Monday, February 28, 2005 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

[Robert K S]

Game Recap for Show #4721, 2005-02-28

2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions Round 1, game 14.

CONTESTANTS
Michelle Clum, an executive assistant originally from Wichita, Kansas
Jerome Vered, a writer from Los Angeles, California
Jim Scott, an attorney from Arlington, Virginia

OPENING REMARKS
Alex: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our program. You know something? There is as much tension in these games in this first round of the tournament, I bet, as there will be in the last three games of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions when the three players will be playing for $2 million. Maybe not. Michelle, Jerome and Jim, good to have you here.

JEOPARDY! ROUND CATEGORIES
THE JIMMY CARTER EXPERIENCE (5/5)
HEY, TIGER! (5/5)
COUNTRIES IN FRENCH (5/5)
BRAND NAMES (4/5, including 1 missed Daily Double)
MAURICE, BARRY OR ROBIN (5/5)
THE "B.G."s (5/5)

THE RIGHTS & THE WRONGS
Michelle: 11 R, 0 W
Jerome: 11 R, 0 W
Jim: 7 R, 1 W (including 1 DD)

Clues revealed: 30
Triple Stumpers: 0
Jeopardy! Round Potential Lach Trash: $0

Jim would have been a mere $200 off the lead at the end of the round had he not blown an early DD that left him in the red; as it stood, his competitors Jerome and Michelle stayed tight together, sharing the lead at the end of the Jeopardy! Round.

JEOPARDY! ROUND DAILY DOUBLE
Jim found the Daily Double on the 8th clue. Jim had $400, Jerome had $2,400, and Michelle was at $800. Jim wagered $1,000.

BRAND NAMES $600: In the 1980s Royal Appliance manufacturing colored its hand-held vacuum cleaner red & called it this
(Jim: What is the Red Devil?)

SCORES AT THE FIRST BREAK
Jerome: $3,200
Michelle: $2,000
Jim: $1,800

CONTESTANT INTERVIEWS

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

Alex: Michelle Clum, now living in Wichita, Kansas. On one of our shows you happened to mention that you are of Bohemian descent, and that started something. Tell us.

Michelle: Yeah, a few people contacted me who love the show Jeopardy! And they're also of Bohemian ancestry. And so I figured I could start a Bohemian Jeopardy!-Lovers fan club.

Alex: Is it a large club? Are there a lot of people of Bohemian descent?

Michelle: I only know three so far. [Laughter]

Alex: That's a start. That's the way we started.


RHAPSODY IN BLUES

Alex: Jerome Vered from L.A. Last day of your original run, and you are a 5-time champion, you played against a rabbi and won, and that led to something.

Jerome: Yeah, it turns out we had a lot of mutual friends, and once he got over the fact that we knew people in common, I was stopped by a friend on the street who told me that I had been the subject of his Yom Kippur sermon about learning to forgive other people and to forgive yourself. [Laughter]

Alex: Okay, boy, you beat a rabbi. You have to watch out.


RHAPSODY ON A THEME BY PAGININI

Alex: Jim Scott is from Arlington, Virginia. Your tournament semi-finals games were featured in the movie Groundhog Day, right?

Jim: Yes, they were.

Alex: And did that get you some extra recognition, some extra renown?

Jim: A lot of people who I hadn't spoken with in a long time called me to let me know they'd seen me. It was a great experience to add to everything that I'd done on Jeopardy!

Alex: Now, you can't select which clues are going to come up that they are going to feature in the film. Do you recall the category, and did you do well in that?

Jim: It was LAKES & RIVERS. I was doing quite well, and I'm thankful they didn't pick other clips where I wasn't doing so hot.

Alex: I know the feeling.

SCORES AT THE END OF THE JEOPARDY! ROUND
Michelle: $6,200
Jerome: $6,200
Jim: $4,000

[Robert K S]

DOUBLE JEOPARDY! ROUND CATEGORIES
BODY WORLDS (4/5)
OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES (3/5)
WHAT A CHARACTER! (4/5, including 1 missed Daily Double)
FEBRUARY IN HISTORY (5/5)
DECADE OF DISCOVERY (4/5, including 1 correct Daily Double)
"IN"s & "OUT"s (5/5)

THE RIGHTS & THE WRONGS
Jerome: 14 R (including 1 DD), 1 W (including 1 DD)
Michelle: 8 R, 1 W
Jim: 3 R, 0 W

Clues revealed: 30
Triple Stumpers: 4
Double Jeopardy! Round Potential Lach Trash: $6,000

Jerome surpassed Michelle this round. He wouldn't have had a lock game even should she have failed to ring on on the last $2,000 clue but even by responding correctly she did not manage to reduce his lead out of the Crush range.

FIRST DOUBLE JEOPARDY! ROUND DAILY DOUBLE
Jerome snagged the next Daily Double on the 9th clue. Jim had $6,000, Jerome had $10,600, and Michelle was at $8,200. Jerome wagered $2,000.

WHAT A CHARACTER! $1600: The last words of this classic 1851 novel character are "Thus, I give up the spear"
(Jerome: What is... Count of Monte Cristo?)
(Alex: No; he gave up the spear as he plunged it into the Great White Whale.)

SECOND DOUBLE JEOPARDY! ROUND DAILY DOUBLE
It was Jerome who snatched up the last Daily Double of the game on the 19th clue. Jim had $6,400, Jerome had $15,000, and Michelle was at $9,000. Jerome wagered $2,500.

DECADE OF DISCOVERY $1600: DNA's double helix

SCORES ENTERING FINAL JEOPARDY!
Jerome: $21,500
Michelle: $13,800
Jim: $7,200

FINAL JEOPARDY! CATEGORY
COLLEGE LIBRARIES

PREFINAL REMARKS
Alex: Jerome still in the lead and Jim still alive as we come to Final Jeopardy!

(At the end of the Double Jeopardy! Round, Jimmy McGuire of the Clue Crew delivers a Footnote on the historical controversy of dissection from Gunther von Hagens's Body Worlds exhibition at the California ScienCenter, which uses real plastinated cadavers to expose the inner structures and functions of real human bodies.) Dissection of the human body for medical purposes has long been controversial. It was forbidden in ancient times, which is one reason for the inaccurate anatomical works of that era. In the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci privately used dissection, and his studies helped launch the modern understanding of how the body works.

VENUSIAN MONOLOGUES/MARTIAN CHRONICLES
Crush for first place.
Jerome: Wager between $6,101 (venusian) and $7,699 (martian) to cover Michelle.
Michelle: You have the hope of surpassing Jerome if you come up with the correct response. Bet at least $7,701 to force Jerome to wager to win while also protecting your position from being usurped by Jim.
Jim: Unfortunately, your score is less than the difference between the scores of the first and second place players, so unless they both blunder, you're competing for second place and have no hopes of first. Wager as much as you desire, but remember, you'll have better chances of advancing to second place if you have a larger sum left over on a Triple Stumper.

FINAL JEOPARDY! CLUE
Built in memory of a victim of this tragedy, Harvard's Widener Library was opened in 1915

FINAL SCORES
Jim: $7,200 + $7,200 = $14,400 (What is the Titanic sinking?) (3rd place: $5,000)
Michelle: $13,800 + $7,701 = $21,501 (What is Titanic sinking?) (2nd place: $5,000)
Jerome: $21,500 + $6,101 = $27,601 (What is the sinking of the Titanic?) (Winner: $27,601 and an advance to UToC Round 2)
(Alex: Harry Widener was a Harvard grad and he was going to build the library, but after his death his family built it in his honor.)

Total Potential Lach Trash: $6,000

GAME DYNAMICS
http://www.j-archive.com/chartgame.p...72&color=light

CORYAT SCORES
Jerome: $22,600, 25 R (including 1 DD), 1 W (including 1 DD)
Michelle: $13,800, 19 R, 1 W
Jim: $8,200, 10 R, 1 W (including 1 DD)
Combined Coryat: $44,600

BATTING AVERAGES
Jerome: 26/60 = .433
Michelle: 20/58 = .345
Jim: 11/59 = .186
Team: 57/63 = .905

MISCELLANEOUS INTERESTING CLUES
MAURICE, BARRY OR ROBIN $400: Yount & Ventura
(Alex: Yes--baseball.)

BODY WORLDS $400: (Sarah of the Clue Crew points to a set of tiny bones in the Body Worlds exhibit at the California ScienCenter.) The smallest bones of the body, the hammer, stirrup and anvil, are found in this part of the ear

BODY WORLDS $800: (Jimmy of the Clue Crew holds a plastinated body organ.) Weighing in at almost 4 pounds, this largest gland metabolizes fat, protein & carbs & is the body's treatment plant
(Alex: Correct! Good with onions.)

BODY WORLDS $1600: (Jimmy of the Clue Crew identifies one section of a plastinated human brain.) This part of the brain, whose name means "little brain", coordinates muscular movement

BODY WORLDS $2000: (Sarah of the Clue Crew stands by a plastinated human skeleton.) In 1543 this pioneering Flemish anatomist pointed out that bones support the body and protect organs from injury

CORRECT RESPONSES
Dirt Devil
Captain Ahab
the 1950s
Anna Kournikova
Meg Ryan
the 1940s
a heart attack (myocardial infarction)
the sinking of the Titanic
Robin
the middle ear
the liver
the cerebellum
Vesalius

[imperpay]

Originally posted by Robert K S
http://www.j-archive.com/j-archivewantsyou.jpg
Join the team, become a J! Archivist! East coasters especially wanted. Enter one round per week. A great way to study for the show! robertks@gmail.com

...all the cool kids are doing it.

-Imp
-----------------------------
Also doing it, though demonstrably not a cool kid.

[Jarael]

Congratulations to Jerome! That FJ! turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it'd be..

Also, that DD in the J! round sounded hard (mainly because of the category), but man did it turn out to be simple!

[heelsrule1988]

Hey, an easy FJ tonight! I always love those, because I actually have a chance.

[garosgeorge]

if there was ever a final jeopardy question with too much TOM factor this was it......given that its a tournament i would have left the date out of the clue

[Autumn]

hmmm, I am out of step. I thought long bow was easy, but this, I had to guess at...I actually was thinking of the sinking of the Lusitania? Course I don't know who the dude in the clue was!

[handcuffedtoverdi]

Originally posted by Autumn
hmmm, I am out of step. I thought long bow was easy, but this, I had to guess at...I actually was thinking of the sinking of the Lusitania? Course I don't know who the dude in the clue was!

I was considering Lusitania as well. *sad* And I've even been to Widener (the steps - you're not allowed in unless you actually kowtow and pay them ~$40,000 a year) before...

[Robert K S]

I got stuck trying to think of Boston disasters. All I could come up with was the Great Molasses Flood. Upon further research, I discover it came 4 years too late to be a viable response.

[savoygirl]

Broadway musicals supply vital information again!

Probably would have guessed Titanic over Luisitania in any case, but the Wideners are minor characters in the musical TITANIC.

Rollercoaster FJs for me; 5/5 two weeks ago, 0/5 last week (both cases very unusual for me), starting 1/1 so far this week.

Bring it on!

[Jaksiel]

I considered the Lusitania, but the key is that the library was finished in early 1915. I didn't know exactly when the Lusitania sank, but I figured that it was somewhere too near to the completion date for a building to have been completed already.

It made sense in my mind, anyway.

[coop-a-loop]

Another great game. Jerome was just too good & quick.

I guessed right between Titanic & Lusitania.


It's actually pretty close. I thought Lusitania sank in 1916, which helped me elminate that option. But it actually sank Feb 1915.


***Oops*** May 1915, LOL. Thx RWK.

[rwk]

The Lusitania was May of 1915. A fact impressed into my memory from my rendezvous with Mr. Jennings (one of the clues I beat him to, actually)

Would have been one rapidly-built library.

[coop-a-loop]

Where does Jerome's $27.6K rank so far?


Looks like 2nd highest total thus far behind Michael Rankins' $31K.

[popstu]

Originally posted by coop-a-loop
Where does Jerome's $27.6K rank so far?


Looks like 2nd highest total thus far behind Michael Rankins' $31K.

What about Ted Carithers's $31.3K?

[coop-a-loop]

Originally posted by popstu
What about Ted Carithers's $31.3K?

Gack, another mistake! You are right.

Rankins: $31.6
Carithers: $31.3
Vered: $27.6

[MarkBarrett]

FJ had me consider only Titanic and Lusitania. I knew Lusitania was 1915, so I was confident that even if the disaster was early in the year that the building would not have been completed in the same year. The FJ didn't name the month for completion, did it? Living in the state for either one would appear to make no difference, but this FJ came soon after the Massachusetts one.

For those who never saw Jerome in his regular games, it was like nothing changed. He handled the material and buzzer well and the only dent in his game was not solving Ahab. I would like to think he could have got that with FJ thinking time. Three games and three TOC champs down in a row. Jerome's payday is third best so far after Michael Rankins and Tad Carithers.

Michelle impressed me by hanging in there and preventing the lock without playing a DD. I thought she might go with a wager to cover a possible 15399 by Jerome on a miss, but instead she made sure he couldn't get away with a zero bet on a solvable FJ.

[Goodgulf]

Great game, Jerome.
I was worried for you, (since I had seen how well Leszek had done against you and several others in the GameShow Congress Smarty-Pants quiz) but you proved your mastery again.

The clue about the liver being a "gland" just doesn't sit right with me. I suppose this is technically correct, in that the liver does produce an exocrine secretion (bile); however, most medical people would consider it an "organ" rather than a gland.

- Jeff
KJL #98

[bengland]

Well at least I got Titanic. However, it's embarassing to admit but the other maritime disaster that I was considering was The Andrea Doria... I used to be smarter, honest!

[harrumph]

The liver clue was a gimme even if one part of the text was debatable.

On FJ I briefly considered the Maine, thinking that a young Harvard grad might have been on board, before switching to the Titanic.