Final Jeopardy: The 1960s (5-23-14)
The Final Jeopardy question (5/23/2014), in the category “The 1960s” was:
In his last speech, he mentioned local newsmakers of the day, including his friend Cesar Chavez and Don Drysdale.
Current champ Julia Collins has made it to the end of the week and now boasts an amazing record of 14 wins and winnings of $284,100. Today she is up against these two players: Brandon Barnes, from Park Forest, IL; and Steve Buechner, from Los Angeles, CA.
Round 1: Julia found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “European History” under the $600 clue. She was in the lead with $3,800, $3,200 ahead of Brandon in second place. She bet $1,200 and she was RIGHT.
The Battle of Balaklava & the Battle of Inkerman took place during this war. show
During the chat, Alex brought up Julia’s reluctance to bet a lot on Daily Doubles and she replied. “I really want to keep winning.” Her buzzer mojo and correct responses in this round really underscored that statement!
Julia finished in the lead with $11,600, Steve was second with $1,600 and Brandon was in the red for $1,400.
Round 2: Julia found the first Daily Double in “Auth’er’s” under the $1,600 clue. She was in the lead with $20,000, $12,000 more than Steve in second place. She bet $2,000 and she was RIGHT.
Published posthumously in 2003, a novel by this Brooklyn guy was titled ‘Catch as Catch Can’. show
Julia found the last Daily Double in “Bodacious Cantatas” under the $800 clue. In the lead with $22,400, she had $14,400 more than Steve in second place. She bet $2,000 again and she was RIGHT again.
Alessandro Scarlatti’s “O di Betlemme Altera” was written for this holiday. show
Julia finished in the lead with $30,400, her third runaway in a row. A very frustrated Steve was next with $10,400. Brandon was still in the hole at minus $1,000 so he was out of the game at this point.
Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
On June 5, 1968, at 12:50 a.m. PDT, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, gave a victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, after winning the California presidential primary. He thanked many people who had helped with his campaign, his family, (including their dog, Freckles), Cesar Chavez and L.A. Dodger Don Drysdale specifically, “who pitched his 6th straight shutout.” After the speech, Sen. Kennedy was mortally wounded in a hail of gunfire and died the following day. A youtube of the first part his speech is here and a transcript (here).
Don Drysdale died of a heart attack on July 3, 1993 in a hotel room in Montreal. Among his personal belongings found in the room was a cassette tape of RFK’s speech, which he is believed to have taken with him wherever he went.
Steve wrote down Tom Bradley. He lost $10,399 and finished with $1.00.
Julia got it right and added $400 to finish with $30,800, her biggest one day total yet! Her 15-day total is $314,900. That falling sound you heard was Arthur Chu’s last record as third highest money winner in regular play. The honor now belongs to Julia Collins!
What a wild game that was to watch! Steve looked like he was exasperated by Julia’s lightning speed on that buzzer more than a couple of times! Julia was definitely at her best!
2 years ago:: Only ONE of the players got this FJ in “Military Matters”.
In 1934 the lease for this place was increased to $4,085 per year; since 1959 the checks haven’t been cashed. show
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Good to see Firth has been taking some notes. For myself, kinda like Steven Colbert I don’t see race or gender so much, but I do have a reasonably well-honed sense of fairness/justice. As solid as Julia’s played she simply doesn’t meet the eye test for what she’s accomplished and the stats –as I’ve explained previously– back me up I believe.
[The Colbert line is partly in jest, since we’re all subject to various biases, known and unknown. It takes real effort to counter prejudices.]
Side note to eric: It’s reassuring to know that “your clan” is not a tame one. And of course, the Pete Steele question was entirely contrived for conversational purposes. Peter Steele, a stage name? You can NOT be serious!
Everything I know, I’ve learned from Wikipedia.
Interesting comments by Firth over on Julia Collins’ Jeopardy! Statistics.
Oh…
Since I was thinkin’ about it, vj, could I get me some devil’s horns for my dude?!
Bill the word below on the thread I replied on should be spelled “insightful.” No such word as “linsightful.” Don’t laugh at me. I hit submit comments prior to proofreading.
Too late, Jacob. I’ve now recovered though but the doc says I should rest my sore back and stomach. I’ve made a note to place soft rugs on the floor for future rolling and laughing.
@bill, all i know about the avatars is they are randomly assigned. I think if you register, you have the ability to upload your own. I really can’t do anything about it right now since not too long ago, the site got suspended for high CPU usage. I had to delete a bunch of plugins (why the social icons disappeared). I’m hoping to be able to revamp later in the summer when J is on break. Maybe I can get some new avatar sets without using plugins then.
@jacobska (and everyone in general), I will fix any typos on here when they are called to my attention and then I will delete the correction message, except when something else is added to the message. Then I feel like I can’t.
Can we conclude by the stimulus given that Don Drysdale was not his friend?
Watched the video. It’s all in context now. Thanks VJ.
Julia is not only brilliant she is smokin HOT and has the most beautiful smile I hope she keeps on winning!!!
Julia is poised and focused. She went to MIT, for Christ’s sake! She’s brilliant! Go Julia!!
I think a lot of the writers on this blog are Jeopardy want to bes and could never make it past the eligibility test to become contestants.
I’m probably guilty of that (haven’t been able to take the test yet), but then again, aren’t most people?
In all fairness, I do believe that there are some intelligent people who write here and probably could pass the test. Of course, since it is easy to identify who posts what, it should be easy to avoid those whom you don’t enjoy.
I think if you watch the show on a pretty regular basis, and you make an effort to read material that fills in your weak spots you have a good shot to make it on the show, but you have to plug away at it. Most contestants get to the show after multiple attempts over a period of several years.
Chuck Forrest’s, “Secrets of the Jeopardy
Champions”, is still probably the single best primer on the topic (an oldy, but a goody).
By the way, the fawning that many people do over some of the contestants is pretty goofy. There are sooo many smart, decent people who never had the chance to go to Wellesley, or MIT, and there are plenty of whip smart, idiotic drones who DID go to elite schools. So what?!
😀
To be clear –cuz’ you can bet yer sweet ace someone will pull a classic non sequitur– I am NOT indicting Julia Collins here, nor have I said a word that was disparaging of Ms. Collins….yet.
😉
Oh but we are waiting William. We are waiting.
You makin’ fun a me, Jacobs KA?
[But just to clarify, the “yet” was not meant as a threat.]
And “bill” is fine.
🙂
Bill it is Jacob. The last name is too long to spell. No I’m not making fun of you. I am an avid reader of your comments and always find them on the intellectual side and Iinsightful.
Thanks, Jacob. I like the scene here. Interesting folks and good conversation. I’ve no doubt I’ll be asking you some follow-ups based on what I’ve seen from you so far.
I looked on Amazon and that book was over $50. At least Julia can afford it. I do wonder if it has strategies for tournaments (and if so, are they for the same format: 5 winners and four wild cards)?
By the way, you guys can refer to me by either “Eric” or “you cannot be serious”. I think that I get referred to by the latter as often.
Wow! That’s kinda weird that it’s that steep, but it’s undoubtedly out of print I would think. Makes me wonder how many people are trying to get on Jeopardy these days –our economy being so daunting– , and how that number compares to years past.
If you’ve got a pretty good library system in your area I think you might track down a copy. If so, then you could simply take some notes and/or make copies of some of the key info.
Scratch my above comment and replace with, “You can NOT be serious!”
One more thing…
Any relation to dearly departed Type O Negative front man, Peter Steele?
Stab in the dark, but hey, who knows?
😀
@Bill: I guess it vacillates from “you cannot…” to “you can not…”. Peter Steele looked a little tame for my clan. Actually, it was a stage name.
Wow, missed the fact that she went to MIT, that pretty much explains it all. I have absolutely no respect for unreasonably prestigious schools like harvard and yale, they only ever pump out rich kids and they honestly aren’t often very bright, whereas just about everyone that ever attended MIT is a good ‘ol bona fide genius
Julia Collins is a Wellesley grad and MIT grad which in my opinion speaks for itself. She is quite brilliant. There is an expression that I think is applicable here. Don’t take kindness for weakness.
Yes, but that 400 bet on FJ was weird. She would have harmed no one with a $5,000 bet. It’s not her knowledge that makes me wonder about her greatness: it’s her game theory.
Agree with Eric on that $400 bet. Huh? This one day she could have went BIG and still went over 300K. Best guess: she wanted to win the match with 30K. Maybe there are times when even Wellesley and MIT grads can’t see the forest for the trees. 🙂
Julia’s weak DD wagers are the equivalent of throwing away crucial opportunities. When you are at the 75 to 80 percent level it’s undeniably in your interest to wager (reasonably) aggressively.
For a simple comparison, Arthur Chu was 18 for 27 on DDs, which is good but not great and his average net gain on DDs was just north of 4000 per game. Julia now stands at 18 for 24 on DDs, which is excellent, yet her average net per game on DDs is barely above 1000. That’s piss-poor, to put it succintly.
It’ll be interesting if she has the smarts to adjust that in TOC. It could be a critical factor.
There is no doubt that it takes a superior intellect to fuse Art and History with Engineering: especially at that level. It doesn’t hurt that she’s a lovely woman as well (at least for me). I do know that some of us would like to see her up against tougher competition: the recent players haven’t been much of a touchstone for her true greatness.
I didn’t think that guy Steve was necessarily a weak competitor. He just couldn’t beat Julia on the buzzer the majority of the time. It was really getting to him!
I don’t know. He lives in LA, and thought the mayor in the 1980’s (maybe more) gave his last speech in the 1960s. Also, as he was starting to gain momentum, he went straight up to the 400 question.
Yeah, I thought those two moves were pretty baffling! Based on his Final Jeopardy guess alone I would surmise that he might not have been a particularly sharp opponent, but the fact that he was having such a bad day on the buzzer made it impossible to tell if he was at least a pretty decent player.
I will say, in his defense, we are all capable of giving pretty bad responses, and in the heat of the game it’s easy to imagine how the pressure can force an error. It’s typically in regular play though, based on a misread or misheard clue, that the boneheaded responses come out.
I’m sure you have read my previous comments on prior games on Jeopardy regarding emotions getting in the way of logical thinking. Steve lost his logical thinking in FJ because he was too animated during the regular game showing his frustration.
That seems completely plausible. I think he was torched, man.
I’m not so sure about that vj. He could have been another Roger Craig. Buzz in and then try to think of a correct response. I was not thrilled with his response in FJ. Mayor Tom Bradley? Julia was right on target with Robert Kennedy. I have no idea what he was thinking about.
Okay guys. I didn’t think too deep about his FJ answer. I mean, he could have bet $0 or everything and wrote down nothing or anything, he was taking home $2K. But I see the point about the $400 question.
Tom Bradley was LA mayor 1973-1993. The category was “the 1960’s.” How could Tom Bradley give a last speech in the 1960’s? That response led me to believe that Steve was not a clear thinker while Julia was a clear thinker.
i do also not believe that answers are supplied. however, as i said earlier this week, 1/20 of a second on the buzzer “release” can make a heck of a difference. and who decides when you can buzz in? it is a certain time span after the clue is read ?? also, as i said before, alex sometimes adds a word or syllable, inadvertently, by mistake, whatever. there will never be a way to prove that. plus, an actual malfunction – where a buzzer is released just THAT much earlier – is always possible. selection of who plays whom ARE made as we have seen in the totd…..
and yes. he who pays (sony) gives the orders. there is a VEEEEERY fine line between actual fraud and just some – “unintentional”- help.
if they want somebody to lose, the smallest “malfunction” of a buzzer suffices. they never explained – to my recollection – in detail how and when you can ring in. if you really want to, anything is possible without committing direct fraud.
can they hint to a player s/he should lose? well, let me just say i still don’t get it how ken would guess FedEx, when H&R Block was OBVIOUS.
The question was asked when I was there: there is a light on the side of the board when the contestants may buzz in. I saw an old episode where they could buzz in whenever: it was truly a mess.
There is a technician who listens to Alex’s voice and hits the switch to fire the podium “go lights”. I’ve heard a former contestant saying that it’s best to just listen to Alex’s voice yourself and ignore the podium lights or you end up ringing in too slow.
Couple of thoughts…
1) I am not in any way defending Arthur Chu. He had his warts, perhaps all the more so via his off tv-screen antics which I haven’t been privy to.
2) I haven’t watched all the Julia Collins games, but tonight’s game was not very interesting or entertaining, in the largest measure because her closest competitor was getting crushed on the buzzer. I felt like tonight’s material was akin to me playing on the 8 foot rims, and to watch a runaway on a lot of easy material is excruciatingly dull. I suspect it wasn’t just me that thought the overall material was on the very easy side.
Bottom line though, Julia has won every bit of her fair share. If she was as dominant as some of the better players historically I’d still pull for her at least to some extent, particularly if the games were competitive and gripping, material-wise.
P.S. I apologize if anyone was offended by my “Julia Collins and her whipping boys” comment off the bat here. Jeopardy comes on after this blog pops up and I hadn’t seen the competitors to know that Brandon was black. Totally unintended bad humor.
Best regards to my fellow Jeopardy fans!
~bill
So, to recap, we know that they arrange the players by at least the week and more (the guy I met, who was a lawyer out of Berkeley, said that his brother who had always been into trivia and was quite smart was held over a day of taping-a week of viewing), we believe they feed desired champions easier FJs and maybe DD s, certain categories may have been avoided, and perhaps given to them the benefit of the tie of the buzzer (horse races end in dead heats with the best of timers available). The words fraud and rig have been used.
I certainly hope that no one believes the correct answers are being supplied. But short of this, I wonder if we aren’t being too naive? Don’t they have the right to produce a successful show? What ethics are truly in play? Remember, after all, it is a show, not an academic competition.
I do not think easier FJs are fed to some. I think that is random and some people get lucky. In the last Kid’s Tournament, the Civil War was more than just a hobby to the kid who won — that came up in the chat. Then Civil War the FJ! category. Before showing the kid’s answer, Trebek said the games are put together long before they know who the contestants are going to be. (The video on that is here).
Maybe some of the FJs are are leftover clues from prior games, I don’t know.
I apologize. What I meant is that I believe that we agree that the easier FJs and DDs favor the leader. However, Alex could have been speaking of games in the tournament. There it would be unethical and perhaps cruel to favor a certain contestant.
Here and now, they certainly have done a fine job of helping the average viewer move from the villain AChu to the postergirl Julia.
and certain things we may NEVER know….
sometimes, just sometimes you begin to wonder..
VJ, will I get into your good graces by telling you that I honestly believe that Martin Brodeur is the best goalie in the last twenty-five years?
LOL Eric – you’re not in my bad graces to begin with but if you were, yes, saying that would get you in my good graces because it made me laugh. I don’t write the sports column — I wouldn’t know Martin Brodeur if he was handing out season passes in the Pru Center at Jimmy Buff’s (probably the only place I’d go to in the Pru)
That food looked great (for special occasions): like a hotdog, fried potato and peppers half-calzone. It does seem like it should be served with a ten percent off coupon to a local cardiologist, though.
Fantastic hockey food.
Thanks again for putting up with me. This site is nice: informative yet informal, enlightening but not forboding, and fun.
yes it is the best – single or double hot dog (or Italian sausage), onions, peppers, potatoes – my son makes the best copycat we can get down here. We just can’t get the kind of bread they put it on 🙁
Thanks, Eric, we are happy you like visiting Fikkle Fame.
I’ll add that I think that what we can actually know regarding Jeopardy’s behind the scenes planning and preparation is very limited, and it’s best to avoid jumping to conclusions.
That said, statistical evidence is the best tool the observer can harness to ascertain if something seems amiss. Arthur Chu’s winning streak was greatly aided by his opponents often failing to recognize the importance of getting to the DDs, but Arthur’s Coryat was 21,000 range and he hit a respectable percentage of his Daily Doubles, many for healthy totals.
Julia’s winning streak is, in my mind, more mysterious. Her assets are a low miss percentage and good poise. But her Coryat has been 18,000 range and her wagering is, frankly, decidedly on the weak side. Like I’ve indicated, I begin to suspect that the competition pool distribution of very good to not very good players has been altered from previous seasons.
A hunch, but an educated one.
Ah then, if planning and preparations are limited, why would a certain contestant be held from one day to the next?
I’m referring to “our knowledge” of Jeopardy’s planning and preparation, by which I mean for a prime example, the selection process for contestants, and how the distribution of skill levels shakes out. But also, I think speculation about Final Jeopardy and Daily Double content being tuned to specific player’s strengths and weaknesses at best presents a difficult argument to defend –and this too, is part of the planning and prep that we cannot know much about without a look “behind the curtain”.
But I welcome any thoughts about the many possible ways that the field could be tilted. Every “system” has flaws and Jeopardy should be open to our full scrutiny. I hope the show may continue to run for many, many more years as an iconic representative of what’s good about American tv –in a fairly vast wasteland on the whole.
🙂
Of course, that could be one of the limitations, I admit. But then, what would others be?
Wow. Final Jeopardy was easy for me today. Being from New York if I had gotten that one wrong I would have to leave the United States since Robert Kennedy was our senator. Julia is certainly on a roll and I expect her to be there many more days. We got a great demonstration from Steve today regarding how agonizing it has probably been for her previous opponents in the Jeopardy game. Her ability to focus is unmatched. She does not let anything distract her. She is on a mission with the way she uses the buzzer. Go Julia go!
One more thing….
How ’bout those insanely tough DDs and Final Jeopardy this game?! Not.
Yeah, that Bethlehem DD was ridiculous.
Just when I was starting to think that I was smart for nailing those. Thanks guys.
no problem, anytime….:-)
A conspiracy theorist here recently speculated that Jeopardy might be rigged (at times) to keep chronic winners winning (because the ratings might go up during these marathon winning streaks.)
One suggested rig was giving the chronic winner weak competitors.
I thought, “Nah.”
However, today, with Brandon, I started wondering. How does someone like that even qualify in the first place?
On AUTH”ER”S, I knew he’d give a name without ER in it, and sure enough, he did. (Of course, then Julia did, too! Sometimes her mighty brain seems to nap.)
I was wondering that yesterday with the middle player, Alex. Steve and Brandon really didn’t have much of a chance to buzz in today.
As for AUTH’ER’S, it’s not all that uncommon for players to forget the category requirements on the first clue picked. Better the $400 clue than the $2000 clue. Steve didn’t know, didn’t ring in after both Brandon and Julia guessed wrong.
Tom I told you I felt Jeopardy was running out of good contestants. Today proves my point with the contestant Brandon. Clearly he was like a fish out of water. If such a trend continues Julia will be on Jeopardy until she gets exhausted physically which I see no evidence of in her demeanor.
And then when Steve gets going with about 7k to JJ’s 11+, he goes up to the 400 question. You know these people study facts before their appearance. Which is more likely to come into play: a fact you just learned or winning game theory?
If there was a level of vitriol for Arthur Chu, at least in part for winning too much, I wonder when the grumbling begins to kick in for Julia Collins and her whipping boy opponents.
😀
Is it time to admit that her run has lasted about as long as she “deserves”, perhaps?
There’s no comparison! Chu was all about mind games and psyching out the competition. Chu’s a sociopath.
I didn’t mind him winning — I minded him not having enough confidence in himself that he felt he had to revert to “tactics.”
Collins just plays the game!
Tom is right. I don’t think Chu was over-vilified at all. Au contraire, he said himself he encouraged it at his wife’s suggestion and thought it was cool. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had some of his friends planting hater comments to stir things up.
I don’t know why you use the word “deserves,” William, but Julia will meet her Waterloo one day like every other player. It just was not this week. And, if she can beat Dave Madden’s record, well, wow!
I don’t want her to come close to Dave Madden. Admittedly, I had to look him up to remember him: he was very good. It seemed like he had way tougher competition.
Yep. The competition used to be much tougher than it is now.