Final Jeopardy: Famous First Lines (2-14-20)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (2/14/2020) in the category “Famous First Lines” was:
These 7 words precede, “The rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals”
New champ Brooke MacKenzie, a lawyer from Toronto, Ontario, won $17,300 yesterday. In Game 2, she is up against: Terry Heard Jr, an aircraft maintainer from Akron, OH; and Jayne Niemi, a retired college registrar from St. Paul, MN.
Round 1 Categories: Women Authors – Quotable 21st Century Movies – Historic Names – Animal Verbs – 20-20 – Heinz Site
Terry found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Historic Names” under the $800 clue on the 5th pick of the round. He was in third place at negative $1,000. Jayne was in the lead with $800. He bet the $1,000 allowance but had no response so he was WRONG.
This Prussian who helped train the Continental Army left his name on a “ville” that’s one of Ohio’s oldest communities. show
Jayne finished in the lead with $3,800. Terry was second with $1,800 and Brooke was last with $1,000.
Round 2 Categories: Trees Grow on Money – TV Villains – Defense Mechanism – The Body Human – London Boroughs – X Marks the Word
Terry found the first Daily Double in “Trees Grow on Money” under the $2,000 clue, with 3 clues left after it. He was in the lead with $9,800 now, $2,800 more than Jayne in second place. He boldly bet it all and he was RIGHT.
A former Italian 100-lire coin shows Minerva grasping one of these trees big in Italian agriculture. show
Terry found the last Daily Double in “London Boroughs” under the $2,000 clue, with just the $2,000 “TV Villains” clue left after it. In the lead with $20,000, he had $13,000 more than Jayne in second place. He only bet $1,000 this time and could not get in a timely response so he was WRONG.
This borough’s name is synonymous with Britain’s Parliament. show
Terry finished in the lead with a runaway $19,000. Jayne was next with $7,000 and Brooke was in third place with $6,600.
Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
WHAT IS “IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT”?
That is the opening phrase from Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel “Paul Clifford” (1830). It is infamously known as the epitome of bad writing. However, he was not the first, nor the last, to use it. Washington Irving used it in “Knickerbocker’s History of New York” (a triple stumper in last Monday’s game). Charles Shulz used it for Snoopy’s numerous attempts at the Great American Novel. So why is it so closely associated with Bulwer-Lytton? A bad writing contest was named after him: “The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (where www means wretched writers welcome).”
Here is the whole first sentence from “Paul Clifford”: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
Brooke got it right, noting that it was a lot of write out. She bet $6,501, finishing with $13,101.
Jayne proved the point that it was a lot by only getting in “it was a dark &”. She lost her $6,206 bet, leaving her with $794.
Terry came up with “Aleve”. (Shades of Alex Jacob). He lost his $1,337 bet but won the game with the remaining $17,663. Terry Heard Jr. is the new Jeopardy! champ.
A triple stumper from each round:
WOMEN AUTHORS ($1000) The Hudson series is a sequence of novels by this “Flowers in the Attic” author
TV VILLAINS ($1600) Crowley, a charming villain on this show, was known to give the Winchester boys a devil of a time
2 years ago: TWO of the players got this FJ in “Fictional Places”
Some residents of the place with this name came from Kensington Gardens, where they had fallen out of their perambulators. show
Click here to leave well wishes and prayers for Alex Trebek for continuing success in his battle against cancer. There’s also a link to where you can make a donation to pancreatic cancer research in his honor.
We may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made from Amazon.com links at no cost to our visitors. Learn more: Affiliate Disclosure.
If Hemingway or Dickens or Steinbeck wrote those words would it still be considered bad writing? Do you see where I am going with this?
Yes, Albert, I see —
If Bulwer-Lytton had written this sentence, would it have been considered good writing?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
🤣🤣🤣
Well we ended the week with one triple solve, a week of leader curses and tough daily doubles plus slews of incorrect responses.
Would it be acceptable to just shorten the response to twas a dark and stormy night to make it easier for the players?
I really doubt they would accept “twas”, Lou. I think they would have accepted the ampersand though “dark & stormy”
On the first DD, the only “ville” I know in Ohio is Steubenville because Dean Martin was born there so I got that one. Thanks, Dean!
Same here on both counts.