Jeopardy All Stars: Wild Card Game 2 (3-1-19)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (3/1/2019) in the category “Presidential Election Years” was:
Prior to 2016 it was the last election year in which the winning candidate had never held public elected office
On Day 8 of the 2019 Jeopardy All-Stars Tournament, Team Buzzy ($0), Team Colby ($7,600) and Team Austin ($5,200) are playing the last Wild Card Match. The amounts after their names will be added to today’s final scores and the winner will advance to the finals.
Today’s lineups:
• Team Buzzy: Jeopardy: Jennifer Giles; DJ: Alex Jacob; FJ: Buzzy Cohen;
• Team Colby: Jeopardy: Alan Lin; DJ: Pam Mueller; FJ: Colby Burnett
• Team Austin: Jeopardy: Leonard Cooper; DJ: Roger Craig; FJ: Austin
Round 1 Categories: Name That Tuna – 20th Century Bestsellers – Their Ivy League Alma Mater – TV – Vowel-pourri – Inventors
Leonard found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Ivy League Alma Mater” under the $600 clue, with a dozen clues to go after it. He was in the lead with $5,000, $800 more than Alan in second place. He bet $2,500 and thought it was Columbia. That was WRONG.
Brooke Shields (class of ’87 with honors) & F. Scott Fitzgerald show
Alan finished in the lead with $5,600. Jennifer was next with $2,200 and Leonard was last with $2,100. A later reversal (see below) would have changed Alan’s score to $6,000, if it had been announced at this point.
Round 2 Categories: History With Lesser-known Painters – On the Soundtrack – Reference Works – What Do You Stand for? – Travel – “E”ponymous
Alex found the first Daily Double in “‘E’ponymous” under the $1,600 clue on the very 7th pick. He was in the lead with $7,400, $2,900 more than Roger in second place. He bet it all and he was RIGHT.
The plane truth is that this 2-word branch of math is named for a Greek who lived around 300 B.C. show
Alex found the last Daily Double in “Soundtrack” under the $1,600 clue, with 14 clues left after it. In the lead with $15,600, he had $10,700 more than Roger in second place. He bet it all again and took a shot with “Pretty Woman.” That was WRONG. (C’est la vie, said the old folks.)
1994: Son of a Preacher Man”, “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” show
Roger finished in the lead with $8,900. Pam was next with $7,600 and Alex was in third place with $3,600.
NONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
Wikipedia has a sortable list of President’s by previous experience. The section that is pertinent to this FJ says: “5 Presidents had never been elected to public office before becoming President: Zachary Taylor [1848], Ulysses S. Grant [1868], Herbert Hoover [1928], Dwight D. Eisenhower [1952], and Donald Trump [2016].” (Dates supplied by me with links to the wikipedia pages on those elections)
From 1989: GOVERNMENT & POLITICS ($400) After losing the 1952 election with John Sparkman as his running mate, he tried again in 1956 with Estes Kefauver
Buzzy chose the 1868 election (U.S. Grant). He bet and lost it all. With nothing to add from yesterday, that was it for Team Buzzy
Colby went with 1956, Ike’s second election. He lost $101, leaving $7,499 to add to yesterday’s $7,600. Team Colby finished with $15,099.
Austin had 1836. He lost everything but Team Austin still had $5,200 from yesterday.
So Team Colby won the Wild Card and will go up against Team Ken and Team Brad in the 2-day finals that are coming up next Monday and Tuesday. Team Buzzy and Team Austin each went home with $75,000.
Reversal: INVENTORS ($200) Nicolas-Jacques Conté mixed graphite & clay to make this writing tool easily produceable for the masses – Alan was awarded $400 when his “crayon” response was accepted because, Trebek said, “the invention was called the Conté crayon.” (Jennifer also got it with pencil.)
A triple stumper from each round:
20TH CENTURY BESTSELLERS ($800) This Edith Hull bestseller about forbidden love in the desert became a 1921 film starring Rudolph Valentino
ON THE SOUNDTRACK ($2000) A 2018 sequel: “If I Could Turn Back Time”, “Mutant Convoy”
2 years ago: Only ONE of the players got this FJ in “Authors’ Epitaphs”
His tombstone in a Hampshire churchyard reads, “Knight, Patriot, Physician & Man of Letters” & “22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930” show
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Did anybody notice there is not one person over 50 in this tournament? That bothers me.
I sure did. I wonder who is even 50?
Buzzy Cohen and Alex Jacob should both go to Gambler’s Anonymous. No need to bet everything on today’s DD and yesterday’s Final. I was hoping Buzzy would win it all.
fwiw, back in December 2014, I linked to that previous experience list on wikipedia in connection with this FJ: The first man in the 20th c. to hold all 4 federally elected offices: Congressman, Senator, Vice-Pres & Pres.
It’s so funny to me that they had a clue about “Rawhide” today — I was going to use a clip of Frankie Laine’s version of that song on Spoiler Talk today. I used to have that as my alarm on my phone.
For anyone who didn’t get my “c’est la vie, said the old folks” remark — it’s from a Chuck Berry song also on the soundtrack of that film and the next line is, “it goes to show you never can tell”
And if it’s worth anything,VJ, I checked your Go Team Buzzy tweet out and was surprised to see that Arthur Chu liked it.
Too bad for team Buzzy that, on this format, the highest scored WC wasn’t automatically qualified for the finals.
I’m rooting for team Ken (Matt), but I think Larissa will kick arse and team Brad will win.
Thanks, Cece… I did see that but idk if that was him personally. That’s the twitter account for his documentary. Doesn’t look like he’s tweeting anything about this tournament on his personal twitter.
I think Team Brad, too. But who knows… I think this is Redemption Time for Matt Jackson and I think it’s gonna be really hard to take him out. He would have to take himself out to lose, like Alex Jacob did in this game
“He would have to take himself out to lose,”—I like that 🙂
But I’m thinking, Larissa writes trivia for a living (how cool is that?).
Very cool. But I’m thinking how’s that gonna help her if she can’t outbuzz Matt? (if they play in the same round at any point, that is)
You got a good point. 😬
If I were to comment on everything in this game I would need 5 pages, so the less said the better, but congratulations to Team Colby for making it to the finals!
Last thought on today: nobody predicted lower than 2 correct today and that in the last 2 games 6 players had a shot at a correct FJ reply: actual solutions: 0/6. But somebody had to win the WC.
Now that we have the final team, here is how I see how the “tournament” will end:
WINNER: Team Ken
RUNNERS-UP: Team Brad
THIRD: Team Colby
I hope the 2 game final will be a close battle with a lot of exciting moments. Team Brad will probably give Team Ken a run for their money, should be a close affair. Team Colby will – imo – not be a factor. I might eat my words and Team Brad might win by a small margin (there is always room for some “but” with J) but I don’t think so.
I anticipate that Ken will play the DJ round in game 1 and the FJ in game 2.
So congratulations to all 3 teams for making it to the final games !!!
Team Ken vs. Team Brad vs. Team Colby in the All-Star Finals. Very interesting, but ending the week on the VERY first wrong DD and the second in a row to miss FJ. Yesterday, they lost a lot, now, they missed off. What a complete turnaround.
Looks like Alex Jacob finally met his match.
Looks like Buzzy Cohen knows what it feels like. Like Lisa Schlitt felt when she got beat by him and Jason Sterlacci.
And looks like Alan Lin got his wish of beating both Buzzy Cohen and Austin Rogers.
Well Alex did his best but sometimes a true daily double won’t work out in his favor all the time. This is the second triple stumper that no one got but at least colby bet wisely to advance to the finals. Congrats to team Colby and of course I hope they will win big. Plus Alex should have bet at least 4000 in that second daily double if he wanted to advance. All the teams played Well. By the way VJ and John, what sort of outcome were you guys predicting after today’s game if it had worked in buzzy’s favor?
@Lou, I was hoping to see Alex Jacob and Matt Jackson play in a Battle Royale DJ! though, of course, I don’t know if it would turned out that way even if Team Buzzy made it to the finals.
LINK: 12 more clues from this game
I can guess and understand Colby’s reasoning with selecting choosing “1956” in FJ: “Which presidents last century were elected without having previously being serving in elected office? Eisenhower. He served two terms, and the latter was due to the 1956 election, so it must be 1956.” When they first revealed his answer, I thought maybe he was correct and I had misread the clue, but it turns out it was he who misread it. It was trickier than I first anticipated. I think Buzzy probably gets it normal circumstances, but he knew they had no chance and was probably not in the correct frame of mind to answer it. Not sure about Austin.
@JP
It did not say “last” or 20th century in the clue. There was no time frame , hence probably Grant and (1836) van Buren.
It did say “last” in the clue:
“Prior to 2016 it was the last election year…”
You are correct that it did not mention the last century. That was my thinking out loud after reading the clue. Some more explanation:
If the clue mentions “last”, I think there is a better chance that the answer was in the last century, so should start my search there. That worked out in this case, but of course that initial narrowing of the search field (last century due to the word “last”) would have worked against me if the correct answer was in the 1800s. Perhaps Buzzy and Austin started from Washington onwards, which would make the clue very difficult to done in time.
@JP
“Last” election year can mean 20th,19th,18th even 21st century. What if Obama had not have held any elected office before becoming POTUS?
I think I was clear that the word “last” did not specify which century; Saying “I think there is a better chance that the answer was in the last century” directly implies that it was not necessarily in the last century.
I think you are reading too much into the precise words I used to formulate my line of thinking. Although it’s probably my fault for not being precise I guess. Obviously I could not actually reproduce my exact thoughts as they occured at 2:20 this morning because we do not think linearly in clear sentences.
The point is using the word “last” as an indication to look at more recent presidents seems to make sense, and would have paid off in this particular question.
You can ignore my first comment. I misread your “last” as standing alone, not as a modifier on ” century” a few words later.
Someone who was at the Tournament taping ran this by a group of Jeopardy! champions at our table and we all ended up thinking it was Washington. Not that easy to run by all the presidents in a short time under pressure and remember what offices they had held. Kudos to Colby for coming up with it at all!
Thanks for sharing, that is very interesting. As always, the easiest ones are the ones you know.
I am typically very hesitant to criticize contestants for incorrect FJ responses because of the incredible pressure they are under. I’m not sure I would remember my middle name in that situation I might be so nervous. Add in red herrings and tricky wording and it’s impressive how many correct answers (questions?) there are, considering it’s probably the first time most contestants have been on TV, and probably the most pressure they’ve ever been under.
Still waiting for that Triple Solve in this Tournament, but congratulations to Team Colby! Team Brad, Team Ken & Team Colby, good luck in the Finals.
Yeah, two consecutive FJ proved very disastrous. Yesterday was tough, today was even tougher.
For the first time in 19 years Pam has moved on to the Finals.
For the first time, one of Alex’s true daily doubles (or otherwise large bet) came back to bite him. It appears their team discussed the strategy and agreed that he would go all in for any Daily Double that he had high confidence in (that was my impression from the brief behind-the-scenes clip) . I cannot fault him for the bet, as it was a team decision, and he figured he probably had at least a 90% chance of answering correctly, and a correct answer would effectively seal the game.
That said, I think this was the first “all-in” bet I’ve seen Alex make that I would not have recommended before the fact. The number of movies and other pop culture trivia that appear on the show is truly enormous, and movie soundtracks have not come up with great frequency in the show’s past, so it’s less likely that studying j-archive, as he clearly has done, would be as helpful. In his position, I would have bet $5,000. If he had hit the $1200 “E”ponymous Daily Double with the same scores, I would have said going all in made sense because the clues are 10x easier when you are spotted the first letter.
It’s clear he was absolutely devastated by the miss. I hope that he has since realized that, despite the outcome, it was a rational bet to make and that he will not allow it to haunt him the rest of his life. Some people might say he was reckless and arrogant making that kind of a wager. I think he believed every wager he made gave him (and his team) the best chance of winning the match, and I greatly respect his decision to do what he thought was best, when the pressure of the situation would make most people shy away from making the big bet.