Because of this there are a number of games that computers still can't beat because just stupidly trying every possible move doesn't work like it does for chess.
Watson actually does use a lot of natural language processing and machine learning so it is kind of intelligent. Though at it's core it's still just a glorified search engine. Jeopardy was always just a game of memorizing facts, not a demonstration of intelligence.
What people did predict wrong is that it would take general intelligence to solve chess. As in, if you solved chess, you could also pass the Turing test and everything else. Here is a quote from Douglas Hofstadter:
>There may be programs which can beat anyone at chess, but they will not be exclusively chess players. They will be programs of general intelligence, and they will be just as temperamental as people. "Do you want to play chess?" "No, I'm bored with chess. Let's talk about poetry." That may be the kind of dialogue you could have with a program that could beat everyone.
And they would have been right if computers hadn't become exponentially faster.
Once we figure out all the issues of general intelligence, it will stop seeming so special. We may even begin to think that humans are really bad at it afterall.