Final Jeopardy: Books of the 1960s (6-23-17)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (6/23/2017) in the category “Books of the 1960s” was:
“Wherever I sat… I would be sitting under the same glass” this, the title of the author’s only novel.
2x champ Lisa Evans has now won $62,402. Her challengers, in the last game of the week, are: Brittany Franckowiak, from Laurel, MD; and Pat McNamee, from McLean, VA.
Alex commended Lisa on averaging over $31K in her first 2 games: “You are good, Lisa.”
Round 1 Categories: Quick Geography – TV in the Stream – Orange – Scary Reading – “Oop”s – Now You’ve Stepped in It
Lisa found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Scary Reading” under the $600 clue on the 3rd pick of the round. She was the only one with any money– $600 for getting the first 2 clues. She refrained from risking the $1K allowance and only bet $500 and she was RIGHT.
You know the stuff that makes up 1/4 of the universe but we can’t see it? Peter Straub put “A” before it to title this 2010 book. show
Lisa finished in the lead with $6,900. Pat was second with $5,000 and Brittany was last with $2,000.
Round 2 Categories: Founding Fathers – The Korean War – 4-Letter Words – American Art – Astronomy – “Center”-tainment
Brittany found the first Daily Double in “American Art” under the $1,200 clue on the 16th pick. She was in third place with $3,600 at this point, $7,800 behind Pat’s lead. She bet $2,000 and she was RIGHT.
Shepard Fairey’s iconic 2008 painting of Barack Obama began as a 60″ x 44″ collage in his studio & featured this 4-letter word. show
Lisa found the last Daily Double in “The Korean War” under the $1,600 clue. Only one clue remained after it, the $2,000 clue in this category. At $13,300, she had regained a slim $700 lead over Pat in second place. She bet $2,000 and guessed Kim Il-sung. That was WRONG.
He ordered his country’s troops into Korea in October 1950 to protect his 1-year-old Communist regime. show
Lisa picked up that last clue and bounced back into the lead with $13,300. Pat was next with $12,600 and Brittany was in third place with $8,800.
NONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
30-year-old Sylvia Plath published “The Bell Jar” in the U.K. in Jan. 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. A month later, on Feb. 11, 1963, the author committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Plath used the bell jar to illustrate her feelings of alienation in this novel, based upon her own struggles with depression, her suicide attempts and treatment in a mental hospital. Plath used a pseudonym for various reasons, among them to protect the real people she fictionalized in the novel and to protect the literary reputation she had established 2 years earlier as a poet.
More on Mental Floss: 10 Facts about Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar
Brittany came up with “the Glass Cage.” She bet and lost everything.
Pat wrote down “I’ve been sucking.” When Alex couldn’t decipher the last word. Pat explained that he was trying to write that he’s been sucking in his stomach the whole show. “All right,” Alex said, “That’s incorrect by the way.” You don’t say. Pat lost his $5,001 bet and had $7,599 left.
Lisa had “To Kill a Mockingbird.” That cost her $11,910 and she landed in second place with $1,390, making Pat the new Jeopardy! champ.
A triple stumper from each round:
TV IN THE STREAM ($1000) Rob Delaney & Sharon Horgan dealt with an unexpected pregnancy in this Amazon series the 2 also created
ASTRONOMY ($2000) This “cloud” of icy objects at the edge of the solar system begins at around 200 billion miles from the sun
2 years ago: ALL of the players got this FJ in “Novel Characters”
This lawyer from a famed 1960 novel shares a name with an ancient Roman renowned for his wisdom. show
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I knew the answer immediately, but I have read and studied Plath, who wrote many poems but published only one novel. Lisa’s answer to kill a mockingbird just made no sense. The answer had to be something made of glass that could finish the title beginning with the word “the.” This is one where your area of expertise made a difference. I’m looking forward to seeing the Plath exhibit that opened recently at the national portrait gallery in dc. Keep the literary questions coming!
Lisa was pretty strong in lit. She opened this match by getting every clue in Scary Reading. She did parse some clues incorrectly in her 3 games, and that’s likely what happened with this FJ.
Tough break, and I really did think she would get this. I was sorry to see her go. But hey! The good part is she really cleaned up in the 2 games she won!
Anybody have a screen shot of the I’ve been sucking” answer. Funniest thing I’ve seen in a while
You can look on Twitter for it. There are several on there under the Jeopardy hashtag
The question was downright confusing. It took a couple of readings to just figure out whether they wanted the author or the title, and somehow the way it was phrased implied that they might be looking for one word, not two. I guess using Sylvia Plath’s name would have made it too easy, but as it was it was not a fair test. These folks should all get a second chance.
“this, the TITLE of the author’s only novel.”
How much clearer can one get?
Hi Sandy, I thought it was ironic that the 2 years ago FJ clue was about TKAM. That was a much easier clue, too.
Well, this was tough but does the novel remind you of another author named Virginia woolf that drowned herself due to depression, just like plath, VJ? I wonder if one of woolf’s novels was also alienated? If you remember woolf was also mentally unstable.
@Lou, when she took her own life, Virginia Woolf was almost twice Sylvia Plath’s age. I can’t say I much care for Plath’s poems and I never read this novel because of that, but I have read her life story and knew about it. There’s another poet, Sara Teasdale, who took her own life in her late 40s. She wrote some of the loneliest poems. I guess the help that was available to them in their lifetimes wasn’t much help and maybe even made their emotionally fragile states worse.
LINK: 11 clues from this match
It’s sad that none of those authors got any help from the psych ward. Ernest Hemingway also had a mental condition. But he died due to his genetic condition. I always thought books were meant to bring happiness for authors like plath and teasdale but I wonder if the content in the.book caused them to be depressed, vj?
@Lou, idk, I guess it’s like that 1897 poem Richard Cory. He was rich (yes, richer than a king) and everyone envied him. He went home one night and blew his brains out.
Fame, talent, wealth — nothing protects people from depression.
Maybe Alex was a bit rattled when he first gave the FJ answer by Pat’s response. He said “The Glass Jar” first but quickly corrected it. To me, Pat’s response came off as a lame attempt to get Alex to say that word. Can’t imagine any other reason to want to write about his stomach, of all things, in FJ and I wondered if Pat’s wife rolled her eyes when she saw it. If not, I did it for her.
It was a strange way to answer that’s for sure!
I thought maybe Alex just acted like he could not read it rather than say it?
@mimsy, idk, maybe. Alex looked genuinely puzzled to me.
I have never heard of the Bell Jar.
45/60 here