Final Jeopardy: Words of the Year (4-11-22)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (4/11/2022) in the category “Words of the Year” was:
Oxford’s word of the year for 2021 was this 3-letter one, short for a word that goes back to the Latin for “cow”
4x champ Mattea Roach, a tutor from Toronto, Ontario won $104,600 last week. In Game 5, she is up against: Vanessa McCombs, a college instructor from Manassas, VA; and Michael Wolman, a marketing manager from Austin,TX.
Round 1 Categories: A European Capital Tour – Purple Reign – It’s a Fact – In Mom’s Free Time – 2-Word Animal Expressions – Symphon”E”s
Michael found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Capitals” under the $1,000 clue on the 5th pick of the round. He was in second place with $400, $600 less than Mattea’s lead. Michael made it a true Daily Double and he was RIGHT.
Something to sink your teeth into… a signed document by Vladimir the Impaler in 1459 is the first written appearance of this capital city show
Mattea finished in the lead with $7,000. Michael was second with $5,200 and Vanessa was last with $600. All clues were shown.
Round 2 Categories: U.S. Geographic History – The Origin Trail – Chemical Elements – Metaphors – Literature – Double Presidential Namers
Vanessa found the first Daily Double in “Literature” under the $800 clue on the 7th pick of the round. She was in third place with $3,400, $5,600 less than Mattea’s lead. Vanessa bet $2,000 and guessed Dickens. That was WRONG.
With works like “Redgauntlet” & “Kenilworth”, this U.K. author created the historical novel in the 19th century show
Michael got the last Daily Double in “Chemical Elements” under the $2,000 clue with 6 clues left after it. He was in second place with $6,800, $3,400 less than Mattea’s lead. Michael bet $5,000 and he was RIGHT.
Atomic number 100, this radioactive element, is named for the scientist who directed the first controlled fission chain reaction show
Michael finished in the lead with $12,600. Mattea was second with $10,200. Vanessa was last with $2,600. 5 clues worth $7,200 were not shown.
Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
WHAT IS VAX?
Here’s why the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lexicographers chose “vax” for 2021’s Word of the Year: “Due to the global pandemic, words related to vax such as double-vaxxed or fully-vaxxed have been used frequently since last year. The word’s usage has increased 72 times more than last year.” Some of the entries that “vax” beat out for the Word of the Year honor include lockdown, COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, Work from Home, bushfires and furlough. From “The Word Vaccine, a Short Historical Note”: “The word vaccine is first recorded in English in 1799, while its derivatives vaccinate and vaccination both first appear in 1800.” The OED article also points out that the Latin adjective vaccinus goes back to ancient Rome and simply meant “of or derived from a cow.”
Interesting: The Philosophical Magazine has correspondence from the 1800s discussing vaccines. A P.S. in a 10/22/1800 letter from Professor Jean De Carro mentions sending vaccine material to Lord Elgin for his sick son in Turkey. That info pops up in De Carro’s wikipedia page.
Vanessa came up with “bov”, which stands for various things. Vanessa bet and lost all of her $2,600.
Mattea got it right, although she wanted everyone to know that she had fun in case Michael also got it right. She added $2,400 to her score, putting her into a $12,600 tie with Michael.
Michael did not get it right. His response of “bov” matched Vanessa’s. Michael lost $8,000 and landed in second place with $4,600. So Mattea remained the champ. Her 5-day total is $117,200. She has a definite spot in the next Tournament of Champions now.
A triple stumper from each round:
PURPLE REIGN ($1000) New Hampshire’s state flower is the purple lilac & its state bird is the purple this
THE ORIGIN TRAIL ($400) These dogs were originally trained as water dogs & their name is related to the small pools of water they splashed in
2 years ago: Only ONE of the players got this FJ in “Wonders of the Modern World”
Nicknamed “The Big Ditch”, in 2014 this Modern Wonder celebrated its 100th anniversary show
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I am still not impressed by Mattea. She had a legit opponent today, and her FJ wager – when it might, finally, matter, was bad. I thought Ken put a good damper on her chatter, but, she still snuck it in. What surprised me was 5 clues unrevealed.
The F. Scott Fitzgerald TS – I’m embarrassed to admit that I got it wrong, as I have read the book! My excuse is that it was 30 years ago! (And, that wasn’t for school – just for my own edification.)
@Jason, I didn’t get that Fitzgerald novel either. Idk why. I previously promised myself I would remember the order of his novels. On the other hand, I did get that Kenilworth DD.
“She still snuck it in” — that is so funny!! My daughter said that for most of the show, I am typing so she can’t see how the chatter (or that “let’s give ’em something to talk about” wager yesterday) could possibly annoy me.
Just so everyone knows, I realize that the contestants were thinking of “bovine” when they went with “bov”, but since that was so patently obvious, I chose to link to the “bov” page on Wikipedia in case that king in Celtic mythology ever comes up.
Or maybe that place named Bov on the Jutland peninsula in Denmark will show up. (Jutland came up recently and it was a TS).
Or how about “broker’s opinion of value”? That might very well appear in an Acronyms category someday.
I think that when the contestants wrote BOV, they might’ve been thinking Bovine
No, I’m sure that they were thinking of bovis which would be the Latin word for cow.
I was SO hoping Michael would know the first DD (it wasn’t tough IF you knew that Transylvania was in Romania) and that he’d get the other one about the element (helped me to know the namesake of that element). I really thought he’d know the Final. It was very recent, and if you knew “vaca” (Spanish) or “vache” (French), words for “cow,” it made it that much easier.
I came up with VAC in FJ. Actually, it was close, but not quite close enough.
@Rick, you’re not alone by any means — others came to the same conclusion and I was wondering if we’d see that as a wrong response. Now I think it’s going to be one of those things, where you didn’t notice it before but now you’re gonna see it all over the place 😮
Congrats to mattea on her 5th win and now with a new streaker in her for April since Andrew He and Tyler Rhodes, this would mean that Maureen O Neill has been bumped off the list officially. Good to see another 5 game streaker since the 4 game curses in march. Still though I thought Mattea would be a victim of the four game curse but I guess not. bov could mean bovine which is an animal name
The last canadian to also win 5 games was Andrew Haringer and he played pretty well. So I hope she gets that sixth win