Final Jeopardy: Epitaphs (1-16-15)
The Final Jeopardy question (1/16/2015), in the category “Epitaphs” was:
His headstone in Rome reads in part: “This grave contains all that was mortal, of a young English poet”
New champ Amanda Boitano scored a big $30,401 payday yesterday in the process of taking down a 5x champ. Today she takes on these two players: Nicholas Bérubé, originally from State College, PA; and Mehmet Berker, from Los Angeles, CA.
Round 1: Amanda found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Describing the Shakespeare Play” under the $600 clue. She was in second place with $2,000, $1,600 less than Nicholas in the lead. She bet $2,000 and she was RIGHT.
The plot? Plotters plot; mid-March gets dangerous; main plotter ends up committing strato-cide. show
Nicholas finished in the lead with $6,000. Amanda was second with $4,600 and Mehmet was last with $2,600.
Round 2: Amanda found the first Daily Double in “The 17th Century” under the $1,600 clue. She was now in third place with $4,600, $4,200 less than Nicholas’ lead. She bet $2,000 and thought it was Turkey. That was WRONG.
Under the Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699, most of Hungary was ceded to this country by the Ottoman Empire. show
After 2 triple stumpers, Amanda found the last Daily Double in “Opposites” under the $1,600 clue. She was in third place with $2,600 now, $6,200 less than Nicholas’ lead. She bet it all this time and guessed “money-grubber”. That was WRONG.
This 11-letter compound word sounds like it means miser, but it’s the opposite. show
Nicholas finished in the lead with $10,800. Mehmet was next with $6,200 and Amanda was in third place with $1,200.
After the break, Mehmet got an extra $800 for his “curve” answer to “The opposite of straighten, as a noun it’s found in a river” so he went into FJ with $7,000. (They were looking for “bend” but accepted “crook” from Nicholas after judging “curve” wrong.)
NONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
English poet John Keats initially declined the invitation of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley to move to the warmer climate of Italy when he was stricken with tuberculosis. Later that year, he moved to Rome with his artist friend, Joseph Severn, and died 3 months later at the age of 25 on 2/23/1821. Keats’ specifically requested that his name not appear on his headstone, but only this phrase: “Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water”. Severn and another friend, Charles Brown, decided to preface the line with the words in the clue followed by language expressing their belief that critics’ harsh treatment of Keats’ work “Endymion” contributed to the poet’s demise. In 1879, Severn was buried next to Keats with the inscription “devoted friend and death-bed companion of John Keats” under his name.
After Keats’ death, Shelley wrote an elegy in his honor entitled “Adonais”. Shelley drowned a year later when his boat, the Don Juan, was caught in a storm in the Gulf of Spezia. He was cremated on the beach and his ashes are interred in the same cemetery as Keats.
Amanda wrote down Rupert Brooke. He is buried in Greece. She lost her whole $1,200.
Mehmet thought it was Lord Byron, who died in Greece but is buried in England. He lost his $2,399 bet, finishing with $4,601.
Nicholas thought it was Byron too. He lost his $4,000 bet but won the game with the remaining $6,800.
Nicholas Bérubé is an architect. During the chat, he and Trebek talked about their common French-Canadian heritage. Nicholas said his goal was to buy a Volkswagen bus for his annual trip to Acadia National Park in Maine if he won on Jeopardy! Well, it’s a start.
2 years ago:: TWO of the players got this FJ in “Military Slogans”
In 1779 U.S. Marine Corps Captain William Jones advertised for these, later a 1992 movie title. show
We may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made from Amazon.com links at no cost to our visitors. Learn more: Affiliate Disclosure.
I don’t think the Treaty of Karlowitz question makes any sense.
The whole premise of the question, that “most of Hungary” was ceded to a “country” just does not make sense. The lands being referred to were ceded to Leopold I. It was merged with the rest of the territory already called “Royal Hungary” or the “Kingdom of Hungary”.
Really, “Habsburg Monarchy” or “Kingdom of Hungary” would be correct responses, not “Austria”.
I still think the worst of the week was the TS on John Wilkes Booth, actually the only presidential assassin I would think everyone knows just by his picture.
Here’s a quiz (LINK) asking for the 4 presidents, assassin, place, date and VP who took over.
Sometimes I have a hard time spelling one assassin’s name. I bet you guys know who I mean. 🙂
I am Turkish and although I am a bit late to come up with an answer since English is my 2nd language I was amazed that Amanda did so well the first day and sank the second day. Austria-Hungary was an easy answer for me having studied this history in elementary school- don’t know how she came up with the answer Turkey. Turkey did not even exist until 1923. But what surprised me was John Keats, Raphael. As far as the countries, that was also easy, come on Zimbabwe, Estonia, Monaco. Everyone knows them. The most shocking answer was Forrest Gump to me. The character’s name was Andrew Beckett and she says Forrest. Gump!! My name is. Forrest, Forrest. Gump. people call me Forrest. Gump :)))
Also, Mehmet Berker is Turkish, born and raised in LA. he was not great either. I expected him to know more about American history and lit having done his schooling in the U.S.
I think Amanda broke a record for Jeopardy players, at least recently — she was absolutely brilliant on Day One and a total dumbass on Day Two.
How did she know all those existentialist philosophers yesterday, yet today didn’t know that Turkey and the Ottoman Empire are, for all intents and purposes, one and the same?
Also, she should have thought of spendthrift, which is a word I’ve always wondered about, because it does indeed suggest the opposite of what it means.
Well, Amanda will have to remain a mystery. She was one of the One Day Wonders.
the beatles called it “day tripper”…..
Quite a coincidence that all three contestants managed to, in effect, pick the same wrong country for each guess in Final Jeopardy. Brooke died of sepsis in a hospital ship moored in the Aegean, and Byron famously died (but not famously enough, it appears) after having gone to Greece to fight for her independence. He died of fever, not in battle, but he’s still revered as a national hero to this day.
I couldn’t believe my ears when Amanda guessed “Turkey” for the country to which the Ottoman Empire ceded Hungary. Apparently she has never heard of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the fact that Turkey is the country that the Ottoman Empire became, post WWI. I was equally dismayed by “Cabot” being given as the name of a French explorer. Granted, he’s not as English as he sounds, but Giovanni Caboto isn’t very French either. I was also surprised to see that neither Rafael nor Mondrian got a flicker of recognition. Rafael should have been a gimme, and the only ambiguity about the latter should have been between Mondrian and de Kooning, who was heavily indebted to Picasso and the other cubists.
All in all, this is one of the least impressive performances by the whole panel on Jeopardy that I’ve seen in weeks.
Congratulations Nicholas Bérubé. Although the winnings were small compared to other champs this week a win is a win. There were a lot of triple stumpers in this game and I couldn’t figure out what was going on in the minds of the contestants but there appeared to be a lot of confusion.
Amanda Boitano just crashed and burned after such a big win yesterday. Can’t explain it. Almost like a different person playing.
Not an impressive game to wrap up the week.
@John, thanks for the explanation and clarification on the Ottoman Empire clue and Austria. Have a wonderful rest before you watch this game. I almost jumped up out of my chair on a few of the missed clues. But there’s always next week.
yes, there is always hope. sometimes you just get a lemon…make lemonade!!!
and before i forget, after all it IS friday:
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND AND THE SAME TO EVERYBODY ELSE IN OUR LITTLE FAMILY HERE!!!
Same to you and everyone who posts here. I’m going to have a nice stiff drink, put this game behind me, and concentrate on the football games Sunday. Would like to Seattle repeat this year. But anything can happen.
they will i think. gb won’t know what hit them. had that call last week gone for dallas, gb would not even be there. as for the sb, i think seatlle will repeat. remember the sb in 2012, when the giants where a 2 td underdog? they beat the patriots 21: 17 and i KNEW when the teams came out, that n.e. will lose. you just had to watch the faces. giants had nothing to lose and right now: let’s face it, brady is a good quarterback but on the backside of the hill. he can still win a game single handedly or screw things up completely. seahawks always seem so nimble and fast, they can run through your legs and circles around you. so my predictions:
NE will beat the colts, seattle will beat gb and the sb: SEATTLE.
unusual high bet by nicholas, still enough and congrats!
well, looks this time i was too optimistic. and lord byron was an answer, even TWICE just as i thought in the CotD talk. (however i thought maybe just one would mention him)
and what a difference a day (taping) makes!
missing AUSTRIA!!! geography combined with history did amanda in this time.again the LACK of knowledge in foreign history/geography rears its ugly head… and obviously literature is not known THAT well either, pity. and brooke? just about 100 years off…
i have not seen the show yet but concluding from the numbers before fj it was probably not one of j’s best show resp. best showing by the candidates.
Amanda had a worse game today than John had yesterday.
And, yep, you were right on Byron and I was wrong that someone would pick Shelley. I just can’t imagine why anyone would think Byron is buried in Italy, but he was friends with Shelley and he was on the beach when Shelley was cremated. and Shelley’s boat was named in honor of Byron’s Don Juan poem.
As for the Brooke answer, the clue did not give any date hints at all.
she was still off by about 100 years from the correct answer…had she known keats or even guessed byron she should have known she was a century off. again, amazing how somebody who dominated a game completely crumbles an hour later (presuming both shows were taped on the same day)!
@vj, how did you like that Forrest Gump response?
Yes, that was indeed peculiar. How about that Kalmar War one where they all buzzed in with wrong answers, the old “if it’s not that, it must be this.” And then there was Virginia Dare and Ambrose Bierce… it wasn’t good.
and btw in case somebody wants to know: the treaty of karlowitz ended the austrian-ottoman war, after the turks besieged vienna a second time in 1683 (the first siege happened in 1529). the turks were defeated by polish king sobieski, the turks fled and their leader – kara mustafa- got the “silk cord”, as it was the tradition then for a leader losing a battle. the turks were driven back into what used to be yugoslavia not too long ago (serbia) and were then routed by prince eugen of savoy in 1717 (austro-venetian-ottoman war) in the battle of belgrade. that effectively ended the turkish dominance in the eastern part of europe.
just a little piece of turkey is left today on the european continent, istanbul being the divide between european and asian turkey territory.
had the turks taken vienna back then, half of europe -or more- would be speaking turkish today…seriously!the moors tried from the other side (iberia) since about the 8th century CE. in southern spain you still see a lot of their influence, especially in buildings.those invasion attempts eventually failed (shown somewhat correctly in the movie “El Cid”) and several hundred years later they tried it from the east. but europe held out again, 1529, 1683 and 1717. in all 3 instances the habsburgs played a – if not THE- crucial role in foiling the attempt to get europe under ottoman rule.