Final Jeopardy: Poets (2-13-19)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (2/13/2019) in the category “Poets” was:
He gave his pets names like Wiscus, Pettipaws, George Pushdragon & Jellylorum, the last of which he used in a poem
2x champ Eric R. Backes, an attorney from Round Rock, TX, has now won $76,901. In Game 3, his opponents are: Susie Highley, an education consultant from McCordsville, IN; and Seth Birnbaum, a marketing manager from Seattle, WA.
Round 1 Categories: Sports Across America – Glassware – That Can Mean 2 Things – A Real Horror Story – Econ. Abbrev. – The Ides of February
Eric found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Glassware” under the $600 clue on the 15th pick of the round. He was in the lead with $5,200, $4,200 more than Seth in second place. He bet $2,300 and went with snifter. That was WRONG.
The name of this wine glass may come from the Irish word for mouth.
show
Eric finished in the lead with $8,300. Susie was second with $3,000 and Seth was last with $2,200.
Round 2 Categories: Odd-Named Animals – Opera Characters – Word & Phrase Origins -The Eisner Awards – What’s the Point? – Rolling a “7”
Seth found the first Daily Double in “Rolling a ‘7’” under the $1,600 clue on the 9th pick. He was in second place with $5,400 now, $1,700 less than Eric’s lead. He bet $3,000 and he was RIGHT.
Group nickname for Bryn Mawr & Vassar + 5. show
Seth found the last Daily Double in “Opera” under the $1,600 clue, with just 3 clues left after it. In second place with $11,200, he had $9,900 less than Eric’s lead. He bet $5,000 and he was RIGHT.
Susanna, Countess Almaviva’s maid, is the bride in this opera. show
Eric finished in the lead with $24,300. Seth was next with $17,000 and Susie was in third place with $8,600.
NONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
T.S. Eliot published “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” in 1939. Some of the poems were already popular as they had been broadcast over the radio on Christmas Day 1937 and several times thereafter. Eliot’s cat, Jellylorum, shows up in “The Naming of Cats,” which contains his instructions on giving a cat a unique name:
“Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkstrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum —”
The poem was adapted for a musical number in Andrew Lloyd’s musical “Cats.” You can listen to it on Youtube. There’s also a reading of the poem in T.S. Eliot’s voice.
Also by T.S. Eliot: POETS ($1200) His “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” says, “In the room the women come and go/ talking of Michelangelo”
Susie went with Dr. Seuss. She lost her $6,000 bet, finishing with $2,600.
Seth went with Seuss, too. He lost $16,999, leaving him with one George Washington.
Eric thought it might be Ogden Nash. He lost $10,000. The $14,300 he had left won him the game and gave him a 3-day total of $91,201.
2 triple stumpers from WORD & PHRASE ORIGINS:
($1200) This psych term means a persistent idea–it once meant control by demons outside you, the opposite of possession
($1600) In 1915 the British military deceptively called a prototype a “water carrier”, leading to this name
2 years ago: TWO of the players got this FJ in “U.S. Political Parties”
Shortly before its demise, it had split into “Conscience” & “Cotton” factions. show
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I was screaming T S Eliot at the TV – not hard at all. Like all general knowledge, easy if you know the answer….
The answer- not transfer- wretched predictive text!
no problem, Susan — I fixed it
Well, since Eric couldn’t make it to the $100,000 mark today, because of that tough clue, maybe he’ll make it there tomorrow, and I sure hope that he does.
Here are 10 more clues from the game: LINK
Wow, a very TOUGH Final Jeopardy, which Eric managed to survive and could make it a 4-time or a 5-time champion. @Richard, Can you please clarify how the All-Star Games work?
The captains will play the 2 Jeopardy! Rounds on the 20th, and the 25th.
Their first picks will play the 2 Double Jeopardy on the 21st and and the 26th
Their second picks will play 2 Rounds of Final Jeopardy on the 22nd and the 27th
I was thinking of Ogden Nash as well because of the cats in that poem custard the dragon. Congrats to Eric on his third win despite the triple stumper. I thought he was nearly done for. I hope he will get the next two wins no matter what happens.
Also, were Karen and Seth thinking of the cat in the hat John and VJ? Dr. Seuss also wrote a bunch of other books. Plus had the clue pointed to the musical Cats, it would have been helpful.
@Lou, yeah, I think they thought of the Cat in the Hat, then with “-lorum” in the cat’s name, thought of the Lorax
It’s FUNNY that in today’s game a category “Odd-named animals” came up, when T.S. E. was the FJ solution….
Congratulations to Eric, win#3. He got kind of lucky Aside from betting 299 to much, had Seth stayed put then Eric would have been toast.As it is, Eric is still in the hunt for wins #4 and 5…. A week of extremes: 2 clean sweeps in a row, followed by a TS.And we all struck out as well….
@JJ
See, exactly my point: just because WE know it and thus it seems easy, does not mean the players know it and vice versa: just because it IS difficult, 1,2 or all 3 player may have heard/read about that particular FJ by the weirdest coincidence just before the game.
Would I like extremes more, I would have gone with zero instead of one. Though it could have been deduced from cats’ names>musical>T.S.E I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. Either no player remembered the name of the main cat, did not make the connection or has never seen “Cats” before… BUT: the real attractive things withs J are:
a) you learn something new EVERY DAY (you never know all the answers) and
b) as I said before, you can always expect the unexpected…never a dull game…
Short weather update : still cold in HI, snow on both Haleakala (Maui) and Mauna Kea (Big Island). At the observatory on M.K. winds were clocked at ONE HUNDRED NINETY MILES PER HOUR yesterday…that’s a hurricane 5 category storm and then some…..
Storm and flood damages across the state,houses obliterated etc. and COLD (for us)….🐧
@John – I’ve been saying that exact same thing for decades, John – I’m well aware that just because I may know something, it doesn’t mean the masses will know it as well! (I’m often shocked when I know an answer and it turns into a “triple whiff” on FJ!, but it has been known to happen on rare occasions.)
As I said this morning, I know nothing about poets or poetry BUT I do know a thing or two about Broadway, (and I’ve seen “Cats” 3x!) which is what lead me to the correct answer.
It’s always fun to daily compare wits & wisdom w/ the J! players… that’s why I keep watching! 😁
@JJ
Moi aussi… AND you learn something new. That never hurts, you never know when it might come in handy!
The match ups for the All-Star Games are revealed. Here’s how they work:
Three teams will play in each match. Every player competes in one round of each game. Each match a 2 game total point affair. No player gets to compete in the same round more than once in each match.
The winners of the first 2 matches automatically go on to the finals. Of the remaining 4 teams, only the 3 highest scoring teams get to face off in match #3. And the winner of the wildcard match, joins the other two in the finals and plays for the grand prize of $1,000,000.
From 2/20-22/19: Team Colby Burnett vs. Team Buzzy Cohen vs. Team Brad Rutter
From 2/25-27/19: Team Julia Collins vs. Team Ken Jennings vs. Team Austin Rogers
@Richard, I wonder if the clues and categories will be tougher because the elite is playing?
No.
So it’s going to take three shows to play a two game match a la the Watson games, hey? Eric on tonight’s show gave 11 letter response Salamanders when the clue wanted a 10 letter response and probably should have been negged after the fact but wasn’t. Eric could have lost if second place made the optimal wager on tonight’s FJ! but didn’t.
@aaaa
Had Seth just covered Eric with 7.301, Seth would still have lost. The only way to win would have been to stay put or bet 201 to cover Susie and then hope for Eric and Susie to be wrong or for him (Seth) to be right if Susie would have been right as well. There are so many strategies. But you don’t know what your opponents will come up with. Hindsight is always 20/20. I bet Seth now would wish he would have stayed. Eric got off the Schneid (even though he bet 299 more than necessary) since the difference was in his favor. That’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes….
I think we all were surprised by the triple stumper. There was one recent FJ asking for T.S. Eliot, having given hints to “Cats” in the clue, and that was a triple solve.
Looking through j-archive, I found about 10 clues in the single and double jeopardy rounds asking for Eliot’s name with “Cats” related information, and only one was a triple stumper. However, the names listed in today’s FJ have not come up before – it’s always been references to Possum, and the other more well-known characters.
I’m guessing that at least a couple of the contestants knew the Cats -> T.S. Eliot connection, but could not connect the information in the clue to “Cats”. In retrospect, Dr. Seuss sounds like a reasonable guess if the strange-sounding-ness of the names in the clue are what you first focus on, rather than the cat puns in the names, even if Dr. Seuss is not usually thought of primarily as a poet.
Interesting thoughts on it, JP. I thought that the “-rum” ending of the cat’s name would lead (quickly) to the Rum Tum Tugger. Guess not.
If it makes Eric feel any better, my daughter said Ogden Nash too because she connected the clue with his Custard the Dragon poem. It has a black kitten named Ink, a gray mouse named Blink and a yellow dog named Mustard
@JP
Seems I am the only one who is not really surprised. I was torn between zero and one, but not liking radical numbers I went with one….just check my post (the part to JJ)…
Not the first time we have a “strange” FJ result, certainly not the last time…
And yes, Seuss was reasonable, but it was more complex today than BERMUDA.