Don’t cross “Jeopardy” host Ken Jennings, or any Seattleite, on the proper way to say Pike Place Market.
During an episode of the popular television game show this week, under the category, “They almost tore it down,” the clue was, “If the 1960s plan to replace this Seattle market with high-rises had succeeded, there might be no Starbucks today.”
Watching from my own kitchen in Seattle on Wednesday, I nonchalantly supplied the question: “What is Pike Place Market?”
But on TV, the question from contestant Dan Moren, a writer and podcaster from Massachusetts, didn’t match: “What is Pike’s Place Market?”
Uh oh.
“No. Sorry, Dan,” Jennings said. “We are sticklers in Seattle. It’s PIKE Place. No ‘s.’”
A clip of the exchange was posted on the r/Seattle subreddit under the title “Jeopardy tonight puts an end to Pikes Place,” where it had almost 5,000 upvotes by Friday morning.
The Seattle Times wrote about it, digging up the history of when the market was almost abandoned as “a ramshackle firetrap” and even checking in with a Western Washington University linguistics professor about why people add an “s” to business names, like Costcos or Fred Meyers.
Jeopardy tonight puts an end to Pikes Place
byu/mybarkingDog inSeattle
The “no” from Jennings seemed to be dripping with decades of consternation over correcting people. Now in his third year as host, Jennings often comes across as the smartest person on the stage, because he probably is — his unprecedented 74-game victory streak as a 2004 contestant won him $2.52 million.
But for the Seattle native, who takes clear delight in clues related to the city or Pacific Northwest, this wasn’t just any grammatical miscue. It seemed personal.
If you’ve been around Seattle long enough you’ve no doubt heard transplants and tourists alike refer to the 117-year-old market as “Pike’s Place.” It can serve as a quick identifier of out-of-towners or those who haven’t properly assimilated.
For history’s sake, the landmark Pike Place Market was created in 1907 on Pike Place, a street named for pioneer builder John Pike. Maybe the place was Pike’s. But it’s not our place to put an “s” in the official market name.
As for Moren, the “Jeopardy” contestant, the only “s” he needs to worry about is in dollars. He’s won 33,500 of them as a two-day champion on the show.
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