Final Jeopardy: Word Origins (5-5-14)
The Final Jeopardy question (5/5/2014), in the category “Word Origins” was:
This word for a timid person comes from the last name of a character in a 1920s newspaper comic called “the Timid Soul.”
The final two weeks of the Battle of the Decades Tournament begin today. Are we excited? Yes! Each game this week has one quarter-finalist from each decade:
The first three to compete are: Leszek Pawlowicz the 80s; Robin Carroll, the 90s; and Roger Craig, the 00s. Their names are linked to the game they won in the preliminary rounds.
Round 1: Leszek found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double while he was sweeping “A Brief Time in History” under the $600 clue. It was the first category chosen, Leszek had $2,000 and no one else had any money. He made it a true Daily Double and he was RIGHT.
Israeli forces destroyed Egypt’s Air Force on the ground on June 5, 1967, the first day of this war. show
Leszek finished in the lead with $7,800. Robin was second with $4,000 and Roger was last with $3,000.
Round 2: Roger found the first Daily Double in “A Brief History of Time” under the $1,600 clue. He was in third place with $3,400, $4,000 behind Leszek’s lead. He made it a true Daily Double and he was RIGHT.
Following Einstein, in 1908 Hermann Minkowski proposed the idea of 4-dimensional this hyphenated term. show
Roger found the last Daily Double in “Lesser Known Americans” under the $1,200 clue. In second place with $9,200, he had $4,200 less than Leszek’s lead. He bet $5,000, took a guess at the very last second, and he was RIGHT! Wow, that was close, Roger!
With a mark of 5’6″ in this event, in 1948 5’7″ Alice Coachman became the first African-American woman to win Olympic Gold. show
Roger finished in the lead with $21,000. Leszek was next with $15,000 and Robin was in third place with $5,200.
Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right, much to our surprise since we thought this one was common knowledge.
“For the first half of the 20th Century Harold Tucker Webster was a popular cartoonist who didn’t change his style with the times. His later drawings seem stuck in an earlier era, but that only added to the charm. The character, Caspar Milquetoast, was Webster’s most popular, and lives on by name as a man who lacks courage. ” (Hairy Green Eyeballs: The Timid Soul)
Robin wrote down “what is a Mitty” thinking of Thurber’s daydreamer Walter Mitty. She bet and lost it all.
Leszek couldn’t come up with an answer but didn’t bet anything so he remained at $15,000.
Roger got it right and thus, won the match right then. Alex said his bet didn’t really matter, but for the record, he bet $1,078 bet and finished with $22,078.
It wasn’t looking good for Roger until he managed to pull out that second Daily Double! But Leszek still played a helluva game. Hopefully, hanging on to all his winnings will get him a Wild Card spot.
2 years ago:: ALL of the Teen Tournament players got this FJ in “On the Periodic Table”.
Of the 5 elements with 4-letter names, it’s the only one that is not a solid at room temperature. show
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i did not hear alex mention anything about wild cards, but there have to be. otherwise how would they come up with 9 players for the semis next mo,tu & we ?? 5 winners this week and 4 wcs…?? he might have said something earlier, since vj mentions wild cards in her post. i certainly believe her plus it’s the only way it makes sense.
we’ll find out next week if Alex doesn’t mention the wild cards this week — the last week of this tournament is next week, not next month!
right, and for the tournament to go into the semis they would need 9 players, the 5 winners this week plus 4 wc spots…?? but then maybe they figured something else out. sometimes the j policies DO surprise me! but then,they are holding the purse strings….
but as far as i am concerned and as the tod has progressed, the only way it would make sense to continue is to play the semis mo,tu,we next week and the 3 winners play the 2 day final th and fr. but what do i know…..
and besides, the players wager in fj as if wc spots are involved. take leszek e.g., if only the winners advance i am pretty sure he would have wagered differently. “word origins” is not such an outlandish category….although in THIS case i think the fj category was a little bit misleading,however technically it might have been correct. but in word origins you certainly don’t think at first of a comic book figure, almost 100 years old….
“comic book history”?? but then probably nobody might have wagered a dime.i was surprised roger got it.but then it’s probably a different story when you are born here and the old stuff still lies around when you are a kid.
I thought maybe the way the clue was worded could have thrown the players off a little with the answer “comes from” the last name, like it was based on, when it actually “is” the character’s last name. Otherwise, I really thought they all would get it. Milquetoast pops up in literature often enough, and even in music, there’s a 1994 song by Helmet named Milquetoast. The 1980s Bloom County comic strip had a character named Milquetoast the Cockroach. I’ve seen it used to describe actors who often play timid characters. The NY Times even had it in the title of Arnold Stang’s obit!
What do you mean “their names are linked to the game they won in the preliminary round”?
Each of them won a game to get in this match. So if you click on Roger Craig’s name in the intro paragraph, for example, it will take you to the page with that game.
Thank you.