While Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek continues to bravely battle pancreatic cancer — with every intention of returning next season — the long-running game show itself hasn’t generated this much attention since Ken Jennings 74-game win streak back in 2004. That is all thanks to James Holzhauer, who has changed the way the game is played thanks to his Daily Double strategy. As of Friday, he’s already amassed $1,275,587 in winnings in just 17 days.
One “Final Jeopardy” wager that Holzhauer cannot make, however, is $69, as we learned last week from former champ Ken Jennings, who said that — as of last year — the wager is no longer allowed on the show. The reason is obvious, although in the course of reporting on the verboten wager number, The AV Club actually discovered that $69 is not the only wager that is no longer allowed on Jeopardy!. There are four other wagers that have been prohibited:
Would you be surprised that both Jeopardy! fans and former contestants are active Reddit participants and came up what appears to be the list of the other four problem numbers, three of which are associated with white supremacy groups, because of course the f**king neo-Nazis would find a way to take some of the joy out of Jeopardy! The numbers $14, $88, and $1488 (all associated with neo-Nazi propaganda) were all banned from the show last year, allegedly after a contestant accidentally bet the latter number as part of an effort to hit a particular target score. $666 is also out, although $420 is actually fine.
Personally, I had no idea that the numbers 14 and 88 were associated with white supremacy, but a quick Google search reveals as much. Fourteen refers to the number of words in a sentence written by a white supremacist who died in prison in 2007, David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Meanwhile, 88 refers to the number of Lane’s precepts (and also, “H” is the eighth word in the Alphabet, and H stands for Hitler). Meanwhile, 666 is the number of the beast. Related: James Holzhauer has been playing like a beast over the last 17 days (although, in this case, a beast entirely unrelated to Satan).
(Via AV Club_
