Final Jeopardy: Agriculture (7-10-18)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (7/10/2018) in the category “Agriculture” was:
Turkey is the world’s largest producer of these fruits; its town of Cerasus was famous for them
New champ Wes Hazard, a standup comic & storyteller from Massachusetts, won $14,400 yesterday. In his second game, his opponents are: Becky Wilson, an operations engineer from Colorado; and Doug Dworkin, a business & technology consultant from New York.
Round 1 Categories: Good Grooming – Opera Heroines – Time Rhyme – King Of The Castle – Extreme Sports? – The FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List
Becky found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “FBI’s 10 Most Wanted” under the $1,000 clue on the 14th pick of the round. She was in the lead with $2,200, $1,000 more than Wes in second place. She bet $1,000 and she was RIGHT.
The list was already full but this man was specially added in April 1968 after a high-profile Memphis murder. show
Becky finished in the lead with $4,000. Wes was second with $3,600 and Doug was last, at negative $200.
Round 2 Categories: Literary Types – Pop Song Overlaps – Endangered Animals – Yestercareer – From Z To A – Nat Geo
Becky found the first Daily Double in “Literary Types” under the $2,000 clue on the 6th pick. She was in the lead with $8,000 now, $4,000 more than Wes in second place. She bet $2,000 and she was RIGHT.
In Sauk Centre, Minnesota, a street (not Main Street) is named for this author born there in 1885. show
3 clues later, Doug found the last Daily Double in “Endangered Animals” under the $800 clue. In third place $600, he had $9,800 less than Becky’s lead. He bet the $2,000 allowance and he was RIGHT.
Found only in Vietnam & Laos, the saola has parallel horns, yet it’s also called “the Asian” this mythical creature. show
Becky finished in the lead with $18,400. Wes was next with $13,200 and Doug was in third place with $3,800.
NONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
This old 1838 book, The Trees and Shrubs of Great Britain, says that Cerasus was “the ancient name of a town in Pontus in Asia, when the cultivated cherry was first brought to Rome, by Lucullus, a Roman General, 68 B.C.” Therein lies its fame with regard to cherries, it seems. Wikipedia has a whole etymology section on how the name came from the Greek word for cherry (kerasós) and another theory about it having something to do with horn. It also says that Kerasous was “Turkified” into Giresun and that’s what it has been called since the late 15th century.
Turkey and its cherry exports have been in the news recently as a record year is anticipated.
Doug thought it was dates. He bet and lost it all.
Wes came up with figs. He lost $805, finishing with $12,395.
Becky went with dates, too. That cost her $8,001. She had $10,399 left and that meant Wes won again! His 2-day total is $26,795.
A triple stumper from each round (well, sort of):
KING OF THE CASTLE ($600) El Pardo, 1975-2014: this recent abdicator
Doug said the King of Spain and Alex asked for the name. Doug said it right after time ran out so it could not be offered to the other players
NAT GEO ($800) Some think his “one life to give” was taken in NYC in 1776 near 3rd Ave. & 66th St.; others in City Hall Park
2 years ago: Only ONE of the players got this FJ in “Political Words”
Hamilton began & ended the Federalist Papers warning of this type of person, Greek for “people’s leader” show
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I believe John B. is mostly right in Latin pronunciation. I took Latin some 65 years ago and I seem to remember that the “C” was usually a hard “C” in Augustan Latin, not that we much cared. I didn’t get the connection either in FJ, and thought Olives would be a good guess. I always pictured cherries as coming from more northern climes.
@Taiwan Bill, that was not the point though — it was whether the players could have easily thought of the French word for cherries after hearing “Kerasus” in the clue (and btw, the Turks got the name from the Greeks, not the Romans)
Was it just me, or did Wes not answer in the form of a question in the song category for ‘nothing’?
That’s what I thought, too.
Nope, it wasn’t just you. “Nothing” was all I heard, too.
He definitely did not, and it cost Becky the game (assuming that their Final Jeopardy wagers would have been the same).
@VJ
What I was getting at was that the Greek pronounced it “K”erasi, which also means cherry and sereese or “cherise” in French sounds a little like “cherry”.That’s all.
Oh, okay, so that’s what you were getting at with all that stuff about Cicero’s speech huh?
idk, to me, kerasus doesn’t sound like sereeze and sereeze doesn’t sound like cherry
@VJ
I was just pointing out the different pronunciations of “C” with Cicero.
And “sereeze” in French is pronounced “”scherize” i many areas. so you leave the “”ze” out and you have “scheri”. Sounds to my quite close to “cherry”. There are so many different pronunciations and connections within all Romance languages that it is often difficult to make a connection right away, certainly not in 30 seconds minus the time you need to write it down.
Some historians pronounce “Cicero” “Kikero” e.g. And Alex speaks Canadian French, sometimes quite different from the French in France. I have noticed that several times over the years. So there all kind of possibilities, certainly too many for such a short time, even if you knew them all. While we pronounce “cherry” more like “Tsherry”, the French say either “scheris(e)” or in some areas even “seris(e). When you see it in writing the connection is maybe clearer than when you just hear it. The “T” in English in “cherry” distracts somewhat imo since it is the lead-in sound. Even if you take the “T” out of the English “cherry “and compare it with the French “scheree(ze)”? Only in English you stress the first syllable, in French the second.
But basically it’s just semantics. Some people see or hear the faintest connections in words and others don’t. I guess it also depends on what “musical ear” one has.
But it’s all water under the bridge as far as today is concerned. But there are several books about connections in pronunciations. I just wonder who has the time to read them..???
So let’s just hope we won’t have another scoreless ninth inning tomorrow!!!
Allrighty, then, John. We’ll just go with this part ” Some people see or hear the faintest connections in words and others don’t.”
If any of the players had that quality, then they heard the connection between Cerasus and cerise.
Second time in a row that no one got this. But still, it’s not hard to recognize a cherry even when the term cerise is used here. VJ you studied Latin before right? Plus Doug couldn’t get much rhythm going today but at least all the daily doubles are nailed today. Glad Wes is a low risk taker since he wants to try and win big without betting to much. Plus he could have the strategy from Seth Wilson.
No, I didn’t study Latin, Lou, and the contestants didn’t hear anything about “cerise” until FJ was over.
LINK: 8 more clues from the match
I guess Doug was up and down today.
1. Congratulations to Wes for the second win in a row with the same smart/sneaky bet. I wonder if he can make it three tomorrow and jump on the ToC list?
2. Second strike out in as many days, 0/6 for the week.
3. Dates and fig DID come up.
4. Too bad that Latin did not help. The city named in the clue – Cerasus- is the Latin word for “cherry”, “cerise” in French which is already kind of close to the English word “cherry”.
Congrats on your prediction, John. FYI, Trebek pronounced the town name with a hard C although he did bring up “cerise”
@VJ
Thank you!!
“C” at the beginning of a word = especially names- are sometimes pronounced like “K” in Latin (Caligula, Carthago, etc) but also as “C” (Cicero, Caesar). Also depends on the century and the class of people. Nobility had other pronunciations than the “plebs”….same in every language I guess. There are at least 4 different levels of Viennese dialect, not to mention “High German” and even the HG is bent sometimes from a little informal (Austria,Bavaria) to highly official and stiff (especially in North Germany).
And just compare Manchester with London or Paris with Marseilles etc!
Not to mention English in the U.S. New York and, say,Alabama. You don’t “help” somebody in AL. you “hep” him…:):):)
P.S.
Cicero always closed his speeches in the Senate with “….ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse”, pronouncing it “Karthaginem”, so c-c-k.
What has that got to do with anything? I was just pointing out that Alex said (phonetic spelling) Kerasus, sereeze — they sound nothing alike