Final Jeopardy: World Time Zones (6-4-19)
Today’s Final Jeopardy question (6/4/2019) in the category “World Time Zones” was:
This European country is still an hour ahead of GMT, a move made in 1940 to be on the same time as Nazi Germany
New champ Emma Boettcher, a user experience librarian from Chicago, IL, won $46,801 yesterday after defeating 32x superchamp, James Holzhauer. In her second game, she is up against: Matthew Swanson, a PhD student from Los Angeles, CA; and Liz Neal, a graphic designer from Astoria, NY.
Round 1 Categories: They Might Be Giants – Vwllss Bbl Bks – Turning Around the Insult – Common Blondes – We Border Germany – The Parker House: a Hotel in History
Emma found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “We Border Germany” under the $800 clue on the 10th pick of the round. She was in the lead with $4,600, $2,800 ahead of Liz in second place. She bet the farm and she was RIGHT.
A peninsula, 406 nearby island & other possessions make up this nation. show
Emma finished in the lead with $14,200. Liz was second with $3,200 and Matthew was last with $3,000.
Round 2 Categories: Alphanumerics – Our Founding Mothers – Smooth Sailing in Song – Parasitic Plants – Literary Geographic Features – Internal Rhyme Verbs
Matthew found the first Daily Double in “Literary Geograpic Features” under the $1,200 clue on the 16th pick. He was in second place with $7,000 now, $13,600 less than Emma’s lead. He bet $6,000 and he was RIGHT.
In this novel by Cormac McCarthy, a man finds $2 million in cash. show
2 clues later, Matthew found the last Daily Double in “Parasitic Plants” under the $2,000 clue. In second place with $15,000 now, he had $5,600 less than Emma’s lead. He bet $6,000 again and took a shot at it with barley. That was WRONG.
Trifolium is the genus of this plant grown as livestock feed & sometimes damaged by the parasitic plant dodder. show
Emma finished with a runaway with $24,600. Matthew was next with $11,000 and Liz was in third place with $9,600.
Only ONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.
From Oct. 2018 in The Local ES (Spain’s news in English): “Spain (apart from the Canary Islands) has been running on standard Central European Time (CET) zone, since 1942, when Spanish dictator Francisco Franco supposedly turned the clocks forward in solidarity with his allies, Nazi Germany.” The article is actually about doing away with the practice of daylight saving throughout all of Europe but discusses the particular effects that being on CET has on Spain, how many are for it and why some are against it.
Here’s a map of all European Time Zones
Liz thought it was Austria. She lost her $2,400 bet and finished with $7,200.
Matthew got it right. He bet $8,201 and finished with $19,201.
Emma came up with Norway. She didn’t bet anything so she won the game with the $24,600 she already had. Her 2-day total is $71,401.
2 triple stumpers from SMOOTH SAILING IN SONG:
($1600) “Sailing takes me away” to this mellow singer who also did the best that he could do with “Arthur’s Theme”
($2000) Prior to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, this singer took a smooth trip around “Christian Island”
2 years ago: Only ONE of the players got this FJ in “The Oscars”
This man received 2 honorary Oscars in his career, & the actor who played him on film received a 1992 nomination for the role. show
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I wonder if the ace librarian Ms. Emma Boettcher happens to be related to the actor and singer Bonnie Jean Boettcher (known as Bonnie Beecher)? As an actor, she appeared on various 1960s TV series as a guest star, starting with the last-shot episode of 1959-1964 Rod Serling CBS-TV’s THE TWILIGHT ZONE, “Come Wander With Me” (also the memorably haunting song featured).
I agree that Emma made a face and seemed disgusted when compared to James, as if “how dare you compare me to a MAN?” James made me a daily Jeopardy fan for a while, I don’t have to watch it any more. On a side note, maybe James blew it on purpose. Since it appears Ken Jennings has nothing else going for him in life, I think that James didn’t want to take that away from him. Besides he has lots of money and it seems, a big and loving family. Did you hear he donated $10,000 to an education fund for children? Forever fan.
Libby’s Mom, I really don’t think she was thinking that. “Bet the farm” was not an expression James ever used for one thing and betting everything on a first.round DD was a recommendation long before James came on the show.
I said on here a long time ago that it’s a shame that the winner of a game against someone on a run has to put up with little attention on how well he or she played and a whole lot more on the dethroned champ, but it’s a commonplace thing that’s not going to change.
I can relate as someone who went through about 20-something years of my life hearing “you look just like your mother” or “you look just like Hayley Mills” even though I didn’t think I looked that much like either of them. lol
P.S. James has publicly said he did not blow the game on purpose and that Emma beat him fair and square.
This is the first day since James Holzhauer slayed by the librarian, and staring from now, it was all BORING! BORING!
John Christian, I’ve had enough of this. Stop repeating yourself.
I greatly enjoyed tonight’s game. It was very competitive.
Jeopardy —reach out when you get James back.
In the mean time I have my early evenings back.
For that and James I am grateful.
I noticed that on the show James lost, there were a lot of long clues, which gives all the contestants time to ready their thumbs for the end of the answer. James usually got the short ones better than most. The third contestant, Jay, was also very competent, which deprived James of several questions he otherwise would have gotten. James hitting the DD on the first square was bad, since he didn’t have the option to wager much. All together, it was the perfect storm required to take him down. If he had gotten the first DD later, or one of the later DDs (Emma got both of the others?) it would have been a different story. I also think the answers were easier than some of the other shows, based on how many I knew myself. I usually average about 70-80% but on that show I knew about 90%.
I thought the clues in yesterday’s game were a bit easier as well. I agree that James hitting the first DD on the first clue could have been a deciding factor. It’s actually the only part of his strategy that I think is not optimal. I would pick clues from the lower-daily-double-probability categories until either I (or a competitor) got over $1,000. This would greatly reduce the chance of hitting the first DD when you don’t even have $1,000 to bet, essentially wasting the clue.
Well, how about that game on April 26th? James didn’t get any of the DD’s and his pre-FJ score was $29,600 as compared to $23,400 in his last game where he got that one $1,000 DD.
I’m linking to the game on J-Archive so you can see how short or long the clues were. There were 4 triple stumpers in the 4/26 game and 3 clues left uncovered. There was only one stumper in his last game and all the clues were uncovered.
I think the deciding factor in the last game was the stiffer competition more than anything else.
I definitely agree that the biggest deciding factor, far and away, was Emma’s and Jay’s incredible skill. Emma specifically could very well have been the best contender of the 66 James faced. Even then it was extremely close. That’s why I brought up hitting the first daily double on the first clue as a possible deciding factor (although far behind Emma’s skill in importance). It was so close that there were probably ten small decisions that could have changed the outcome. But none of those would have been relevant unless James ran into Emma and Jay.
Already tired of her standoffish mannerisms. Bring back James!
I agree! Jeopardy! without James Holzhauer is BORING!
She’s not standoffish. Just reserved. You can’t change your personality.
While we are all in awe of James and his incredible amount of knowledge, I was getting bored with the show because no one could even get close to challenging him.
I can’t believe how excited I was when she did it.
Now that was a game!
Does anybody know any specifics about how James lost? For example, did James lose on a Tuesday after the lunch break? James seemed slightly tired and off his game, so maybe playing the 9th or 10th game that week mildly handicapped James’s performance.
Being a Monday game (that is, it aired on Monday), it would have been the first game of a taping day. Not sure if it was a Tuesday or Wednesday taping day.
I think the simplest explanation is the correct one in this case: Emma (as well as the other competitor) were better on the buzzer than the average contestant. In an interview, James said he noticed that Emma did very well on the buzzer in the practice in the morning, so he was expecting a tough game before it started.
I’d guess buzzer skill is approximately normally distributed. Over the course of 30 or so games, there will inevitably be a handful of players that are really good on the buzzer. Emma was one of them, and she also was fortunate enough to hit the daily doubles and use them wisely.
wouldn’t it be cool if emma made it to Tournament of champions and james got to have a rematch? just thinking maybe a little prematurely but it would be intriguing to see
It may be cool for you, but I’m not! As I said, if that “giant-killer” makes it to the ToC, she won’t make it past the first round. I agree with @Matty that she’s nothing but showing her standoff-ish mannerisms, especially after what she did to James Holzhauer!
It was so cool that they had the clue mentioning the Edmund Fitzgerald today. I had a song by that singer as my Friday song clip the week before last. We not only mentioned the Edmund Fitzgerald, JJ wrote a whole parody of it.
Another stumper (in Internal Rhyme Verbs) is the name of a song by Roger Miller. I linked to it in the extra clues. 😀 (I love that song… It “makes you wanna holler hidey ho”)
LINK: 10 more clues from the game
Also, Emma zipped through that vowel-less Bible Books category right out of the gate today, racking up $3,000 by clue 5.
($200) XDS
($400) CTS
($600) CCLSSTS
($800) PHSNS
($1000) BDH
Emma Boettcher is from Chicago, Illinois.
Thanks, WIlliam
You’re welcome, VJ.
Ms. Emma Boettcher indeed now lives in Chicago and is a librarian at the University of Chicago. But she is orginally from the Philadelphia area!
Well it seems that Emma might have what it takes to be a streaker just like James since she knows that he likes to make big bets. It’s a shame that the 6000 dollar bet from Matt didn’t pay off for him the second time when he hit that plant daily double. But still congratulations to her second win with the zero dollar bet.
Yeah, that was a shame. If he only bet half of the $6K he just won, it would not have been a runaway game for Emma and he was the only one who got FJ right!
If anyone wants spoilers for Emma, you can checkout the YouTube videos Jeopardy released yesterday, which included clips with an interview from Emma. I’m guessing that the outfit that she is wearing in the interview will be either be the outfit she wears when she loses, or the outfit she wears on Friday (if she wins through the end of the week).
Thanks, JP. It’s obvious that Emma is not particularly thrilled with the giant-killer designation. lol When she used the expression “bet the farm” today when making her DD bet, Alex said “influenced by James, are we?” She made a little face. Then she got more about him in the chat segment.