Jeopardy! G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time)
Jan. 14th, 2020 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cjlasky7I'll take "Words and Phrases" for $600, Alex.
A: "Rotten" term for key details revealed about a TV show before you've seen it.
Q: What are "spoilers"?
Just finished watching the 4-night Jeopardy! tournament, featuring the three biggest winners in the show's history. The entire family played along, and it was genuinely thrilling to see how we stacked up against such a ridiculously high level of competition. I got 30% of the clues... maybe. I was pretty good with the arts, but sat back in awe as the contestants blazed through categories that would have made college professors look baffled.
Of the three, all time money winner Brad Rutter seemed overmatched. He was slow on the buzzer, and consistently crapped out whenever he hit Daily Doubles. In Match #2, he ended up in the negative and had to watch, embarrassed, as his opponents went onto Final Jeopardy.
So it boiled down to a two-man competition between James Holzhauer and Ken Jennings. Holzhauer, the professional gambler. seemed most at ease in the high pressure environment, playing mind games with Jennings, and bringing back his "pushing in my chips" signature move when going all in on a Daily Double. But Jennings, even though he was clearly nervous, had a narrow edge in breadth of knowledge, and hit Daily Doubles at key points in the competition. (He had the unnerving habit of looking baffled for a long, long moment before coming up with the right answer.) Jennings also got the biggest laughs in the contest. (After his opponents gave joke responses in a Final Jeopardy round, Jennings deadpanned that he'd like to do five minutes on airline food before giving his answer....,)
In the end, Jennings won matches #1, 3 and 4 to take the million dollar prize and the GOAT trophy. He won the title on this question:
Category: Shakespearean Dramas
Answer: This character has the most speeches (272) for any non-title character in a Shakespeare play.
Do you know who it is? (Ah ah! No cheating with the internet!)
*****************
The competition was exciting, but there's another reason why this tournament was special. Jeopardy host Alex Trebek is fighting pancreatic cancer and may be at end of his run. Trebek has hosted since 1984, and his perfectly modulated voice, his calm demeanor and his sly sense of humor have made him the class act in the often undignified world of game shows. Trebek has become a revered media celebrity in his own right, guest starring on The X-files and honored with a parody on Saturday Night Live, where Will Ferrell's Trebek would vainly try to convince Darrell Hammond's cantankerous Sean Connery to play some semblance of the game.
Jennings may have won the trophy, but the Greatest of All Time could also refer to the host.
A: "Rotten" term for key details revealed about a TV show before you've seen it.
Q: What are "spoilers"?
Just finished watching the 4-night Jeopardy! tournament, featuring the three biggest winners in the show's history. The entire family played along, and it was genuinely thrilling to see how we stacked up against such a ridiculously high level of competition. I got 30% of the clues... maybe. I was pretty good with the arts, but sat back in awe as the contestants blazed through categories that would have made college professors look baffled.
Of the three, all time money winner Brad Rutter seemed overmatched. He was slow on the buzzer, and consistently crapped out whenever he hit Daily Doubles. In Match #2, he ended up in the negative and had to watch, embarrassed, as his opponents went onto Final Jeopardy.
So it boiled down to a two-man competition between James Holzhauer and Ken Jennings. Holzhauer, the professional gambler. seemed most at ease in the high pressure environment, playing mind games with Jennings, and bringing back his "pushing in my chips" signature move when going all in on a Daily Double. But Jennings, even though he was clearly nervous, had a narrow edge in breadth of knowledge, and hit Daily Doubles at key points in the competition. (He had the unnerving habit of looking baffled for a long, long moment before coming up with the right answer.) Jennings also got the biggest laughs in the contest. (After his opponents gave joke responses in a Final Jeopardy round, Jennings deadpanned that he'd like to do five minutes on airline food before giving his answer....,)
In the end, Jennings won matches #1, 3 and 4 to take the million dollar prize and the GOAT trophy. He won the title on this question:
Category: Shakespearean Dramas
Answer: This character has the most speeches (272) for any non-title character in a Shakespeare play.
Do you know who it is? (Ah ah! No cheating with the internet!)
*****************
The competition was exciting, but there's another reason why this tournament was special. Jeopardy host Alex Trebek is fighting pancreatic cancer and may be at end of his run. Trebek has hosted since 1984, and his perfectly modulated voice, his calm demeanor and his sly sense of humor have made him the class act in the often undignified world of game shows. Trebek has become a revered media celebrity in his own right, guest starring on The X-files and honored with a parody on Saturday Night Live, where Will Ferrell's Trebek would vainly try to convince Darrell Hammond's cantankerous Sean Connery to play some semblance of the game.
Jennings may have won the trophy, but the Greatest of All Time could also refer to the host.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-15 02:40 pm (UTC)Alex Trebek certainly has been the best of game show hosts and remarkably suited for Jeopardy. (But being an old timer, when I think of Jeopardy I do still think of Art Fleming first.)
On the Shakespeare, unless it's a character named 'I don't know' I'll have to pass.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-15 04:22 pm (UTC)I also remember the original, non-digital Jeopardy! board; somebody backstage had to physically pull the money card up to reveal the answer.
One of the interesting tidbits in the recent "history of game shows" special on ABC (hosted by Trebek, of course) was the origin of Jeopardy! Merv Griffin was talking with his wife about the infamous quiz show scandal of the 1950s and he thought game shows were dead because the public would think they're giving the contestants all the answers. His wife responded, so give them the answers! Have them come up with the questions!
And a legend was born.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-15 06:34 pm (UTC)I was rooting for Ken - nothing really against James (though I've heard some stories that he can be kind of prickly in certain settings) - but Ken, I actually knew.
I haven't really talked to Ken in a while. I played against his BYU teams when I was at Maryland - and he's just kept getting better at this stuff. And he is also every bit as nice in real life as he comes across on TV. And he'd obviously learned by watching James.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-15 07:15 pm (UTC)We were all rooting for Jennings, too. He seems like a genuinely nice guy. When Trebek does step down, a lot of people say Jennings would be the perfect successor.
[We did get a little bit of dickishness from Holzhauer with his "Hey, Brad's score (i.e., '0') is still up there!" comment at the midpoint of Match #4.]
Rutter played a major factor in the outcome, although not in the way he would have wanted. By soaking up the Daily Doubles, he prevented Holzhauer from making those asymmetrical leaps that usually give him the wins. With few exceptions, it came down to a "linear" faceoff with Jennings, where Jennings' slightly wider range of knowledge pulled him ahead.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-15 08:31 pm (UTC)Ken was a good college player back then, but not one of the very top players. My Maryland team beat his BYU team without us putting a lot of thought into it. (The other top teams we were focused on were Harvard, UVA, Georgia Tech, Cal Berkely and Chicago).
Now, college Quizbowl and Jeopardy! are different games. Ken's particular skill with J! wordplay questions wouldn't have come up then. But he's also spent years after college writing Trivia for competition and one of the main ways Trivia Players improve is by researching & writing tons of questions.
[We did get a little bit of dickishness from Holzhauer with his "Hey, Brad's score (i.e., '0') is still up there!" comment at the midpoint of Match #4.]
That, I don't mind. Trash talk is part of competition. OTOH, after a top player in our online league did poorly on J!, James accused the player of only succeeding online by cheating. Said player had won a national championship in a proctored setting - and people resent James for not apologizing to him. That sort of thing...
Rutter played a major factor in the outcome, although not in the way he would have wanted. By soaking up the Daily Doubles, he prevented Holzhauer from making those asymmetrical leaps
This also prevented Ken from getting those Daily Doubles. Brad's performance on those was crushing.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-16 01:07 am (UTC)Excellent article on Slate website today about how Jennings won by adopting Holzhauer's technique--beating him at his own game.