Final Jeopardy: Historic Figures (4-27-23)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (4/27/2023) in the category “Historic Figures” was:
Dante gives him, born to a Kurdish family in the 12th century, a place of honor in Limbo along with the war heroes of Rome & Troy
New champ Jesse Matheny, a customer success implementation manager orig. from Huntington, IN, won $2,600 yesterday. In Game 2, his opponents are: Rebecca Bailey, a reference librarian from Reading, MA; and Eric Anderson, an operations director from Brooklyn, NY.
Round 1 Categories: Spot the Mammal – Historic Wives – TV Drama – Ready to Wear – Take a Tour – “A_B_C_D”
Jesse found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Historic Wives” under the $600 clue on the third pick of the round. Jesse was in the red for $200. Nobody else had any money. Jesse bet the $1,000 allowance and he was RIGHT.
Kasturba, who married him when both were under 15, became a leader in India’s struggle for independence from British rule show
Rebecca finished in the lead with $4,600. Jesse was second with $4,400. Eric was last with $0. All clues were shown.
Round 2 Categories: Where the “H” Is that? – A Fine Wine Film – Tanks for the Memories – Produce: We Have Names – Recent Literary Biography – 4-Letter Before & After
Jesse found the first Daily Double in “A Fine Wine Film” under the $1,200 clue on the 12th pick of the round. He was in the lead with $8,400, $1,000 more than Rebecca in second place. Jesse bet $3,000 and, for lack of anything better, said Hoity-toity. That was WRONG.
This 2-word term for disparagement of something you can’t have is the title of a 2016 documentary about counterfeit wine show
Jesse got the last Daily Double in “Tanks for the Memories” under the $800 clue with 6 clues left after it. He was in second place with $4,600 now, $2,800 less than Rebecca’s lead. Jesse bet $2,000 and drew a blank so he was WRONG.
Built in England in 1916, a prototype of the first operational tank was nicknamed “Big Willie” in mockery of this man show
Rebecca finished in the lead with $9,800. Eric was second with $6,800 and Jesse was last with $3,000. All clues were shown.
Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
WHO IS SALADIN?
Saladin was a Muslim leader who was the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He is credited with uniting the Muslim sects against the Crusaders and recapturing Jerusalem in the 12th century. Many positive virtues, such as nobility, honor and fairness, were attributed to his character so that he had an upright reputation, even in the West.
In Dante’s “Inferno”, Limbo is the First Circle of Hell. Dante populated Limbo with the souls he didn’t think deserved to be punished after death. Yet, he believed they could not gain admittance to Heaven because they were not baptized, non-Christians included. Saladin appears in Canto IV, after the part where Hector, Aeneas, Caesar are sighted. “Across the field”, several others were seen, and then “by himself apart, the Saladin.” That’s all it says about him, so don’t ask me where the place of honor is.
Good to know: If you have the time and the interest, Jonathan Phillips will acquaint you with more literary appearances of Saladin. My favorite is the Saladin / Eleanor of Aquitaine connection.
Jesse went with Dante’s traveling companion, Virgil. He bet and lost his whole $3,000.
Eric got it right. He only bet $800 for a $7,600 finish.
Rebecca had Genghis Khan. She lost $3,801, leaving her with $5,999. So Eric Anderson is our newest Jeopardy! champ.
2 triple stumpers from RECENT LITERARY BIOGRAPHY:
($1200) For the centennial of its publication, Matthew Hollis’ 2022 “Biography of a Poem” is about this culture-spanning one by T.S. Eliot
($1600) Lucasta Miller gives us “A Brief Life” (& brief it was) of him “in Nine Poems” (including “Endymion”) “& One Epitaph”
2 years ago: ALL of the players got this FJ in “Continental Geography”
Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea & Somalia make up this region named for its resemblance to a part of a native animal show
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Kudos to Eric for not only coming from behind, but nailing what I thought was a very difficult final.
I though someone, especially the librarian, would know Eliot’s career-defining work. Jesse was not a strong champion. “Big Willie” wasn’t a dead giveaway, but not that hard. Nixon’s AG’s wife was a big news source 50 years ago, but more recently was portrayed in a cable series by Julia Roberts, so maybe someone should have known that. Usually at least one contestant knows enough French to answer a clue like “beurre'” which Ken mispronounced as “boor” instead of “boor-ray.” The Colonel’s recipes clue was pretty much a gimme, but at that point they didn’t quite get what the format of that category was.
In the A_B-C-D category, the answer “ascorbic acid”, doesn’t quite seem to fit. Am I missing something, or is that first “c” in “ascorbic” not out of sequence?
I think the response was “Ascorbic acid.” Hence, a & b in ascorbic and c & d in acid. If I remember correctly Ken said the letters had to be in order. I don’t think “Ascorbic” alone would have been acceptable. Imo, this was Jeopardy Clue writers being tricky and trying to trip up the contestants.
This is the one I thought that was tricky in that category and resulted in a triple stumper: “Above and beyond the call of duty.” It had to be exactly 7 words.
I thought they were ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ with that category 🤣🤣🤣
I got Final immediately, for a funny reason. The USS Saladin is an absolute workhorse in my Star Trek game.
Again, as usual, I got about half the TS correct.
What is the answer for $600 spot the mammal? I think Jeopardy has the answer wrong.
It was the first one, Michael, the 5-letter one. I had the middle one in the answers by mistake but I just fixed that.
So far this week, we have payouts that are less than 10,000. Jesse continued his struggles on the Daily Doubles and that’s how the scores were so low. But we have our 4th new champ in a row. We’ll see if we can have our first 2 day champ of the week.