Final Jeopardy: Title Movie Roles (5-26-14)
The Final Jeopardy question (5/26/2014), in the category “Title Movie Roles” was:
In 1984, in the first of the films featuring this character, he only has 21 lines, for a total of 133 words.
15x champ Julia Collins is back today, after bringing her winnings up to $314,900 last week. She’s getting closer to Dave Madden’s record, but she’s got some more work to do. Today’s opponents are: Steve Martinez, from Fairfax, VA; and Simone Chavoor, from Oakland, CA.
From the chat: Steve is the father of Julia Martinez, winner of the 2012 Kids Tournament.
Round 1: Julia found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Big Stuff” under the $1,000 clue. She was in the lead with $6,800, $5,400 ahead of Steve in second place. She bet $2,400 and she was RIGHT.
The world’s largest building by volume is this company’s 472 million-cubic-foot factory in Everett, Wash. show
Julia finished in the lead with $9,600. Steve was second with $3,200 and Simone was last with $800.
Round 2: Julia found the first Daily Double in “All Gone” under the $1,600 clue. She was now in the lead with $12,000, $8,800 more than Steve in second place. She bet $3,000 and she was RIGHT.
The wolf named for these islands wasn’t around for the 1982 war; it was hunted to extinction a century before. show
Simone found the last Daily Double in “The Atlantic” under the $800 clue. In third place with $4,000, she had $21,400 less than Julia’s lead. She bet $2,200 and she was RIGHT.
In 1933, she wrote about what she’d look at if she had sight for 3 days: Rembrandts, Fifth Avenue, the face of her dog Helga…. show
Julia finished in the lead with a runaway $31,400. Steve was next with $9,200 and Simone was in third place with $6,600.
Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
WHO IS THE TERMINATOR?
According to wikipedia, (pillar of information and misinformation alike), “Schwarzenegger speaks only 18 lines in the film, and less than 100 words.” The Terminator Files.com has every line spoken by Schwarzenegger and explains why the count (about 134) is sometimes different. In the wake of the film’s success, “The Terminator” became the actor’s nickname until he was elected Governor of California in 2003. He then became known as “the Governator.” After he left office, he collaborated with Stan Lee in developing a children’s franchise based upon a fictionalized governor who became a superhero after stepping down from office. The series was cancelled due to the ex-governor’s infidelity scandal.
Simone couldn’t come up with a guess. She lost her $5,500 bet and finished with $1,100.
Steve got it right. His $5,800 bet brought him up to $15,000.
Julia wrote down Indiana Jones. She lost her $8,600 bet but still had $22,800, plenty left to remain champ. Her 16-day total is $337,700. How cool would it have been if Alex Trebek had said: “and just like the Terminator, she’ll be back!”
@john_blahuta – this one’s for you. Sorry about the little blip. It was raining cats and dogs the whole time today’s show was on and I’m lucky I even got to see it! ~ vj
2 years ago on Memorial Day:: Only ONE of the players got this FJ in “American Inventors”
This Grammy winner who died in 2009 at age 94 was an inductee into both the Rock & Roll & National Inventors Halls of Fame. show
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One more thought…
In my opinion if Julia breaks Dave Madden’s mark of 19 consecutive victories there ought to be an asterisk next to her record. We could look to baseball’s “live ball era” versus the old dead ball era for guidance.
In the current situation I’d be in favor of the moniker, “The Cannon Fodder Era” for the apparent high percentage of lower aptitude Jeopardy contestants as compared to the handful of very good players we are seeing.
That’s my hypothesis and I’m sticking to it.
🙂
What should we do about this asterisk if she wins this year’s ToC?
My prediction is that the librarian from New Haven will give her a run, but only she has a more Yale game than Quinnipiac.
Just read your response below. As expected, it was well reasoned and fair.
Further, it is frustrating to see someone break records who doesn’t appear to have the talent of those who fell by the wayside. Dave Madden was awesome, and in many ways it’s great for him that he missed the last tournament: it’s great that he has a fulfilling life. It was, however, a loss for us viewers.
Julia had a 97% accuracy rate in this game. She only had one incorrect response in the regular game. She is not a reckless game player. It appears that if she is not certain about a clue she will not respond. Some contestants make wild guesses and that strategy comes back to haunt them. I know some of you think she should take more chances. Her strategy appears to be working up to this date.
Julia’s overall accuracy rate is excellent. But Dave Madden’s was as well, and accuracy rate is not the primary measure of a player’s Jeopardy aptitude, in any case.
I look at Coryat average, and I look at DD conversion rate as well as average total gained per game on DDs. Julia is patently weak on her average total gained per game on DDs. [Final Jeopardy is typically a craps shoot, but the better players should be 60 percent plus range.]
But we can slice this eight ways until Sunday, and the bottom line is that Julia’s play is entirely worthy of TOC status, and I MIGHT even begin to consider her among the Greats of the Game at some point –much needs to be determined when the TOC actually arrives.
To sum up, Dave Madden had a DD conversion rate of (41 of 43) 95 freakin’ percent! He also hit the DDs at a rate of 2 per game which is what the very best players do. And when the best players hit DDs they risk a more sensible amount in keeping with the fact that they will be correct roughly 80% (or more) of the time.
Let’s see Julia in the TOC, adjusting her strategy accordingly and winning against Chu and the gang. Then I’ll be among the first to sing her praises, Jacob. Until then, just color me a bit skeptical about the value of Julia’s sixteen straight (and counting) streak.
I’m not singing praises of Julia. I’m just quantifying certain aspects of her strategy and attempting to analyze her game that has led, so far, to a winning streak. For me to analyze things it is easier to quantfy them to establish what type of trend is being established if any. Clearly, she is no Dave Madden. He was my type of Jeopardy player. I never missed his games.
However, even though Julia is statistically speaking an outlier, in comparison to the greats of the game, I’m curious to know how her games pan out for her level of playing.
Well, you may not be waxing ecstatic at this moment but I’ve seen a lot of semi-embarrassing, over-the-top gushing for Julia Collins on these boards, and I seem to recall that you’ve had your fair share of online, public displays of affection for Julia!
Anyhow, her numbers are actually not too far off from Madden’s, particularly if you take away Dave’s practically garish DD average (which could only have fallen, at least a bit, if he had played more games).
My beef here on a level slightly deeper than the Julia Collins gush-fest is the idea that our human tendency is to pick “good guys” and “bad guys” all too easily, rather than tempering our responses in the knowledge of how silly history has often shown our love (and hate) affairs to be.
We’ll likely do much better as a species when we someday figure out how to be judicious with each other, as well as with an entire living, breathing Mother Earth which sustains us and every other living thing. Lord knows we are in need of some (serious) luck on this point.
😉
Oh, how we long for a worthy champ when there’s a long string of one-day champs!
Oh, how we long for someone to take out the champ after we get tired of seeing the same face win day after day!
Fikkle fans
that sums it up perfectly, Eric. 😉
Succinctly.
😀
not just for the “maui” category, but today WAS easy, especially the DDs and the FJ.
i knew all 4 before i even was through reading the clues.
LARGEST building in WASHINGTON…
war in 1982….(there was but one “major” and
sight for 3 days….
how easy can it get???
believe it or not: i saw the terminator movies just once, out of curiosity. after all, my compatriot was the star….sort of.
That FJ was easy big time. Most people have followed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career and knew he didn’t talk much in his first movies. The focus was on his body since he was famous as a bodybuilder. Hollywood wanted it that way. Wilt Chamberlin, Brett Favre, etc. Ask any young boy and he can talk about these guys. Jeopardy is giving kid clues. No wonder Julia is not showing signs of fatigue.
It is funny, though. With what everyone is calling easy questions, Julia is 9-7 on FJs, which also don’t show up on the Coryat scores. To me, Coryat is the batting average of Jeopardy! Statistics.
I feel the need to come clean. I missed yesterdays FJ. I simply could not get Conan the Barbarian out of my mind (I never actually saw it). It seems so close and yet so far away.
I’m positive that no one is happier than Julia that coryat scores do not include FJ because she was wrong yesterday in FJ. However, since her coryat was so high her inaccuracy in FJ had no impact on her winning the game.
Admittedly, it would be weird to include FJs in the Coryat is their strategical importance is always relevant. My contention with the Coryat is the DDs. Although their importance may be strategically relevant, the Coryat always counts them for face value: that is, they might be called the quiz bowl scores. This system most definitely favors Julia and, naturally, conservative play.
Naturally, there should not be as many statistics as baseball. I just feel the Coryat is over-rated.
It’s human nature for one to blurt out that he/she was right and the “question” was easy, but admitting a blunder doesn’t slip out nearly so often –kudos to you Eric. A case in point might be the boxer Floyd Mayweather posting all over social media when he wins a big sports wager. How many times has he fessed up to a fat loss?
I agree that the Final was pretty easy last night, but I was stumped for a response. But that’s the style of clue that we see in Finals more often than not. It either jumps to mind or it doesn’t, and as to why that is exactly, varies from player to player. Bottom line is that Finals are consistently more difficult than DDs. [Jennings averaged 83% on DDs, and 69% in Finals. Seasonal contestant averages in Final Jeopardy rarely hits 50 percent, and a personal average in Final of 60% or better is excellent.]
If I had an associated year for The Terminator in mind I probably would have gotten it easily –for instance, 1994 instantly conjures up Pulp Fiction.
But I did get all of the DDs with ease.
😀
Thanks, Bill.
Oddly enough, I looked back on that game that VJ referenced and readily nailed the FJ (historical letters). The responses are so easy when you know them.
Indeed!
In the last 3 weeks, there was only one day each week that all 3 contestants got FJ right. So they haven’t been too easy for the contestants.
I seem to recall remarking in some recap about how the clues swing from too hard to too easy, but I’ll never find that one so here’s a post from last Dec, where I was whining about the obscurity of the clue.
I have a completely different theory from what I have been reading on the threads. Has anyone considered that the writers are not as sharp as the team of writers in past years? I look at some of the categories and think to myself “Is this the same Jeopardy I have been watching for years?” No offense meant but I have seen better categories in the Kids Tournament. An 8-year old could have figured out the Brett Favre clue.
Good point!!
I have to say that I really don’t mind if the writers make the first two lower value clues relatively easy: those clues rarely help decide the outcome and may entice the less knowledgeable viewers to return. Again, I wish there was a nationally televised quiz bowl for the brighter viewers, but I fear that it couldn’t pay its bills. Perhaps Larissa Kelly will be successful in this endeavor.
@vj
thank you for the sunny thought…..
This does seem to be getting easier, not only for Julia, but for me as well. I mean, I got 4 out of the last 5 fjs. Also, I ran through the Maui category (thanks for putting that up VJ). And I’ve never been near being in the vicinity of Hawaii. And I’ve never been this good with J replies. Is there some truth to the conspiracy theories?
Perhaps the ToC will shed more light. I still would make AChu is the favorite. Plus, that guy is training like mad: it has to help the mental stamina.
AChu was staying at his mother’s house. That may have had something to do with it.
Also, VJ, my phone sometimes thinks it knows more than I. I think someone told it that it was a smartphone. I typed “ty VJ” earlier and it decided that it would be better to write “type VJ”. It was wrong. I know not to get condescending with a woman from Jersey. So, thank you for your editing.
LOL – I thought you meant to type typo. No need to thank me — I think it’s only fair and courteous to correct any typos since I have the ability to correct my own and the Lord knows I make my fair share. 🙂
It’s getting embarrassing for Jeopardy, the franchise, at the moment. Between last Friday’s walkover and now tonight’s, it certainly isn’t making for interesting viewing.
And like I’ve stressed previously, there isn’t any knocking Julia’s overall solid play but 16 straight wins in the context of her statistical numbers, and more poignantly, her (typical) opponent’s Jeopardy aptitudes –or general lack thereof– doesn’t look pretty, frankly.
I think for Julia’s (and Jeopardy’s) sake we had better start seeing better games, or at the very least some competent competition in my opinion.
If I were a Jeopardy producer I’d be bursting at the seams to explain to the viewing audience what is going on, because something certainly is and it doesn’t have to be “fraudulent” per se. One thing that I consider is the possibility that the percentage of barely qualified players has gone up over time because prospective contestants are cheating on the online test. They’d still have to score half-way decently on the in-house test, but an influx of barely qualifed players could perhaps account for the non-competitive games we’ve been watching. Just a thought.
Online test cheating has crossed my mind as well, Bill. I even looked it up and saw that they have to pass an in-person test where they can’t cheat, too. So who knows.
Maybe the producers are thinking that the show will go down the toilet when Trebek retires anyhow so they might as well set some new records by setting the bar lower.
I have attributed these last two wins to Julia’s buzzer speed. One of the other contestants might know the answer but she beats them to the punch. The weird thing is when she doesn’t know an answer, she doesn’t buzz in — and rarely do the other two, whoever they are. LOL. Julia knows almost everything and if Julia doesn’t know, nobody else does either.
Further, on-line testing is, I believe, multiple choice: sometimes you know the answer when you see it.
No, it’s not…I’ve been taking it for the last three years…with no luck :).
Thanks for clarifying. Good luck next time!
Julia is gaining traction. In her very first game her coryat was 8,000. Her coryat at the end of week 1 was in the 16,000 range. At the end of week 2 her coryat was in the 18,000 range. At the end of week 3 her coryat range was 21,000. Clearly, there is an upward trend in her game pattern which is unusual. Normally, contestants begin to wear down due to mental fatigue. I don’t see symptoms of fatigue in Julia. But, just to save face tomorrow is another day.
😉
Yes, it sure is something that she’s not showing signs of flagging. Chu was cranky as hell in his last couple of games. Now if Julia can just keep it up for 3 more shows…
Here’s a link for those who are wondering what a coryat score is.
I think a better way to find the strength of a player is to use the Coryat as a denominator and the actual score as a numerator.
Either way, though, the upward trend is interesting.
VJ nice of you to honor John B. I was thinking about him when I saw the category. John did you get all of the clues correct?