After at least seven recent Jeopardy! champions said they would not cross the Writers Guild of America picket line to participate in the shows annual Tournament of Champions, producers now say the tournament is delayed.

In a statement late Tuesday, a spokesperson for Sony Pictures Television, which produces the long-running game show, told HuffPost the show never had any intention of producing a Tournament of Champions for Season 39 until the strike is resolved. The annual tournament, which features champions who won the most games during the previous season, typically is filmed in late summer and airs in November.

Jeopardy! writers, who come up with the shows signature clues and questions, are members of the Writers of Guild of America West. TV and film members of the WGA West and East have been on strike since May over equitable pay and working conditions in the streaming era. (HuffPosts unionized staffers are members of the WGA East.)

On Friday, one of the shows recent champions, 13-time winner Ray Lalonde, announced he would not cross the picket line to participate in the Tournament of Champions in solidarity with the shows writers. Lalonde, a Toronto-based scenic artist who has worked on film and TV sets, including on the Hulu series The Handmaids Tale, is a member of IATSE , a union representing many film and TV crew workers.

I am and will always be grateful for the experience I had on the show and the opportunity to participate in the TOC is beyond a dream come true for me, Lalonde wrote on a popular Reddit forum for the show . That being said, I believe that the shows writers are a vital part of the show and they are justified in taking their job action to secure a fair contract for themselves and their fellow WGA members.

As a supporter of the trade union movement, a union members son and a proud union member myself, I have informed the shows producers that if the strike remains unresolved I will not cross a picket line to play in the tournament of champions, he continued.

By Tuesday, six of his fellow champions who are eligible to participate in the tournament said they would join Lalonde in pledging to not cross the picket line.

The writers make the clues; the clues make the show, five-time Jeopardy! champion Luigi de Guzman wrote in response to Lalondes post.