Final Jeopardy: Vice Presidents (11-13-17)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (11/13/2017) in the category “Vice Presidents” was:
A biography of this 19th century VP traces his family to a German town made famous in a folk tale about children.
oo-wee! It’s the Semi-Finals kick off of the 2017 Tournament of Champions today and here is Monday’s line-up: Andrew Pau (QF 5); Austin Rogers, (QF #3); and Lilly Chin, (QF #2).
Round 1 Categories: Get an Education – Starts With a Double Vowel – Ohio – Queen-Sized – Music for Champs – Light Up a Cigar
Andrew found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Queen-Sized” under the $800 clue on the 14th pick of the round. He was in second place with $2,200, $600 behind Austin’s lead. He made it a true Daily Double and he was RIGHT.
The 18th century War of this “Succession” helped keep Maria Theresa as ruler but cost her Silesia. show
Austin finished in the lead with $6,800. Andrew was second with $6,000 and Lilly was last with $4,600.
Round 2 Categories: Those Darn Franciscans – ’90s TV – Earth Science – Add a Letter – World Place Names – They Wrote It
Andrew found the first Daily Double in “World Place Names” under the $2,000 clue on the 6th pick. He was in lead with $12,000 at this point, $5,200 more than Austin in second place. He bet $8,000 and guessed Pretoria. That was WRONG.
This African capital is said
to take its name from
the mammal seen here.
(click on image for large size)
show
Lilly found the last Daily Double in “Earth Science” under the $1,200 clue, with 11 clues left after it (5 of them worth $400). In third place with $6,200, she had $1,800 less than Austin’s lead. She bet $3,000 and came up with the radius of the earth. That was WRONG.
Millennia ago Eratosthenes calculated this at 252,000 stadia, thought to equal about 25,000 miles. show
Austin finished in the lead with $9,200. Andrew was next with $7,200 and Lilly was in third place with $6,800.
TWO of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
“The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin” (1899) is a biography of the USA’s 15th Vice President written by his grandson, Charles Eugene Hamlin. He digs right into the family’s ancestry in Chapter 1, relating that the family name likely comes from old Saxon words meaning “home” and “pool.” The theory is borne out, he says, by “the fact that Hamlins are now living in the ancient town of Hamelin in Hanover… which is the town made famous in the legend of The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning.”
Lilly went with Martin Van Buren, whose family came from Buren in the Netherlands. (We’ll leave it to Jeopardy! to find out if that town has a folk tale.) She lost her $6.000 bet and finished with $800.
Andrew got it right. His $3,199 bet brought him up to $10,399.
Austin also got it. He bet $5,300 and became the first 2017 ToC finalist. Who will join him tomorrow? Buzzy, Jason or Lisa?
A triple stumper from each round:
MUSIC FOR CHAMPS ($1000) “Victory” is the final track on this Dave Mustaine Band’s 1994 platinum-selling album “Youthanasia”
’90s TV ($2000) Originally from Northern Ireland, this actress played Monica on “Touched by an Angel”
2 years ago: TWO of the players got this FJ in “Cities of the European Union”
A Hanseatic City, this port of 1.8 million is the largest European Union city that’s not a capital. 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 agree with IAN. Hamlin’s full name should have been required.
But, rules are rules and a last name is usually sufficient.
The test to me of whether they only got it from the folk tale would have been if anyone wrote down “Hamelin” — the way it is spelled in the Browning poem and all the children’s books. and I’m pretty sure that would have been accepted because the “e” is silent. So I think the cluewriters were well aware of that possibility but wrote it like that to make it easier.
In any event, Austin spelled the last name right so I believe he knew it was Han (Hannibal’s boyhood nickname)
For the 11/13/17 Final Jeopardy!: A biography of this 19th century VP traces his family to a German town made famous in a folk tale about children, the question “Who is Hamlin?” by itself should not have been correct. It’s easy to get the “Piped Piper of Hamlin” reference, hence “Who is Hamlin?”, but not have any idea about “Hannibal Hamlin” as a Vice President. The full name should have been required to be correct.
@VJ, that’s funny “who begat who….” As far as Hannibal Hamlin goes sounds like a lot depended on oral history. Too bad they didn’t have DNA in those days. Sometimes it’s difficult to believe what relatives say about “finding one’s roots.” A lot gets lost in meanings hearing from one relative to another.
Yeah, right? We’ll never know how much historical stuff we think is true is a mistake that just kept getting repeated through the centuries
I think Buzzy will join Austin, even though he and Jason are super fast, especially even though I want Lisa to win tomorrow.
I expect to be in a grumpy mood tomorrow with a capital G.
I wanted Buzzy and Jason to both be in the Finals.
You can’t be grumpy. I thought Lisa would be the fastest.
Will you be grumpy if she’s not?
No I would not be grumpy if Lisa isn’t gonna be faster.
OK, well, I will try not to be. You do have a point though. If Lisa wins, I won’t have to feel bad at all.
Perhaps it’s just me but I always think of “van” in a last name as Dutch and not German. E.g., Lee van Cleef, Vincent van Gogh, Martin van Buren, etc.
@Jacob, It is Dutch but some of Van Buren’s ancestors could have gone to the Netherlands from Germany. That ancestral history in the Hamlin biography is quite convoluted (I’d rather read who begat who in the Bible than that!) But from what I could glean, Hamlin’s more immediate ancestors came here from England. Before that, they were in France. He’s saying the clan originated in Hamelin, Germany. One chart I looked at showed the first of Hamlin’s ancestors to come to America as using the last name Hamblin.
@Marilyn, I keep wondering what made Andrew wager $8000 on a DD when he already had a good lead. Your statement is correct imo.
@VJ, there were definitely a lot of triple stumpers in this game. Rather surprised.
I guess Andrew was looking to get an unbeatable lead right then and there. He was on a genuine roll at least up til the clue before he hit that DD (the Fernandes one). Nobody knowing that would have spooked me for sure but, ah, well — he took the risk he wanted to take. If it had been a geographical location, I believe he would have been set.
I only counted 10 triple stumpers, Jacob. That’s actually what a few games had last week. I threw in 4 extra solved clues on the TS post, as long as I had to do that “extra letter” category. There’s nothing to really learn from them and I put the answers inside a spoiler.
If only Andrew had not made such a large wager on his daily double!
As my dad said, that Daily Double miss by Andrew turned out to be the difference in this game.
Tonight’s game of Austin Rogers kinda reminds me of Julia Collins’ first game.
Hannibal Hamlin, very interesting. How many kids did he have during his time as vice president, VJ? Also van buren was not a,bad guess but were their names similar to the Hamlins?
@Lou, I really don’t know how many kids Hamlin had. He was married 2x and had 4 kids by his first wife. After she died, he married again and had another 2, apparently one of them was born when he was VP. But I saw a mention of another child on a genealogy chart, too, only no info on when born and which wife. This is interesting: Hamlin’s grandson, who wrote the book referred to, was born the year Hannibal Hamlin became VP and the year before Hamlin’s youngest son, Frank, was born.
LINK: 12 more clues from this match.
Only bad thing about this game was the last category in the first round 🙂
And then there were 7.