Final Jeopardy: Scientists (6-10-14)
The Final Jeopardy question (6/10/2014), in the category “Scientists” was:
As a humorous tribute, an astronomical term equivalent to at least 4 billion has been named for him.
3x champ Molly LaLonde has won $38,500. Today she takes on these two players: Jason Raffile, from Meriden, CT; and Cindy Summers, from Clarksville, TN.
Alex Trebek, we must say, was in rare form today. He began the game with a backhanded compliment for Molly. She’s been lucky even though she’s missed a couple of FJ’s! But she won because she wagered intelligently (she did), and played well in the first and second round (a matter of opinion).
Round 1: Cindy found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Nevada” under the $800 clue. Everybody had $1,200 and Cindy figured she’d break that tie with a true Daily Double. She thought it was (Steve) Wynn and that was WRONG. The tie was broken but not in the direction she’d hoped for.
In the 1960s he bought 6 Nevada hotels, a TV station and more than 1,000 mining claims. show
Molly finished in the lead with $6,600. Cindy was second with $3,600 and Jason was last with $200.
Alex began the second round with a little jab at Jason, noting that Molly had a $6,400 lead over him, whereas he usually just says so and so has a lot of catching up to do.
Round 2: Molly found the first Daily Double in “Poetic Women” under the $1,200 clue. She was in the lead with $11,800, $9,000 ahead of Cindy in second place. She bet $2,000 and thought it was (Mary) Shelley. That was WRONG.
She spent the last 14 years of her life with her husband at Casa Guidi in Italy. show
Molly found the last Daily Double in “The Bonapartes” under the $2,000 clue. In the lead with $15,400, she had $15,200 more than Jason in second place. She bet $2,000 and she was RIGHT.
Napoleon’s brother-in-law Charles Leclerc died in 1802 in this New World country while trying to put down a revolt. show
Molly finished in the lead with $17,400, a guaranteed win. Jason was next with $200 and Cindy was out of the game since she finished in the red at -$800.
NONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
Neatorama has a list of 10 Neat Facts about Carl Sagan. No. 5 says “Carl Sagan actually never used the term “billions and billions.” His exact words on the series Cosmos were “billions upon billions” (which, for all practical purpose, is pretty much the same thing). So how did “billions and billions” came to be? We can blame Johnny Carson….”
No. 6 defines The Sagan Unit: “A sagan is defined as at least 4 billion (the smallest amount in “billions” is two billion, so “billions and billions” equal 4 billion). It is estimated that the Milky Way galaxy has 100 sagan (400,000,000,000) stars.”
We had quite the discussion about this in Spoiler Talk today. Congratulations and a king-size virtual Milky Way gets split between Jacob and Bill. VJ consoles herself that although she was foolish to abandon Sagan, she was not alone with Hawking. Eric has already given himself the Darwin award.
Jason thought it was Stephen Hawking. He bet and lost it all.
Molly wrote down Dalton (no idea who she meant. Meteorologist, John Dalton?). She lost $2,600 and won the match with $14,800. Her 4-day total is $53,300.
Trebek finished up with another back-handed compliment: “You keep winning in spite of missing the Final!” Well, Molly did get enough higher paying clues to get far ahead of Cindy and Jason, who played quite recklessly.
Two triple stumpers in African capitals: Kampala and Abuja. Our favorite was in The Bonapartes: “French emperor from 1852 to 1870, he wrote a book saying government should end poverty.” Jason said “Maximilian”, Emperor of Mexico from 1864-67 (often rumored to be the illegitimate son of Napoleon II). Nobody else buzzed in. They also didn’t know what country Joseph Bonaparte ruled until the Bourbons were restored. (Jason rang in with France on that one).
2 years ago:: TWO of the players got this FJ in “Authors”
His multi-novel series is based on Robert Browning’s poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” show
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Don’t agree with the concept of applying exact rules to an English phrase as if it were a mathematical formula. More specifically, doubling up of a phrase is a means of emphasis. So “billions and billions” can really be thought of a quantity of greater that two billion or greater that should be kept in mind.
So “billions and billions” is the same as (just) billions? I can see your point as possibly three billion: “billions and billion” just doesn’t seem right.
Here we go again. A good but not great woman player is on a roll, so they give her dumbbells for competitors.
A dumbbell is someone who not only doesn’t know the answer, but rings in anyway with a really stupid, wild guess answer and winds up either barely above or below zero at the end of DJ.
No, I can’t say with 100% certainty that Jeopardy has become rigged, but I’m moving nicely past the 90% mark now.
I still think Molly is a weak player. In 4 games, out of 5 DDs that she ended up with she only got 2 right. One out of 4 FJs right.
All I’m getting out of this is you can get on Jeopardy if you are good in just a few categories and you can win if you’re lucky. Alex Trebek seems to be making an extra effort to remind Molly that she’s lucky to still be around. LOL!!
In February when this show was taped there was an article in the New York Times discussing Seth MacFarlane and how he was financing an upcoming TV series on Cosmos. Many contestants on Jeopardy talk about how they read the New York Times because they know that Jeopardy has a partnership with the New York Times. Also when
Julia Collins was interviewed on TV she explained that they tell you on Jeopardy during the taping what month the show will air. She said that she studied events that had and would take place in the month the show was to air.
Clearly, Molly’s opponents today did not study at all. It almost looked like Molly would be the only one left to answer a final Jeopardy clue.
Judging from the last few weeks on Jeopardy it appears that the contestants are “winging it” and have done no type of research or review of anything that they ever learned in school as a refresher. This is a catastrophe.
maybe it’s just me but Julia’s remark makes no sense — she shows up for her taping and they tell her this is going to air in February. You’d think she studied before she showed up for her taping, wouldn’t you?
How many players a year get that much of a chance to do any studying between tapings?
I would think that players would have a general idea, but you’re right that most players wouldn’t know for sure unless they won the last match of the taping day (a Friday game). Of course, it would be better if it was the last taped game of the week. But, in general, most players would start with only an educated guess.
VJ, well let’s see. April 21st thru April 29 was National Park week. On April 21st there was a category on Jeopardy on national parks system. Frederique Delapree answered three of the five clues correctly. Remember she was the returning Champion. Julia answered none. I think after that Julia figured it out. Even though she was at a
disadvantage in that category. She went on to win the game. That was her 1st game win and she probably started studying for future games like crazy.
My opinion is using this strategy you still might look pretty good on Jeopardy even if you don’t win. You might even get a DD in whatever the category connected to an event might be. At least you won’t look like the two contestants tonight up against molly. They were clueless.
Julia’s 1st show was taped in February but they were told that the show would air in April. Julia’s comments make sense to me.
So I guess in between tapings she started reading every This Day in History she could get her mitts on. Now we know The Secret!
It’s not a secret. I picked up on that pattern years ago on Jeopardy. You may not be as curious as me but go to J archive and check out some of the categories close to certain key dates.
Her streak started on a Monday, right (she won 20 in a row, then lost on a Monday)? So, she wouldn’t have time to look at any material until after that Friday’s game. Maybe she was lucky enough to start winning on the last day of taping that week (did someone here say how many days a week they taped?), if not, she wouldn’t have all that long to study (done by 3:30, regroup, study, dinner, study…back by 8am…add travel time around L.A). Also, who knows if there was a taping break in between her streak. I think maybe she found out ahead of time when the episodes would air.
I agree with you that Molly was probably thinking of meteorologist, chemist, and physicist John Dalton (1766-1844).
John Dalton also has a unit of measure in the scientific world named after him. Atomic mass units, which are units used to describe the atomic weight or mass of molecules and atoms, are also called daltons.
John Dalton was an ENglish chemist, meteorologist, and physicist, living from 1766-1844, as per WIkipedia, so take it with a grain of salt. Though I do remember hearing his name in college physics classes. THis show taped in Feburary I think, maybe before the Cosmos revival with Neil Degrassi Tyson started airing
Are we sure this was an episode of Jeopardy, and not The Three Stooges?
[Full disclosure: I haven’t seen this episode, and I’ll need to see the j-archive of the game to fully critique it, but them’s some really bad misses, people!]
Thanks for the Sagan link, vj. Very nicely done!
4 wins, ONE fj right – and that was a no-brainer- a haul of 53.300 for batting .250 in fj….
I think Molly played reasonably well today and I identified another category she knows pretty well — gods and goddesses. It didn’t look good for her at first but then the other two started throwing their $$ away like novices at a blackjack table.
That Howard Hughes Daily Double?? Cindy was old enough where she should have thought of Hughes right off the bat.
What does Jason think Napoleon was ruling when he put his relatives on the thrones of other countries? That reminded me a little of Pat Robertson when the earthquake hit Haiti and he thought Napoleon III was in charge at the time of the Haitian revolution. OMG!
i also find that contestants ring in much too often when they have no idea about the correct response. often players lose MORE money by missing clues than they earn. a player who finishes with, say, 8K could easily finish with twice as much if s/he would refrain from buzzing in and having no idea.
take any given game and add the money lost to the money earned. the amounts before fj would be twice as high as they are. you must not only WIN money, it is equally important NOT TO LOSE money by being overconfident or ringing in, thinking “it will come to me”. mostly it doesn’t.
at least that would be my strategy. buzz in and try to be the first when you KNOW the right response. otherwise let the other 2 have it and chances are that THEY will lose money 1/3 of the time.
In the comments for yesterday, I brought up naming nominees for an award called (tentatively), the Most Likely To Win A Darwin Award for people that provide responses for FJ like the response of Vatican City yesterday.
Well, in all fairness, even with William pleading with me to change, I provided the response of Chuck Lorre today. I obviously didn’t think him to be a scientist; I focused more on the humor aspect (the reasoning is more extensively explained in the CorD section). I guess I need to nominate myself for the award.