Final Jeopardy: 19th Century Writers (2-9-15)
The Final Jeopardy question (2/9/2015), in the category “19th Century Writers” was:
After his death, he was given full military honors in Greece before his body was returned home for burial at his baronial seat.
The first semi-final match of the 2015 Teachers Tournament features: Erin McLaughlin, from Queens, NY; Lydia Cuffman, from Redwood City, CA; and Adam Elkana-Hale, from St. Louis, MO.
The winner of this match will advance to the finals and the other two will take home $10,000.
Round 1: Lydia found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Leaves” under the $400 clue. She was in second place with $3,800, $1,000 less than Adam’s lead. She bet $2,000 and guessed Casanova. That was WRONG.
“Life is so beautiful”, says this fictional Italian American before dying in his garden. show
Adam finished in the lead with $5,600. Erin was second with $3,200 and Lydia was last with $1,000.
Round 2: Adam found the first Daily Double in “Merry Wives of Windsor” under the $800 clue. He was in the lead with $11,200, $6,400 more than Erin in second place. He bet $1,200 and he was RIGHT.
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon married Albert in 1923, 13 years before he got this new name. show
Adam found the last Daily Double in “South of the Equator” under the $1,600 clue. In the lead with $14,000, he was $6,600 ahead of Lydia in second place. He bet $3,000 and he was RIGHT.
This island nation with a directional name splits oil revenues with Australia, not its old master Indonesia. show
Adam finished in the lead with a runaway $19,800. Erin was next with $9,200 and Lydia was in third place with $7,000.
TWO of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
“As he approached middle age, Byron grew more contemplative. He had the sense that he wanted to do something bigger than just flirt. In 1823, after publishing the remaining cantos of Don Juan, Byron traveled to Greece to assist the Greeks in their revolution against Turkish rule. He had always had a soft spot for the country and hoped to prove his heroics in their fight for independence. He instead got a rather unglamorous role in the revolution, helping to procure supplies. On 9 April 1824, Byron fell ill with a fever. Doctors bled him with leeches as his illness grew progressively worse, with Byron writhing, delirious and in pain. Ten days later, on 19 April 1824, Lord Byron died in Missolonghi, Greece at the age of 36.” (Lord Byron: Exile and Death)
Lydia got it right but bet nothing so she remained at $7,000.
Erin also got it right. Her $9,000 bet brought her up to $18,200.
Adam wrote down Tennyson, who was 14 years old at the time. He only lost $1,300 and won the match with $18,500, as well as the first spot in the finals.
There’s a video of the chat segments for each semi-final game on Jeopardy!’s youtube channel.
These two clues in the Double Jeopardy! round prompted commentary from Alex Trebek.
$400 in “South of the Equator: South of the equator, winter begins in this month.” Adam rang in after a pregnant pause and got it right. Trebek said “You guys gave so much thought to that, it just blew my mind.
$2000 in “The New $100 Bill: “The bill feels rough to the touch due to a printing process using this Italian-named sculptural method, also called hollow relief.” It was the last clue of the round and Lydia lost $2K by buzzing in with bas-relief. Just before the FJ answers were revealed, Trebek said “I can’t help but think that you three are going to remember [the answer] for a long long time.”
2 years ago:: Only ONE of the players got this FJ in “Military Men”
On June 6, 1944 he said, “The eyes of the world are upon you” show
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It would have been great to have started the week with an FJ triple solve. Alas, it was not to be. Regardless, congrats to Adam!
“You guys gave so much thought to that, it just blew my mind.” I guess that’s the closer Alex can get to saying “What’s wrong with you guys?” 🙂
LOL! I think what blew his mind was that the clue was only $400.
If I made an image of that scene with thought bubbles over their heads, I’d have “June or July? I’ll pass” for Erin and Lydia but for Adam, I’d have “June or July? Remember the alligator! Oh, well, this one’s only $400…”
On Friday, a $1,600 clue in Reptiles was: “The only species of this toothy beast besides the American is the Chinese, which lives along the Yangtze”
There was no buzzer shaking going on with Kate. After a second or two, Adam tried it with crocodile. Then Kate got it and he no longer had a runaway.
LOL! I just love your sense of humor, VJ!
Yeah…I had forgotten about that mishap of Adam on Friday. Today, at the last clue(?) (when Adam already had a runaway), I was like, Adam, don’t you dare ringing in, dude!
yeah at the end of the round it’s just not wise to take a guess, although that $2K guess didn’t cost Lydia the game because she didn’t know it and would have just remained at $9,000, but you never know. Sometimes a person with a runaway makes a betting mistake as we have seen.
PS – the equator clue was a $400 clue. I fixed that and the refs to it.
And speaking of your sense of humor, one of your comments on Friday’s game, in which you jokingly suggested to someone to write his Congressman and tell him about the sad state of our teachers/education and link the J!games on Youtube as proof, absolutely cracked me up.
so adam got “italy” right on friday. that was a no-brainer imo.
and…drum roll please….
we have our first finalist who won his spot despite missing such an easy answer in the semi finals.
i am by no means into poetry, but EVEN I knew it was lord byron immediately after i read the clue -actually when i was just past the part with the military honors in greece. read it in a history book ironically enough.
can’t wait to see the show, how difficult or easy the clues were, after all (with a 3K dd) he had 19.800..and then misses byron as the only one of the three players.
i wonder how many finalists we will have who missed fj in the semis.
and all 3 DDs were on college level (corleone,1923+13=1936 when prince albert became george VI and all the hoopla with timor, ending in a referendum and independence for the eastern part of the island). lydia either never saw the movie or did not pay attention.
as far as fj is concerned: i wonder what it will take to get a correct answer from all 3?? if they ask “number of states in the u.s.a ” someone will come up with 51 or 52, including D.C. and/or puerto rico as a state….how much easier does it have to get??
@John, the day there is a triple solve on fj you and I will have a virtual party. Thought this would be the day, but “no.”
Watched the match. Overall, I felt it was good. Was shocked about the Don Corleone DD miss though.
Adam is a very good player. Congrats Adam!
Erin or Lydia getting Intaglio might well have meant a made it a win for one of them.
A lot less bad guesses would have helped Lydia
I agree. Still can’t figure out how she missed Don Corleone.
well I wasn’t really counting that one — she didn’t read the book, that’s how she missed that one.
I don’t recall the line being in the movie. He keeled over playing in the garden with his grandson in the movie and didn’t say anything.
Yep. In the movie he had a half orange in his mouth playing with his grandson. They had a thing for oranges in Godfather I and II. In GF II, remember Michael was eating an orange in his home while ordering hits on people?
Michael was told “you can’t kill everybody” to which he replied “I don’t want to kill everybody, just my enemies.” This part had me laughing because in the movie it appeared everybody WAS his enemy. 😀
Anyway, I digress. The DD clue was not in the movie because I remember you and I discussing some time ago having read the book when we were younger. Lydia is definitely too young to have read the book.
I don’t think she’s too young to read the book — I was only about 19 when I read it, the year before the film came out. Then I went to see that 3x.
And I wouldn’t say the book is too old for her to read either :):) I read “Gone with the Wind” when I was 15 and saw the movie for the first time at Radio City Musical Hall when I was 16.
Books and films don’t always have the same details. For example, around the same time as “The Godfather”, I read Irwin Shaw’s “Rich Man, Poor Man.” They made it into a mini-series in the mid-70s and totally cut out the sister of the two main characters.
Sometimes the film version can replace the book in your memory. And of course, Jeopardy can draw from either as a clue source.