Category Watch: Top 40 Math

Remember how much everyone liked the “Initials to Roman Numerals to Numbers” category when Ken Jennings ran it like a boss in The Battle of the Decades?

Usually I put 10 clues from the same or similar categories on Monday’s Spoiler Talk every week, but I found this somewhat similar Top 40 Math category on J-Archive (the links to the full games are in the dates). I liked it so much that I’m putting it on our clue watch tag in hopes that the category will come up again. It’s been almost 7 years since the last set of Top 40 Math clues appeared in the Double Jeopardy! round of the match played on September 24, 2009:

$400: The Commodores’ “Times A Lady” divided by Paul Simon’s “Trick Pony”
$800: The Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be” this many “(Miles)” plus Paul Simon’s “Ways To Leave Your Lover”
$1200: Stevie Nicks’ “Edge Of” this minus The Crests’ this many “Candles”
$1600: Murray Head’s nights “In Bangkok” minus Brewer & Shipley’s tokes “Over The Line”
$2000: The Byrds’ this many “Miles High” times Eddie Money’s this many “Tickets To Paradise” show

Five years before that, these clues were in the second semi-final match of the 2004 Tournament of Champions on September 28, 2004:

$400: Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Tons” times Eddie Money’s “Tickets To Paradise”
$800: Rolling Stones’ “Nervous Breakdown” number plus Beatles’ “Days A Week”
$1200: The Crests’ “Candles” plus Boyz II Men’s “Seasons Of Loneliness”
$1600: The speed Sammy Hagar “Can’t Drive” minus Three Dog Night’s title “Loneliest Number”
$2000: In the song’s title, Zager & Evans’ “In The Year” this minus The Commodores’ “Times A Lady” show

If you want to listen to any of the songs, video links are in the artists’ names, except for this one: the song that led me to find this category:

A No. 1 hit for 6 weeks in 1969, “In the Year 2525” came in at No. 26 on Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100 chart for 1969, but if they were going by “Coolest Songs,” it would have to be No. 1.

J-Archive only has 3 clues for the song, the last one in a 60s Pop Quiz category in October of 2005: This Zager & Evans hit about the future is subtitled “Exordium & Terminus.” Whether in a Top 40 Math category or not, “In the Year 2525” is definitely due for a clue.