Final Jeopardy: Russians (4-10-15)

The Final Jeopardy question (4/10/2015), in the category “Russians” was:

The subtitle of a biography about this early 20th century man is “the Saint Who Sinned”.

New champ Chris Hurt defeated a 6x champ yesterday and won $30,801. In the last game of the week, these two players will try to make Chris’s reign brief: Alex Jacob, from Chicago, IL; and Laura Kohlenberg, originally from Pemberville, OH.

Round 1: Chris found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Literary Landmarks” under the $600 clue before the first break. He was in the lead with $1,600, $1,200 more than Alex in second place. He bet $1,000 and he was RIGHT.

You can visit the Belfast buildings where as a child this author saw a lion door knocker & an elaborate wardrobe. show

Chris finished in the lead with $5,600. Alex was second with $5,000 and Laura was last with $1,800.

Round 2: Alex found the first Daily Double in “Dictionary of Science” under the $1,600 clue. He was in the lead with $8,600, $2,600 more than Chris in second place. He made it a true Daily Double and he was RIGHT.

“E” is for this hard outer body of an animal, like a mollusk’s shell. show

Alex found the last Daily Double in “Books of the Roman Empire?” under the $1,200 clue. In the lead with $24,400, he was $12,800 ahead of Chris in second place. It took him about 10 whole seconds to decide to bet $4,000. He gave the right answer but not in Roman numerals so that was WRONG.

From MCMXV, the _____ steps. show

Alex finished in the lead with a runaway $23,200. Chris was next with $10,800 and Laura was in third place with $1,800.

Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.

WHO IS RASPUTIN?

“On Nov. 1, 1905, Nicholas II of Russia made the following entry in his diary: “We [his wife and he] have made the acquaintance of a man of God, named Grigory. . . .” He was referring to Grigory Rasputin, and the entry marks the beginning of a friendship that proved fatal to all three and contributed, with the help of the myths it engendered, to the fall of the Romanov dynasty and the collapse of imperial Russia. Its contribution may not have been as great as is usually assumed (and seems to be by [author] Brian Moynahan), but the assumption is by now part of the many Rasputin myths. So is the most widespread myth of all: that of the dark, powerful, almost medieval figure–a monk in the odd but most popular Western legends– who, in the decade preceding the revolution, was, according to Moynahan, ‘the real sovereign of Russia.'” (L.A. Times: Dr. Feelgood)



Laura thought it was Lenin. That cost her $1,700 and she finished with $100.

Chris got it right. His $9,200 bet brought him up to $20,000.

Alex didn’t write anything down and he didn’t bet anything either. So he won the match with $23,200 and he is the new Jeopardy! champ.

FJ Results: 4-10-15

Alex Jacob is a currency trader who used to be a professional poker player. (He’s in wikipedia). Alex Trebek asked him if the two occupations were similar during the chat. “Well, they’re both businesses,” Alex responded. “You could come home from a long day’s work with less money than you started.”

2 years ago:: Only ONE of the players got this FJ in “Authors”

In hiding when his life was threatened, Salman Rushdie paid tribute to Conrad & Chekhov by using this pseudonym. show

We may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made from Amazon.com links at no cost to our visitors. Learn more: Affiliate Disclosure.

Share

You may also like...

27 Responses

  1. yeahyman says:

    easy FJ

  2. Nullifidian says:

    Alex’s second DD showed another drawback of DD hunting: by the time you find it, you may have forgotten the conditions placed on the correct answer. This does seem like a silly restriction to put on players. “You not only have to give the correct answer, but you have to answer it in a needlessly contrived way!” It could have been worse, though. They could have given clues to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (CDLI), George Orwell’s 1984 (MCMLXXXIV), and Blake Butler’s 300,000,000 (gives up in despair).

    I’m surprised nobody mentioned it—perhaps we’re all too polite—but Alex looked and sounded stoned to me. His long pauses and drawled answers were just driving me up the wall. If he was on anything, I hope he comes down from it by Monday. If he wasn’t, I’ll just have to struggle to live with it.

    • Cece says:

      LOL!

    • VJ says:

      Oh, they mentioned that he looked and sounded stoned a lot on Twitter. Personally, I thought Alex was stalling deliberately — I didn’t notice that overwhelming lethargy set in til after he doubled his $$ on the Science DD.

    • john blahuta says:

      an M with a bar over it is one million in roman numerals, so…. 🙂

      well, remember reagan in his second term? he was sometimes drawling, pausing etc and it eventually turned out to be the earliest signs of alzheimer’s. for alex’s sake i hope he just inhaled or so…

    • Tom Clark says:

      1,000,000 is M with a bar over it. I guess 300,000,000 would be 300 of them?

      In those days, I guess they figured no one would ever need a number that big. Well, times have changed. The U.S. government spends more than $300,000,000 every HOUR (!) (actually something like $450,000,000).

      Anyway, I agree he looked and acted stoned.

    • VJ says:

      Flashback: Ken Jennings didn’t have any problem with Initials to Roman Numerals LINK

  3. ginny says:

    Alex is so smart. He answered the first difficult Roman Numerals’ question. He got it correct; however, he was clearly frustrated that it had to be in Roman numeral form.

  4. VJ says:

    Lots of itchy sweater tweets out there tonight. I thought that was Alex’ way of saying “I can answer this with one hand tied behind my back.”

  5. jacob ska says:

    @John, you’re going to have a conniption when you watch the game. Laura responded to something along the line to “this currency used during Nazi Germany” the Deutsche Mark (which wasn’t used until around 1948) when the response should have been Reichsmark.

    I said to myself “John is going to throw a temper tantrum.” I know I did and I didn’t live in Europe as long as you did. LOL

    • VJ says:

      My own FYI to the Alexes from this match – when you are talking about the largest city in New Jersey, Newark is a one-syllable word — it’s Nork.

      • Cece says:

        @VJ – I didn’t know that’s how you pronounced it — thanks!

        It was only 10 seconds Alex took to bet on that DD? It felt like an eternity (and then he forgets the category). I don’t want to knock his victory, but I was rooting for Chris.

        To everyone’s chagrin, we may be in for anther string of 1-day or 2-day champs again.

        • VJ says:

          Yeah, I once taught a Korean guy who had to go to Newark, NJ on business how to say it. (I was born there). He was saying it like they do in Delaware – Noo – ark. Idk how they say it in Ohio.

          Yeah, it was about 10 seconds from the time Trebek stopped talking and he was supposed to say his bet till he did, including the “hurry”.

          However, it pans out, let’s hope the howdies don’t have any spoilers next week.

        • Cece says:

          Idk how they say it in Ohio either, but I know we foreigners (Koreans, Brazilians..) say it like they do in Delaware — lol!

          I’m with you about the howdies, otherwise we’ll have to write a letter to the J! staff. 🙂

      • VJ says:

        They have a Brazilian Carnaval in Newark, Cece. I bet your fellow countrymen say Nork in the Ironbound.

        My youngest was baptized at a church in the Ironbound by her cousin, who was a monsignor at the time. Now he is a bishop.

        • Cece says:

          That’s a cool piece of info, VJ — thanks! I looked up “Ironbound” on Wikipedia and learned about its great influx of Portuguese in the 50’s. In the present day, there’s a community of Brazilians — they even have a few Portuguese and Brazilian newspapers.

          Wow, your daughter was baptized by her own cousin — how neat!

        • VJ says:

          Yes, and the food down there is great. My son and his wife were in NJ just last month and made a point to have dinner at Iberia.

      • john blahuta says:

        sooooo 2 syllables becoming one,pronouncing it incorrectly. remember how i was lambasted when i said some french say “coup de grace” WITHOUT the “s”, making it sound like “fat/gras”???
        cece had a fit and here we have ne-wark pronounced as nork..???
        i just hope cece reads this.
        so YES, some people in france DO pronounce “coup de grace” like “gras”.
        and probably MOST people pronounce newark, a 2 syllable word as nork.
        thanks for proving my point vj, albeit unintentionally and belated. :):):)

        • VJ says:

          I don’t believe I proved your point unintentionally or belatedly at all, John. Nobody disagreed with your position that some people in France might pronounce “coup de grâce” like “gras” or lambasted you for it. I said I would have to take your word for it since I didn’t know that. Also, you weren’t directing me to any source to support your statement and I did provide you with a wiki link that said the “gras” pronunciation was started by English speakers who were overcompensating on silent ‘s’s.

          The point that Cece and I were making is that “gras” and “grâce” are two different words in French so please don’t start talking apples and oranges again – like when you brought up the evolution of the word “cookie”. That is one word with different meanings. Today I am talking about the name of a city that is pronounced differently by locals in different areas. Other pertinent examples are Houston Street in NYC and Houston, TX. Or Lima, Peru and Lima, Ohio. No matter how many people pronounce “gras” and “grâce” the same way, they are not the same word.

    • john blahuta says:

      well, the reichsmark WAS german, but so were all the sheep that followed hitler and his henchmen. a rather dark chapter in german history, although wwII de facto began with the treaty of vbersailles. a british diplomat said something like ” this is not peace, we just bought a 20 year armistice”. 20 years later hitler (could have been anybody) started wwII by attacking poland.
      what still bothers me a little is that he was born on the wrong (austrian) bank in Braunau on the Inn river.thank God it is past us, but now we have chaos in the middle east where brother kills brother and everybody else in the name of “religion”. seems people never learn.
      shalom,haveri!

  6. jacob ska says:

    I think Alex took so long on deciding how much to wager on that last DD because he wanted to ensure a lock in lead. Now that is what I call a strategy and it worked. He didn’t have to wager anything in fj.

    Smart move Alex unlike someone who shall remain nameless earlier this week who threw caution to the wind and BET $12000 on a DD and didn’t know the correct response.

    • VJ says:

      well, smart move because he got it, but I must say that when he bet it all on that first DD he got, I was like — oh, no, not again!

      • Nullifidian says:

        Yeah, but he seemed pretty confident. Being a guy with a math background, he may have thought that he had enough of an appreciation of science to get the question right. I’ve known many mathematicians who were science buffs, and the reciprocal situation is often true for us scientists. I’m a molecular biologist, but I follow mathematics as best I can from my admittedly non-expert background. In fact, right now I’m reading David Foster Wallace’s pop math book, Everything and More: A Concise History of Infinity. While I won’t be delivering any conference presentations, I’m pretty sure I could answer any math question likely to arise on Jeopardy.

    • Tom Clark says:

      I thought he took an hour and a half (it seemed like it) to decide on his wager because he was stalling. The longer he took, the less time there’d be for more questions and the less opportunity for his opponents to achieve at least half his score so they might win with FJ (which is exactly what would have happened.)

      I could argue that what he was doing was a form of cheating.

      Everything about his playing involved Chu-like “mind games” strategy.

      But I don’t think he’ll last too long because he’s not as smart as he thinks he is (for instance, forgetting that Trebek had said you’d have to give the answers in Roman numerals) or as knowledgable (for instance, having no clue about Rasputin.)

      To be brutally honest, I found him to be so weird and obnoxious that I don’t want to look at him any more and I’m not going to watch the show any more. So there.

      • Jeb says:

        I agree with you Tom. Obnoxious bullies like this guy ruin the game. I am not watching tonight either. Somebody tell me when he is gone.

  7. john blahuta says:

    surprised at only 1 correct response.seemed easy to me, but then we are talking east european history… so chris could not follow up on yesterday’s performance and we have-again- a new champ.
    idk why chris risked second place with his bet..?
    well, anyway:
    HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND ALL YOU FFamers!
    stay safe and file your tax return already!! :):) publicanus ante portam est!

    • john blahuta says:

      and of course congratulations to alex (the player..). let’s see how HE will do on monday. give them banjos and we have the dueling alexes.(provided that is the plural for alex..)