Ken Jennings blasts ‘Jeopardy!’ fan over clue complaints: ‘Buy a dictionary!’

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Jeopardy! co-host Ken Jennings knows that Twitter is full of critics, so usually he doesn’t engage with them.

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But Jennings, 48, wasn’t going to back down after one viewer tagged him in a message claiming that he and the judges messed up when they awarded an answer to a contestant they thought was wrong.

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The category in question was “Potent Potable Rhyme Time,” and the riddle read, “Rice wine for the guy who rides a racehorse,” for $200.

Contestant Kari Elsila buzzed in with, “What is ‘sake’ and ‘jockey’?” which Jennings quickly confirmed was the correct response.

But one fan took to Twitter to dispute the answer, claiming “Sake” and “Jockey” don’t rhyme adding a disappointed-face emoji.

“Dear @Jeopardy writers ‘Sake’ and ‘Jockey’ are not rhyming words,” wrote Twitter user @kyasariin, tagging Jennings in a separate tweet.

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But Jennings spotted the tweet and wasn’t going to let the comment slide without a response.

“I am once again asking Americans to buy a dictionary,” Jennings fired back. He then included screenshots of the words “Jockey” and “Sake” as they appear in the dictionary with the phonetic spelling.

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The couch potato was unmoved by Jennings’ response, tweeting back, “Love when English changes foreign words, I guess.”

But Jennings was determined to have the last word, responding: “Yeah I’m always mad when people say the ‘s’ in Paris. Shameful.”

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On the show’s YouTube page, fans debated the pronunciation.

“Gah! ‘Sake’ does NOT rhyme with ‘jockey,’” one person complained. “‘Sake’ is pronounced just as it’s spelled: sa-ke. Sah-keh, phonetically. The ‘e’ in Japanese is like the ‘e’ in the English word ‘let.’ If it rhymed with ‘jockey’ it would be ‘saki’ (sic).”

Another fan replied, “Foreign words get adjusted when they become part of a new language. This happens with every language.”

“Thank you, as a Japanese person I was about to comment exactly this,” chimed a third.

“Everybody who doesn’t have an American accent will be immediately irritated by the first clue so transparently not rhyming in any accent without the caught-cot merger,” observed another viewer.

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This isn’t the first instance in which Jennings has employed a divisive dictionary diss to deal with unruly followers.

After an enthusiast questioned his pronunciation of “Appalachian” last month, Jennings shot back with a link to the Merriam-Webster dictionary and the definition of Appalachian.

“How many times, @KenJennings? HOW MANY TIMES? #SayItRight #AppaLATCHun,” the armchair critic swiped.

“You guys lost the war & now the North writes the dictionaries,” Jennings wrote dismissively.

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Jennings’ retort received a mixed response in the comments, with one person writing, “Oh Ken … that’s kinda icky, bro.”

This most recent spat follows another Jeopardy! controversy that emerged when Jennings was accused of robbing a contestant after they mispronounced a response.

Jennings’ questionable call came earlier this month when Kevin Manning gave the correct answer to a clue — but was ruled invalid by the host.

“After the Last Supper, Jesus travelled to this garden to pray & was arrested there,” read the question in “The Bible” category.

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Manning buzzed in with the correct answer, “What is the Garden of Gethsemane,” but Jennings rejected his response because of how he pronounced Gethsemane. Returning champ Tamara Ghattas then took a shot, changing her inflection slightly.

“Yeah, we just needed the ‘n’ in Gethsemane — that’s correct,” said Jennings.

According to the Dictionary.com, Gethsemane is pronounced geth-sem-uh-nee.

Jenning’s ruling against Manning cost him $1,600 and dropped him down to $2,600.

Fans immediately took to social media to react to the call, with many lambasting Jennings for awarding the answer to Ghattas.

“I thought the contestant who answered The “Garden of Gethsemane” was robbed of his points tonight. What did he say wrong? The contestant who got points for that question, didn’t even pronounce it right,” one viewer wrote.

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“Just watched @Jeopardy this evening and @KenJennings definitely mispronounced the name of Mount Gethsemane. The gentleman Kevin pronounced it right,” another watcher seethed.

That debate followed an episode the week before in which Professor Melissa Klapper answered a clue in the “Quite the Fish Story” category incorrectly.

“The Force of Lasse Hallstrom was strong to pull in this Scot to play a fisheries expert in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” Jennings read.

Klapper buzzed in with “Who is Ewan Gregor?,” winning $600 and giving her the edge over the two other contestants, Jake Garrett and Kelly Barry.

Jennings allowed her response, saying, “That is correct.”

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But Klapper’s answer didn’t sit well with viewers at home who slammed her incorrect response.

Tagging the show’s official Twitter handle, one fan fumed: “That red-headed lady who won answered a question incorrectly. She said Ewan Gregor instead of Ewen MCGREGOR. We ran it back twice. She didn’t say it. She shouldn’t have won.”

After that gaffe, a woman named Karen Morris was ruthlessly mocked after betting $10,000 on a Daily Double, which led to her eventually losing the game.

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