Final Jeopardy: Countries of Africa (4-19-22)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (4/19/2022) in the category “Countries of Africa” was:
Old maps depicting what’s now this 125,000-square-mile country labeled the area with the French word for “teeth”
10x champ Mattea Roach, a tutor from Toronto, Ontario, has now won $227,601. In Game 11, her challengers are: Tina Disciullo-Acker, a manager of development events from Philadelphia, PA; and Josh Sen, a student from Edison, NJ.
Round 1 Categories: Let’s Get Scientific – The ABCs of Indian Food – Possessive Things – Nonfiction Television – Rhyme Time – I See You There!
Josh found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Let’s Get Scientific” under the $800 clue on the 13th pick of the round. He was in second place with $1,800, $400 less than Mattea’s lead. Josh went all in, but came up short so he was WRONG.
Showing great steadfastness in 2021, NASA landed this $2.7 billion rover on Mars, a mere 127 million miles away show
Mattea finished in the lead with $5,600. Josh was second with $2,800. Tina was last with $1,400. All clues were shown.
Round 2 Categories: April Fools – My Literary Creations – Policing & Punishment – Religion in the 13th Century – The Cast of the Movie – “ICU” There!
Josh found the first Daily Double in “‘ICU’ There!” under the $1,200 clue on the 17th pick of the round. He was in second place with $7,200, $6,800 less than Mattea’s lead. Josh bet $3,000 but didn’t know the answer so he was WRONG.
In a friendly legal term, it precedes “brief” show
Mattea got the last Daily Double in “Religion in the 13th Century” under the $2,000 clue on the last pick of the round. She was in the lead with $14,000, $5,400 more than Josh in second place. Mattea bet $3,400 and she was RIGHT.
The oldest known manuscript of the Avesta, a sacred text of this ancient religion of Persia, was produced around 1258 show
Mattea finished in the lead with a runaway $17,400. Josh was second with $8,600 and Tina was last with $7,000. All clues were shown.
NONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
WHAT IS CÔTE D’IVOIRE or IVORY COAST?
Côte des dents and côte de l’yvoire are names that first appeared on European maps in the late 1600s, obviously referring to the coastal trade in elephant tusks. In that time period, European countries named regions in Africa based upon what was being traded. “Dents” means “teeth” in French. It’s “dentes” in Portuguese and “dientes” in Spanish. Ivory is “ivoire” or “yvoire” in French, marfim in Portuguese and marfil in Spanish. You might be able to see some of these names on the 1707 French map in the above video (at about 0:57) if you can zoom in on it without getting to the point where it’s illegible.
Some years ago, Côte d’Ivoire announced that its official name would henceforth be “Côte d’Ivoire” and its president requested that the name not be translated into local languages by other countries. I don’t know about other countries but a lot of writers in the USA didn’t get the memo and continue to use Ivory Coast.
Tina wrote down “dent”, the French word for tooth. That took a $5,000 bite out of her $7,000. She finished with $2,000.
Josh went with Sudan. He bet nothing and finished with $8,600.
Mattea thought it might be Mali. She lost her $119 bet but won the game with the remaining $17,281. Mattea Roach is now an 11-day champ. Total winnings: $244,882.
A triple stumper from each round:
POSSESSIVE THINGS ($1000) 9th c. English King Alfred the Great collected this saint’s “Pence” for the Pope; you can donate to a fund of the same name
THE CAST OF THE MOVIE ($2000) 2021: Gemma Chan & Salma Hayek deal with a pressing planetary issue
2 years ago: TWO of the players got this FJ in “Country Names”
The cartographic feature from which this country gets its name passes near the town of Guayllabamba show
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Well, (don’t) go me! I’m not still fluent in French, but passable, but I didn’t know this one. I said “Algeria”, because, notwithstanding VJ’s statement above, I can’t picture 125k square miles. Maybe Mattea was giving a call out to Jeopardy! with “Mali”. Someone on the writing crew loves that country, and, like Tina and “could George Washington be the response?”, if it’s an African country, Mali is always on the table as a guess.
Something that bugged me was Josh just giving up on the first DD. Just something about the way he “surrendered” rubbed me the wrong way.
But, no chatter today! Except from Ken.
Well, at least for future reference, let’s say that Mali is a lot bigger than Texas. Cote d’Ivoire is about the size of New Mexico.
Thank you for that. I don’t know if you are familiar with the “CIA World Factbook”; unfortunately, it is exclusively online only now (and not classified). But, it being the US govt, each country listed is compared to a US state in size, for reference!
There’s another site that JP recommended a while back that I can’t remember the name of right now.
Maybe I can find it tomorrow (I’m falling asleep!) or maybe JP will remind us later
Here’s the site that JP recommended: The True Size of There’s a little video on there to show how it works. He also mentioned WolframAlpha “for getting a quick mathematical comparison between country sizes”
Yeah, Algeria was indeed my guess; I just didn’t want to post it.
I’m still fairly fluent in French, but couldn’t make the transition from “Les Dents” to “Cote d’Ivoire.”
Sudan wasn’t a half-bad try.
Poor Josh couldn’t get any traction thanks to those pesky DDs. The legal brief DD wasn’t tough, but it’s not the kind of term you could guess if you don’t know it.
The stumpers were mostly too much for me, but I did guess the Altenscheul one and the name of the Crusade.
Same here. I certainly knew the French word for teeth, but I just couldn’t connect it with a particular African country.
Howard, Sudan and Mali were terrible answers. Both of those countries are in Africa’s Top 10 in area and the size of the country was the only other thing in the clue to help with a guess if you had no idea what teeth was supposed to point at.
Wow, a tough finale, and the clue really wasn’t much help unless one was at least vaguely aware of the alternative name for Cote D’Ivoire.
Now I might not know much about African geography but cote d’dent could have also been an acceptable response though. Maybe Tina could be back for the second chance tournament. Not surprised no one knew this one.
I don’t think Côte d’dent would be accepted, because that’s not the nation’s current name. Like, if they were looking for “Thailand”, and you gave “Siam”, that wouldn’t be taken.
I didn’t know that factoid about the name only in French, and not translated. Coincidentally, when I looked for Côte D’Ivoire on Wikipedia, the page was “Ivory Coast”!
Here’s a separate image of the 1707 French map for anyone who wants to zoom in on it. The names are easier to read.
That was a tough final as we got a triple stumper. I am sure that Richard Corliss and William Weyser would say darn those daily doubles, Josh.
On the plus side, Mattea made a good Daily Double wager, got it right, and made the game a runaway right there.