Final Jeopardy: Presidential Elections (9-22-15)
The Final Jeopardy question (9/22/2015) in the category “Presidential Elections” was:
The only election year since 1952 in which neither major-party candidate had been president or vice president.
3x champ Natalie Lips saw her winnings rise to a “princely” total of $57,601. A win today could get her a TOC spot. The challengers are: Dylan Parson, from Slippery Rock, PA; and Mai Kulkarni, from Macon, GA.
Round 1: Mai found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Books” (with the B in quotes) under the $400 clue. She was in second place with $800, $1,200 less than Natalie’s lead. She bet the $1,000 allowance but didn’t know so she was WRONG.
This classic kids’ book by Felix Salten was subtitled “A Life in the Woods.” show
Natalie finished in the lead with $3,400. Dylan was second with $2,800 and Mai was last with $2,200.
Round 2: Dylan found the first Daily Double in “Rocket, Man” under the $800 clue. He was now in second place with $4,000, $1,800 less than Natalie’s lead. He bet $2,000 and he was RIGHT.
“About Combustion Tests”, this German’s 1934 Ph.D. thesis, dealt with 660-pound-thrust rocket engines. show
Dylan found the last Daily Double in “Raise the White in the Flag” under the $1,200 clue. He now had $9,600 and chose to risk $3,500 of it. He gave the state’s full name instead of the letters so that was WRONG.
The flag of “The Tar Heel State” has these two letters on either side of a white star. show
Dylan finished in the lead with $11,700. Natalie was next with $9,000 and Mai was in third place with $5,000.
NONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
Weblists has a quick reference guide to all U.S. Presidential elections, where you can see the two major-party candidates and the votes they got (electoral college and popular), but it doesn’t show their running mates. Wikipedia has the lowdown on that, showing incumbent Presidents and Vice-Presidents, but the list does not reflect how Gerald Ford replaced Spiro Agnew as VP in 1973, then became President when Nixon resigned in 1974. That is reflected on Wikipedia’s list of Presidents by previous experience.
Mai came up with 1980. (Reagan beat incumbent Carter). She lost her $3,001 bet and finished with $1,999.
Natalie thought it was 1976. (Carter beat incumbent Ford.) That cost her everything.
Dylan picked 2000. (G.W. Bush beat Clinton’s VP, Al Gore.) He lost $6,301. That left him $5,399 and that was enough to claim the title of Jeopardy! champ. Congrats to Dylan on a wise bet.
If Natalie had thought to stay pat, she would have displaced Darren Harris-Fain on the 2015 TOC list. On Twitter she said she was glad that more people were disappointed with her “NATO” answer than her FJ miss and she tweeted an image of her Superman logo tattoo “since people are apparently so curious.”
2 years ago:: ALL of the players got this FJ in “Newspapers”
On July 23, 2013, this best-selling British tabloid re-spelled its name on its masthead to honor big British news. show
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I was amazed at the amount of triple stumpers on this game last night. Out of curiosity, I just checked J!Archive — 7 TS in the 1st round and 7 TS in the DJ! round. Wow!
What about 1960? Has JFK or LBJ been president or vice president before?
Richard Nixon was the other major party candidate in 1960. He was also the Vice-President at the time.
I love coincidences, even though they don’t mean anything, so indulge me.
Yesterday — just yesterday, mind you — I came across a Time Magazine from 2007 which was covering the presidential election shenanigans of that year, and it mentioned that it looked as if 2008 would be the first year since 1952 that neither a president or vice president would be on either party’s ticket.
Thus, I instantly knew the answer to today’s FJ, whereas otherwise I would have had to think through all the elections since 1952 and would have run out of time.
If I actually went on the show, I’d never have that kind of luck!
i’m canadian and got the FJ correct right away
A nice $3000 wager would have covered Natalie ‘ s needs quite nicely. Once again, a prime example of how the person in second should not always bet it all.
More importantly, this brilliantly exemplifies how Game Theory is the single most important thing you need to know to succeed in Jeopardy!