Final Jeopardy: British Novels (5-20-14)
The Final Jeopardy question (5/20/2014), in the category “British Novels” was:
Stephen King borrowed the name of his fictional town Castle Rock from this 1950s novel that greatly influenced him.
11x champ Julia Collins not only tied Arthur Chu for games won yesterday, she also beat Larissa Kelly’s record as the highest-winning female player on Jeopardy yesterday. Julia has won $231,310 so far. In her 12th game, she is up against Clayton Walker, from Dallas, TX; and Kate Hoffman, from East Boston, MA.
Round 1: Julia found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Reading Rainbow” under the $800 clue. She was in the lead with $2,600, $2,000 ahead of both Kate and Clayton, tied in second place. She bet $2,000 and she was RIGHT.
In a children’s classic by Scott O’Dell, San Nicolas Island is better known as this title place. show
Julia finished in the lead with $9,800. Kate was second with $3,800 and Clayton was last with $2,800.
Round 2: Kate found the first Daily Double in “Rock & Roll Hall of Famers” under the $1,600 clue. She was in second place with $7,800, $5,600 less than Julia’s lead. She bet $3,000 and she was RIGHT.
Darryl McDaniels was one-third of this rap group that was inducted in 2009. show
Julia found the last Daily Double in “The Museums of Europe” under the $1,600 clue. In the lead with $18,200, she had $6,200 more than Kate in second place. She bet $3,000 and thought it was Johann Sebastian Bach. That was WRONG.
Exhibits in this composer’s Bonn home include his grand piano & a variety of ear trumpets. show
Julia finished in the lead with $20,000. Kate was next with $12,800 and Clayton was in third place with $6,800.
NONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
“Castle Rock, Maine is part of Stephen King’s fictional Maine topography and provides the setting for a number of his novels, novellas, and short stories. Castle Rock first appeared in King’s 1979 novel The Dead Zone, and has reappeared as late as his 2013 novel Doctor Sleep (see list below). The name is derived from the fictional mountain fort in William Golding’s 1963 novel Lord of the Flies.” (wikipedia)
Clayton wrote down “Ulysses.” He lost $6,799 and finished with a dollar.
Kate couldn’t come up with anything. She lost $10,000, finishing with $2,800.
Julia came up with “1984.” She lost $5,700, leaving her with $14,300, more than enough to win the match. Her 12-day total is $245,610. Julia’s average is now $20,467.50 per game, not much less than it was at her 6-game point. This win puts Julia in the No. 4 position of Jeopardy money winners, right behind Arthur Chu. Here is the link to her game stats, and here is Arthur Chu’s twitter reaction after finding out that Julia won this game:
“Okay, so @JeopardyJulia has more wins now than me but not quite more money”
“I’ll have no chance of ever getting the wins title back from her but I can hang on to the money title if I win #ToC2014”
2 years ago:: TWO of the players got this FJ in “1957”
On September 5th, Dwight Eisenhower told this State’s Governor that “The Federal Constitution will be upheld by me by every legal means.” show
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FYI…
Here’s an excerpt from one article I found online:
“I’ve watched the show since I was a little kid, maybe 8 or 9,” Collins told her alma mater’s e-newsletter. “It was on mid-afternoon when I was growing up, so I could watch after school.”
Collins says she tried out for the show five years ago and never had a call back but finally got what would become her record-breaking chance when she tried out again in 2013 and was invited on the show in December.
Collins, who double-majored in art and history at Wellesley before earning a master’s degree in engineering from MIT, has become known for live-tweeting each episode on which she competes to her nearly 1,000, and growing, Twitter followers.
On her Twitter profile, Collins describes herself as an “aspiring polymath, smarty pants, voracious reader of anything in print.”
Another victory for Julia. So good to see this year how female contestants are starting to show their true potential. Really enjoying it.
And second place had less than 2/3 of Julia’s total pre-FJ!, so no inoptimal wagering causing a Julia loss like last night on the double/triple stumper.
i must be really in a negative part of my cycle today. the only ones i got were the second dd (duh) and fj.
I couldn’t believe she didn’t get that Beethoven DD — do you think she thought it was a trick question?
Listen, I’m still not over her “Park Place” from yesterday!
Here’s what Julia said on Twitter on Monopoly — “I haven’t played Monopoly in at least 10 years, not willingly in at least 20. And that’s how it goes on @Jeopardy.”
On Beethoven — “I totally blanked on that #DailyDouble. Ear trumpet? Bonn? Piano? Duh! And that’s why I don’t go for broke. #JeopardyProblems”
i don’t know, but as soon as i saw “bonn” in the clue it was as clear as it can get. and although he was born in bonn, he lived in vienna some 35 years in a part of my home district there. that part of vienna is called “heiligenstadt”= town of saints,and the “heiligenstaedter testament” is probably his most famous letter to his brothers, where he expressed his despair re: his bad health and losing his hearing etc etc and his end being near. that letter was from 1802 and he lived another 25 years, although he WAS in poor health and deaf in his last years.
i was as well surprised that julia didn’t get it. bach was already dead when beethoven was born…
I really enjoy the added insight that you provide. Thank you.
my pleasure!
I gave you props too (below), JB.
;o)
To me, one of the beauties of Jeopardy is that it eventually exposes even the best of players on a given night. It’s a valuable lesson for every one of us to be aware of the fact that what we don’t know always dwarfs what we do.
As wide ranging a pool of information that Jeopardy encompasses, it is still a tiny sliver of potential subject matter.
On a side note to Mr. Blahuta, I enjoyed the fact that you spoke up about events in the Balkans as well as the Ukraine. One of the things I find most disturbing is the fact that so much of momentous importance is happening globally, and most Americans are brutally ignorant about almost all of it. To make matters much worse, the US media machinery has become a travesty when it comes to anything approaching honest coverage of these Earth shifting scenes, be they economic, environmental, or geopolitical.
It’s as I alluded to in a recent post here about the rather all-too-obvious potential for systemic breakdown that seems to be occurring in real time, even as those (ostensibly) in charge seem incapable of acknowledging the most basic facts on the ground.
i’m glad i found somebody who agrees with me. if there is any real danger for america, it’s the ignorance and the arrogance that comes with it if it is outside the states. there is a whole planet out there!!
@john — and don’t forget me. I have always been an admirer of your informative comments. 🙂
vj (below),
You had to figure that the Beethoven miss was a brain fade moment. Doesn’t alter the fact that even really good Jeopardy players are capable of missing –actually not knowing– on material that most viewers would consider “easy”. Certainly it’s nothing to be embarrassed about, regardless.
Side note: I am not a big fan of Final Jeopardy clues along the lines of the Monopoly example that require the contestants to brain storm over something that, 1) doesn’t amount to much of interest and 2) is often just a random toss-up as to whether the contestant or viewer can come up with the correct “answer”.
🙂
another win by default. but julia WAS in the lead, so she deserved to win a triple stumper. does anyone know when j goes into summer break??