Final Jeopardy: 20th Century American Music (10-16-20)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (10/16/2020) in the category “20th Century American Music” was:
The composer of this 1944 ballet piece said it “concerned a pioneer celebration…around a newly built farmhouse in the…hills”
New champ, Kristin Hucek, an attorney from San Francisco, CA, won $2,700 yesterday. In Game 2, her challengers are: Aaron Ballett, an executive assistant from Santa Barbara, CA; and Aanchal Ramani, an MBA student originally from San Francisco, CA.
Round 1 Categories: City Nicknames – 2-Letter Words – Around the House – Actors & Their Roles – American History – LV
Aaron found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “American History” under the $600 clue, with 7 clues to go after it. He was in second place with $3,000, $1,000 less than Kristin’s lead. He bet $1,500 and he was RIGHT– in the last half-second! Whew!
The oldest continuously settled city in America, it was named for the Bishop of Hippo. show
Aaron finished in the lead with $5,300. Kristin was second with $5,200 and Aanchal was last with $1,800.
Round 2 Categories: Feel the Power! – Poets & Poetry – Orders of Magnitude – The English Monarch when… – I’m Just the “Go” between – Elvi
Aanchal landed on the first Daily Double in “Orders of Magnitude” under the $1,600 clue, with 9 clues left after it. She was in third place with $3,400 now, $6,600 less than Kristin’s lead. She bet $1,400 and thought it was Ireland. That was WRONG.
Emerging from famine, this country opened up to the U.S. in 1972, & its first deal was to buy 13 American fertilizer factories. show
Aanchal got the last Daily Double in “The English Monarch When…” under the $1,200 clue, on her next pick. She now had $2,000, $8,000 less than Kristin. She bet $1,000 this time and picked Queen Victoria. That was WRONG.
Napoleon became Emperor of France. show
Kristin finished in the lead with $8,000 and Aaron was next with $5,300. At negative $200, Aanchal was out of the game. 3 clues stayed on the board in this round.
NEITHER contestant left to play Final Jeopardy! got it right.
WHAT IS “APPALACHIAN SPRING”?
1944’s “Appalachian Spring” won Aaron Copland the 1945 Pulitzer Prize in Music. From the Library of Congress’ website: “Copland and his creative partner, choreographer Martha Graham, thought the simple story of frontier love, community, perseverance, and fidelity could serve as the foundation for a compelling piece of theater”. In addition to the remarks in the clue, Copland also wrote that the ballet “had to do with the pioneer American spirit, with youth and spring, with optimism and hope.”
A Daily Double from 9/13/2018: He had nothing to do with the title, but Aaron Copland said, “I’ve begun to see the” mountains “myself” on hearing this piece. (Martha Graham took the title from a Hart Crane poem that was actually talking about the watery type of spring.)
Aaron didn’t have a response. He lost his $5,000 bet and finished with $300.
Kristin responded with a different Copland work, “Rodeo”. She lost $2,700 and won the game with remaining $5,300. Her 2-day total is $8,000.
3 triple stumpers from I’M JUST THE “GO” BETWEEN
($800) “Star Trek: The Next Generation” de-gendered the famed opening, changing “man” to “one” in this line
($1200) 3-word phrase meaning “Please stop talking in your present vein, as I do not wish to think about that”
($1600) The town where you grew up won’t be the way you remember it, as we learn from this 1940 novel title
2 years ago: TWO of the players got this FJ in “America in the 1930s”
Of the 23 lawgivers depicted on marble portraits over doors in the U.S. House Chamber, he’s the only one in the Bible show
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Haven’t seen a picture like this one since Season 14.
Tonight’s show was one of the more painful ones. I must admit the Final stumped me. Thought for sure it was “Rodeo” and gave it no further thought.
SO many stumpers again. I tend to compare the routine players, even the winners, with the all-time greats, which of course is unfair. But it highlights the massive difference between them.
I certainly didn’t know all of them, but scored on several. (I won’t say which ones because VJ requested that we not answer them so as not to spoil it for those who see the show later.)
Thanks, Howard. You can certainly say how many of them you knew and you can refer to the category (like, I got the two Actors stumpers) or make a reference to something in the clue (like, I knew that 2-word Scrabble answer 30 something years ago) .😀
We end the week with a double stumper.
In the beginning of the game, Alex said “What are the odds… we select two challengers from the pool at random. They both wind up on the program and both their first names start with double A. Never gonna happen… never gonna happen!”
That is unusual, I’ll agree, but I have to say I have seen way too many challengers with names that start with the same letter on the same show. Many times, Alex has said “the Js (or Ms or whatever) have arrived.” It’s made me wonder if their selections are really alphabetical.
On the other hand, in light of today’s final, it really was a crazy coincidence that one player’s name was Aaron Ballett! (I loved his apple pie answer in the Magnitude category)
It looks like in the U.S. about 10-15% of all people’s names begin with ‘J’.
For men, it’s about 15-20% ()
If we say the chances of a contestant’s name starting with ‘J’ is 15%, then the chances that two challengers chosen at random will both have their name begin with ‘J’ would be .15*.15 = 0.0225 = 2.25%.
If there are, say, 40 weeks a year with new, non-tournament shows, there would be 40 x 5 = 200 games per year with two challengers. That means you’d expect 200 * 2.25% = 4.5 times per year that both challengers’ first names would start with ‘J’.
The next most common starting letters are ‘A’ and ‘M’, each of which start about 10% of all names in the U.S. So those would each contribute about 2 times per year that both challengers’ first names start with the same letter.
That’s a total of 8.5 per year from the 3 most common starting letters. I’d bet the remaining letters might get you up to at least 12, probably close to 15-18, which would mean 1-2 per month, on average, if contestants are chosen at random.
Some years ago, JP, I made a name meaning/nicknames site for my daughter. On it, so far, we made this many pages for each of the letters you mentioned:
A – 79 male / 55 female
J – 62 male / 42 female
M – 70 male / 94 female
S seemed like it was never-ending, too: 55 male / 66 female
Of course, I mainly stuck to the most common version of a name and put variations in the same post. Otherwise, I’d still be doing that and not this. lol
As someone who works in web development, I must say that’s a pretty cool website for someone who does not do that work professionally!
Thanks, JP!
I couldn’t resist. I looked at season 35 (2018-2019) on j-archive. I found 190 non-tournament games. 6 times both challengers’ first names started with J, And 2 occurrences for both A and M. And a total of 17 same-letter-of-first-name challengers. Which matches the back-of-the-napkin calculations I did incredibly closely.
It actually reminds me of a video I saw recently. Towards the end, he mentions how the mathematical principle can be used to detect fraud in corporate bookkeeping.
The idea is that when you expect some phenomenon to be distributed randomly, sometimes you can check for small things that would indicate that it was not random. Based off my findings, I’d say it’s very likely that Jeopardy does not take contestants’ first names into account when selecting challengers, because their distribution, at least by the above measure, matches the theoretical prediction almost exactly.
Ever since Kevin Walsh won his 5th game, things have gone downhill fast, especially for Final Jeopardy!
Yes, this week has been both an interesting & really hard week. We have had only 3 correct responses, out of 12. We’ve had 3 Triple Stumpers, which, again, everybody hates. We have had both a Single Disqualification & a Double Disqualification in 1 week, and we also have 1 of the Lowest 2-Day Totals ever. It’s not a record, but still, and on Wheel of Fortune, we only had 1 solve, out of 5. However, some good things did happen this week. On Wheel of Fortune, the 1 solve that we did get FINALLY gave us our 1st $100,000 Winner in almost 2 years. We had our 1st Single Player Final Jeopardy! in over 5 years, and Kevin Walsh was successful in Final Jeopardy!, and speaking of Kevin Walsh, he became our 1st 5-Time Champion of Season 37. Let’s hope that next week will be a lot nicer & better. Will it actually happen? Will we go through 1 week without a triple stumper? Keep your fingers crossed, and find out.
Well we finished the week with our first five time champion, three dismissals, and many triple stumpers. Aanchal had trouble with the game and missed some easy daily doubles. Congrats to Kristin on her win but I think she might have Karen Farrell’s playing style, VJ. This fj wasn’t as hard as yesterday but I would love to see kristin get fj right next week to build on her win.
Man, this has been a sluggish week on Jeopardy. Earlier this week, we had a solo player FJ! and today we’re down to two contestants left in FJ! so that means 3 of the contestants have been disqualified. Hopefully next week it will be better.
$13,400 in Triple Stumper clues and a win from the fourth podium. That is the third or fourth time I could do that this season out of 25 games.
It’s actually Trebek who won.
Thank you, VJ for sticking to my idea.
well, Richard, that is the way it was shown. They can do this with 2 players right next to each other, but they won’t be able to do it with the first and third positions
If it’s in the first and third positions, then how will you post the picture?
Probably the same way I always do.
Man, this night had it’s ups and downs.
This entire week has had it’s ups and downs.
Because of the national health emergency.