Final Jeopardy Meltdown

Why is it seemingly smart people can turn into complete idiots on the final jeopardy question?

Probably one of the easiest final questions ever - you didn't need to know some useless fact about Norway or some complex engineering theory, just:

What is the only whole number that when spelled out the letters are in reverse alphabetical order?

Now a logical approach would be to start with the lowest number and work up. Let's begin.

O-N-E

Oh shit, that's it. O comes after N, N comes after E. Yay! Reverse alphabetical order.

And what do our contestants answer? Two of them have major brain farts and answer:

Eleven? What??? That has 3 freakin E's all over the place. No alphabetical order there....

A ton. What the?? That's not even a number!!!!!!!!

I don't know how Alex keeps a straight face sometimes.