Final Jeopardy: Presidents & The Movies (2-7-19)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (2/7/2019) in the category “Presidents & The Movies” was:
3 presidential films, all directed by Oliver Stone, have a total of only 9 letters in their titles –“Nixon” & these 2
New champ Bif Reiser, a mathematician from Portland, OR, won $28,001 yesterday. In Game 2, he is up against: Amanda Basta, an attorney from Arlington, VA; and Alan Florendo, a software developer from St. Louis, MO.
Round 1 Categories: Museum Miscellany – Easy Listening – “P”laces at the Mall – Country Facts – March On! – Word Rhymes
Bif found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “March On!” under the $600 clue, with 3 clues worth $2,200 left after it. He was in second place with $4,000 now, $1,800 less than Alan’s lead. He bet $2,000 and he was RIGHT.
In the 1930s the endeavor known as this took about a year to complete & took its participants from Jiangxi to Shaanxi. show
Bif finished in the lead with $6,800. Alan was second with $5,800 and Amanda was last with $800.
Round 2 Categories: The Grand Tour – Epic Poetry – Opposites – I.M. – A Man of Constant – Sorrow
Bif found the first Daily Double in “The Grand Tour” under the $1,200 clue on the 5th pick. He was in the lead with $8,800 now, $2,600 more than Alan in second place. He bet $3,000 and he was RIGHT.
Canaletto made pretty good money selling landscapes of this city of his birth as souvenirs for grand tourists. show
2 clues later, Bif found the last Daily Double in “A Man of Constant” under the $1,600 clue. In the lead with $13,000, he had $6,800 more than Alan in second place. He bet $3,000 again and he was RIGHT again.
Max Planck’s constant is the ratio of the energy of this smallest unit of radiation to its frequency– what a leap! show
Bif finished with a runaway $32,800. Alan was next with $9,000 and Amanda was in third place with $3,200.
Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
Not much to say about the 9 letter total, is there? In 2014, in honor of director Oliver Stone’s 68th birthday, Indie Wire ranked 22 of his films from Worst to Best. “W” (2008) starring Josh Brolin as the 43rd president, came in at No. 12. “Nixon” (1995), starring Anthony Hopkins as the 37th President, was No. 3 and “JFK” (1991), about the assassination of the 35th president, came in at No. 2. Stone got a Best Director nomination for “JFK”.
The Checkers speech (a DD from yesterday) was in “Nixon”. Half of the FJ clue on 7-27-2017 was related to “Nixon” too.
Amanda got it right. Her $3,199 bet brought her up to $6,399.
Alan had “JFK” & “LBJ,” and said Amanda was a better mathematician. He lost $1,000 and finished with $8,000.
Bif wrote down “2 films I have'” going for “haven’t seen.” He didn’t bet anything, having already won the game. That big ol’ $32,800 payday gave Bif a 2-day total of $60,801.
A triple stumper from each round:
EASY LISTENING ($1000) This Arizona-born country singer had a No. 1 hit with “Free and Easy (Down the Road I Go)”
SORROW ($2000) It’s Spanish for “sorrows”, so the name of Mexican actress Del Rio means “sorrows of the river”
2 years ago: NEITHER player left in FJ got this one in “The Oscars”
Since “The Godfather Part II”, this film has been the only sequel to win Best Picture. show
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This guy has the makings of a 20-game champ. He’s great at the academic topics, but pop culture will eventually be his downfall.
Uh oh, I have a feeling HE could be the one!
Well even though bif won again he has a very good chance to get some more runaways hopefully this week and next week before the all star games start. Glad Amanda got this right but still though for an easy final jeopardy bif should have known this one even if he didn’t see the movie but still though, I could sense that he could end up getting up to Rob worman’s total if possible wouldn’t you agree John and VJ?
@Lou
He certainly seems to have the potential. And since he had such a huge runaway, he might have been kidding, as I said. I am pretty sure that Bif DOES know at least about the JFK movie, but then his bet was ZERO. Had he bet, say, 10K or so, his answer might have been different and correct. Since he bet nothing, a “silly” answer would be a way to throw your next opponents off. I don’t know however, if the players who play the next game are allowed to watch the game before their games.
@VJ
Do you know by any chance VJ, if the players for a certain day’s worth of taping are sequestered and not told the results of the games immediately played before their games????
I believe contestants typically are in the audience for games they are not participating in, except for tournaments where they are sequestered so they do not have an advantage in wagering for Wild Card purposes.
@John, he may have heard of one or the other of the film but have no idea who directed them since he evidently had no interest in seeing them. btw, Rob Reiner directed a film titled “LBJ’ several years ago. That one starred Woody Harrelson in the title role. As for your question, what JP said.
Yesterday, after talking about Will’s prior game, Alex said “Today he faces the two B’s – Bif and Bryan.” I was kind of hoping Alex would say something about “the two A’s” today and then ask Bif during the chat what his real name is like he did with Buzzy. I saw online that it’s Andrew so today we really had the three A’s.
LINK: 9 more clues from the match
@VJ
Well, then Andrew aka “Bif” certainly had an “A” game today!
@VJ
If the players for the next game are in the audience, Bif’s answer might very well have been a feint. After all, his bet was zero, so he was happy with his 32.800 and was maybe trying to throw everybody off track, right or wrong it would not have changed his score. One of the many tactics , pretending you don’t know anything about a certain category. And if Bif is still around in a few days a somewhat similar FJ category might come up, he feigned ignorance today and may catch everybody off guard. Would not be the first time somebody did that.
I believe the players are sequestered from what I have read.
@Albert, here is a very detailed article by Shannan Younger, a contestant on 3-29-2018. She talks about watching games she was not in from the audience. She also says:
“The categories of the five shows are fixed in the morning. To keep things fair, contestant names are written on a piece of paper and selected randomly before each game to make sure that categories and questions they get are completely random.”
It’s weird how often that results in 2 players’ names starting with the same letters!!
@John, yeah, yeah, we all know about the fake-out technique that Alex Jacob delighted in employing. Possibly, we’ll be treated to some more of it in a couple of weeks. 😉
And another day of J! is in the books.
Congratulations to Bif for win #2, an emphatic runaway. I’m wondering if he was trying to joke when he wrote down his answer (in part)?
Amanda got it right, Alan had JFK and LBJ = 11(!) letters with Nixon, but at least they got JFK.
Hard to imagine that Bif never heard of the movie JFK…..,FJ was not that difficult imo, at least for the JFK part. W. was a bust at the box office though.
I hope he could be another 4-time champion, OR the one we’ve all been waiting for, a 5-time one.