Final Jeopardy: Eponymous Geography (10-22-14)

The Final Jeopardy question (10/22/2014), in the category “Eponymous Geography” was:

Named around 1616, it’s the world’s fifth-largest island & the largest named after a person.

3-day champ Alexander Persaud had a great game yesterday and it brought his winning total up to $61,000. Today he’s got these two challengers to deal with: Mike Harwood, from Westerly, RI; and Ali Palmer, from Portland, OR.

Round 1: Mike found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Money Talks” under the $1,000 clue. He was in the lead with $6,800, $1,400 more than Alexander in second place. He bet $1,400 but didn’t make “the sun’ll come out tomorrow” connection so he was WRONG.

Like Annie says, if something’s a sure thing, you can do this, put up the last money you have. show

WHAT IS “BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR”?

Mike finished in the lead with $6,000. Alexander was second with $5,400 and Ali was last with $1,800.

Round 2: Ali found the first Daily Double in “Take the Stairs” under the $2,000 clue. She was in third place with $3,400, $3,600 less than Alexander’s lead. She made it a true Daily Double and she was RIGHT.

The Keats-Shelley Memorial House in Rome is located near the foot of these famous stairs. show

WHAT ARE THE SPANISH STEPS?

Mike found the last Daily Double in “Getting in Shape” under the $1,600 clue. Back in the lead, he had $13,600, $2,600 more than Alexander in second place. He bet $2,600 and he was RIGHT.

It’s a diamond-shaped rhombus or a medicated sore throat candy. show

WHAT IS A LOZENGE?

Mike finished in the lead with $18,600. Alexander was next with $16,200 and Ali was in third place with $12,000.

Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.

WHAT IS BAFFIN ISLAND?

Baffin Island is indeed the 5th largest in the world and the largest named after a person; however, the first part of the clue is inaccurate. The bay, not the island, got its name around 1616.

English navigator William Baffin’s entry in the online Dictionary of Canadian Biography notes that Baffin Island was actually named about 1818 by Sir William Parry “out of respect to the memory of that able and enterprising navigator.” The quoted part can be seen online in “The Voyages of William Baffin (1612-1622)” in the footnote on page 132. The two century gap between Baffin’s sighting of the island and Parry’s naming it occurred because Baffin’s 1616 findings had come to be regarded as dubious in the intervening years.

Under Robert Bylot’s entry in Mark Nuttall’s “Encyclopedia of the Arctic”, the credit for naming Baffin Bay in 1616 is given to Bylot: “Probably because of Bylot’s role in the Hudson mutiny, he named Baffin Bay after his navigator rather than himself.”

Ali got it right and added $4,300 to finish with $16,300.

Alexander thought it was Java (13th largest). He lost his $7,800 bet, finishing with $8,400.

Mike came up with Tasmania (26th largest). That cost him $13,801 so he ended up with $4,799. And that made Ali Palmer the new Jeopardy! champ.

In the chat, Ali talked about what a big fan of Meat Loaf she is and how she once hitchhiked 200 miles across Germany just to attend one of his concerts. This brought on a huge chuckle from the audience later. One of the clues in “Picture the Hitmakers” was “He was born Marvin Aday in 1947” and Mike got it before Ali could buzz in. “Oh! That hurts,” Ali laughed. The end of the game surely healed that wound!

2 years ago:: Only ONE of the players got this FJ in “The Elements”

This element was discovered extra-terrestrially in 1868; it took 27 more years until someone isolated it on Earth. show

WHAT IS HELIUM?

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