Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

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econgator
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by econgator »

ElendilPickle wrote:It took a few seconds of thought, but I got FJ with time to spare.
Ditto.

Have the contestants ever had an 0-fer week on FJ before? They're 0-for-8 so far.
Onairb
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Onairb »

esrever wrote:Three strong players and a great game up until FJ.

Picked up Lach trash: "Bucharest", "Oscar", "Dayton", "India", "Astrid", "Communist"

Got FJ. Thought of Canberra first, then Ankara. (Possible poll question?)
Dear J! writers,
You know that thing where you show a map of a region of the U.S. asking to identify a city, and you practicallyCOVER the map with the name of the state that borders the one that pertains to the clue?
Yeah...stop doing that.
Signed,
Everyone

Was never going to get Dayton based on 'on the right track'..I guess it was a Soapbox Derby reference...but we're not 12, and it's not 1960, so maybe that's not something everyone would know?
EDIT: OK, couldn't they have just gone for the wordplay of 'On the "Wright" track?
Can we just start a 'Let's Trash the Writers Because They're Annoying' thread? They're too big to fit in the 'peeve' topics!
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Sherm »

I just couldn't digest the FJ question really well. Had I focused in Australia right away I would have been fine. I probably wasted 10 to 15 seconds figuring out exactely what they wanted and zeroed in on Russia and that did me in. I briefly looked at Beijing and Ottawa and it's like how does that match Moscow. I then honed in on Canberra and tied it to Ankara really quickly. I figured it out about 5 seconds after the music ended. Broke a streak of nine gets in a row for me. Stinks to lose a nice streak on a subject you feel really good about.

Well, good until you see the question. :)
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by cheezguyty »

econgator wrote:Have the contestants ever had an 0-fer week on FJ before? They're 0-for-8 so far.
It wasn't a calendar week, but the contestants went 0/15 on FJ from January 12-18, 2011.
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Johnblue »

I loved the FJ wording and was happy with the game overall but there were many TSs.
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by seaborgium »

I was looking for an ..01 wager from Darren, so when I saw it ended with a 0, I yelled "YES" thinking he'd survived by offering a tie. Then I did a double-take at the final scores.

"Both end in 'ra'" is pretty unsatisfying wordplay. Here's a capital city wordplay question I once came up with (that uses two kinds of capital cities). I can't word it like a Final Jeopardy clue and be concise, so here are the basics:

Anagram a world capital and add a letter to get a state capital.
Anagram the state capital and add a letter to get the nation whose capital you anagrammed in step 1.
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by yclept »

We may never know, but I do wonder if the new champ wasn't really being strategic at all and just wrote a number down. I don't really know how this was a savvy wager...seems more like a round number he was comfortable with than figuring out what each of the women may wager. Molly's wager was strategically correct, though.

I do bet Molly regrets not going all in on Shakespeare. She did it in her first game, and is obviously a wheelhouse. Good run for her regardless....but it will cost her TOC status.

Overall, three strong players and a very good overall game.
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Paucle »

seaborgium wrote: Anagram a world capital and add a letter to get a state capital.
Anagram the state capital and add a letter to get the nation whose capital you anagrammed in step 1.
Spoiler
Tunis => Austin => Tunisia
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by JeopRDFan »

Sorry to see Molly go and miss out on a TOC spot -- she was a sharp player with nice speed. Missed FJ, got stuck on parsing what they were looking for and couldn't get away from Moscow when time ... ran ... out. I did get India & Lexington, though.
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Mathew5000 »

For the NATO phonetic alphabet category, when they say "letter", do they require the word, e.g. "What is Foxtrot?", or is it enough to respond "What is F?"?

I am thinking of that FJ clue from 2009; the following year they brought back the player who had responded with the English letter rather than the word that represents it. So that should mean that it's okay to respond "What is F?" to that clue where they asked for a dance, right?
Onairb wrote:Dear J! writers,
You know that thing where you show a map of a region of the U.S. asking to identify a city, and you practicallyCOVER the map with the name of the state that borders the one that pertains to the clue?
Yeah...stop doing that.
They started this in September, right? Or did they do it last season as well? As soon as I saw the word "Kentucky" on that map, I had to say to my brain three times, "it's near, not in, Kentucky". Then I got Dayton easily from the red dot in Ohio, plus the "right track" TOM which I took as a reference to the Daytona 500. which (until I looked it up just now) I always thought was in Dayton, Ohio. (It makes much more sense as a reference to the Wright Brothers.)
dhkendall wrote:"Country that covers a continent"? While not completely true (IMHO, but I can see where others would argue otherwise, even though they're wrong) since Australia's continent also includes the Pacific island nations (at least Jeopardy!-wise, have they not asked what continent New Zealand or Fiji is in before?),
I'm pretty sure that for Jeopardy purposes, Australia is always considered a one-country continent. (E.g. the $50 clue in World Geography here and the $100 clue in Island Countries here.) The National Geographic Society is in accord: "There are some islands and island groups, however, that are not considered part of any continent, geographically speaking. New Zealand, Hawaii, and French Polynesia are among them.... Oceania itself is not a continent."
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by BobF »

Yes! Two instagets for me when the contestants are 0 for 8 on the FJs this week. Makes me feel better about my poor showing in TD194.
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gnash
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by gnash »

I wish I could press the buzzer as fast as I could answer this FJ. Actually, make it "as fast as I could answer all three of this week's FJs".

I wonder what people find confusing in the wording, and how they would reword it to be less confusing.
seaborgium wrote:Here's a capital city wordplay question I once came up with (that uses two kinds of capital cities). I can't word it like a Final Jeopardy clue and be concise, so here are the basics:

Anagram a world capital and add a letter to get a state capital.
Anagram the state capital and add a letter to get the nation whose capital you anagrammed in step 1.
Spoiler
The best approach is to note that the two statements imply that the nation's name has all the letters of its capital, plus two. And that gives Tunis(ia) as the obvious first guess. Austin should only take a few seconds to find from "anagram TUNISA or TUNISI".
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by ACW »

Australia was easy, but I was thinking AustralIA, RussIA.
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Vermonter »

seaborgium wrote:I was looking for an ..01 wager from Darren, so when I saw it ended with a 0, I yelled "YES" thinking he'd survived by offering a tie. Then I did a double-take at the final scores.
This.
Hate bad wagering? Me too. Join me at The Final Wager.
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Spaceman Spiff »

skullturf wrote:
TenPoundHammer wrote:Surprised that Optimus Prime wasn't a TS.
I'm a North American male born in 1974, which means that I was a boy aged 10 to 13 when the Transformers cartoon show was on TV, which means it would be impossible for me *not* to get that.
Being a toonhead (which means I know voices), this would have been a dream category for me. Peter Cullen, IIRC, had done the voice of Optimus in pretty much all incarnations -- animated and Michael Bay live action versions -- since the beginning.

Ran the Scandinavian names. Guess all those years of listening to ABBA music (and other Scandinavian music) paid off! (Totally unrelated plug: If you like ABBA music, go onto YouTube and look up Helen Sjoholm. You will not be disappointed.)

FJ gummed me up only because I can't spell in my head (damned dyslexia). Figured Australia and Turkey, thought "Canberra ends in RA, Ankara ends in KA..."

Then, after saying, "no, not Cairo, no, not Moscow," went back to Canberra and Ankara to have something. Then I had the DUH moment at second 27 of the think music.
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by slam »

Sari is one the rabbis at the synagogue we attend and would not be an answer to "someone who has not been in my kitchen".

As to wagering, the leader's wager was silly. Wagering another $400 for the tie was clear. Sari was in an interesting position, of course. She could wager $0 or bet enough to lock out 3rd place. I prefer the $0 wager because of the correlation effect of FJ responses, but I think either is defensible. Obviously one would have worked better than the other here. I gave Sari some wagering tips before her taping, but with her rabbinical duties (our synagogue is rather large and keeps her very busy) and a newborn, she had only so much time to study them. As with nearly all contestants, she had a great time, though.
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by slam »

ACW wrote:Australia was easy, but I was thinking AustralIA, RussIA.
That's the direction I was going for the first 15 seconds. Then I got the "D'oh" moment and changed to Canberra and Ankara flowed easily. It might have helped a bit that we just booked a trip to Istanbul for later this summer.
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by slam »

jfrumkin wrote:Entertaining game, a lot of it, I think, because it was fairly easy all around (the zodiac category was basically "can you name the zodiac"). I got FJ almost immediately, but it's hard as @#$! to stand up there and process that stuff with the clock bearing down on you. I like the rabbi a) because I'm predisposed to and b) she and I connected over twitter when I was on and she's good people. Fun fact: the champ I beat goes to her shul (although I have a TOC-er at mine, so I may take ours in a J! street fight).
I certainly agree that Sari is good people (her husband, too). Even though I also go to that shul, I don't know the champ you beat. But it's a BIG shul with over 1800 familes.

I'm available for that street fight any time even though I've yet to be on the show. :)
TenPoundHammer

Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by TenPoundHammer »

Spaceman Spiff wrote:
skullturf wrote:
TenPoundHammer wrote:Surprised that Optimus Prime wasn't a TS.
I'm a North American male born in 1974, which means that I was a boy aged 10 to 13 when the Transformers cartoon show was on TV, which means it would be impossible for me *not* to get that.
Being a toonhead (which means I know voices), this would have been a dream category for me. Peter Cullen, IIRC, had done the voice of Optimus in pretty much all incarnations -- animated and Michael Bay live action versions -- since the beginning.
I know voices, but I don't know Transformers. Just don't think it'd be my thing.

But then again, I said that about quite a few live-action franchises lately and proved myself wrong. Never figured I'd get any enjoyment out of the first two Terminator movies or anything out of the Marvel cinematic universe, to name just two.
Spaceman Spiff wrote:FJ gummed me up only because I can't spell in my head (damned dyslexia).
This is exactly what math clues do to me.
slam
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Re: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by slam »

gnash wrote:I wish I could press the buzzer as fast as I could answer this FJ. Actually, make it "as fast as I could answer all three of this week's FJs".

I wonder what people find confusing in the wording, and how they would reword it to be less confusing.
Not sure they can make it less confusing. It is unambiguously written, but it does have elements that make it confusing. Asking for a response of the capitals but making one think through facts about the geography of countries (covering a continent and spanning two continents) and then back to facts about the names of the capitals (the last two letters) and then finally responding with the names of the capitals requires some mental dexterity which can be confusing, particularly under time pressure. One can get sidetracked in the transition from the geography of the countries to the names of the countries rather than the names of the capitals.
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