Thursday, December 29, 2016 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[seaborgium]

I also got Bon Ami because of Bob Harris.

I also guessed Mongolia.

[earendel]

I got Bon Ami from a 1966 movie - The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, starring Don Knotts. There's a scene in which Knotts is in a supposedly haunted house where there's a pipe organ. There are reddish stains on some of the keys and he (or someone else) says something to the effect that "they won't come off, even with Bon Ami". I looked for a youtube clip but couldn't find one.

[davey]

I'll confess. My intended response was Mongolia - but I wrote down Manchuria ...

[goatman]

43R, Instaget FJ, I've either previously considered or noticed this curious factoid in geography study prep.
Western Sahara is not a country, it's a disputed territory, and Saudi Arabia is not named for the Rub'al Khali (Empty Quarter), nor is Mongolia named for the Gobi Desert, all easily confused.
Very helpful in this kind of clue is 'know your deserts, lakes, rivers, ten biggest islands and mountain lists'!

LT: 4th Kind encounter: Abduction! The Last Tycoon - FSF's unfinished novel, I learned also the republication under title The Love of the Last Tycoon circa 1993 from wiki after this confusing clue! I also gave Eve Marie-Saint probably best to just give surnames, eh?! No get on Theta waves, also went with gamma, doh!
Worked out Bon Ami by speaking French. Should be a poll IMHO!

[Woppy T]

That was an interesting reversal on Eve Marie Saint. I'm not sure it would've occurred to me to research that one. Kudos to the judges for finding that out.

I was very skeptical of this reversal, but then I found on her IMDb page http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001693/ that she was credited as "Eve" for one 1950 episode of the TV show "Studio One in Hollywood." However, I wonder if this was a typo by some production assistant working on that show, and not an example of her having "gone by" that name.

[Elijah Baley]

I thought Namibia would be a triple get, mostly because it's been featured in any number of nature documentaries in the past decade. I'll be curious to see how it polls.

Western Sahara never occurred to me. The debate is interesting but I don't think it qualifies as a country under most definitions, which I think would have to include some form of self-governance. As I understand it, WS is basically occupied by Morocco. The UN lists it as a "non-self-governing territory." To me, that distinguishes it from someplace like Taiwan. And, while some African countries recognize it as a country, it's under a different name: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (and maybe "Sahrawi" is a reference to Sahara).

In any event, while the Jeopardy writers come under fire for ambiguity in clues, they get credit here for side-stepping any dispute about the definition of a country by specifically providing that it had to have UN member status.

(Interesting too, in light of the discussion about Western Sahara, that Namibia's history is similarly checkered with disputes about who controlled it, fights for independence, and a really awful history of German occupation, including genocide).

[davey]

That was an interesting reversal on Eve Marie Saint. I'm not sure it would've occurred to me to research that one. Kudos to the judges for finding that out.

I was very skeptical of this reversal, but then I found on her IMDb page http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001693/ that she was credited as "Eve" for one 1950 episode of the TV show "Studio One in Hollywood." However, I wonder if this was a typo by some production assistant working on that show, and not an example of her having "gone by" that name.

You're probably right, especially since she's listed on episodes of the same series both before and after as Eva...However there's one other early credit there listing her as Eve, so I suppose it's a technicality but the ruling was defensible....
I recently rewatched the Coen brothers' Barton Fink - a favorite of mine - and noticed that one of the big old-time credits given at the front of the movie reads Tony Shaloub. It's spelled correctly as Shalhoub at the end of the picture, in much smaller type. When PBS aired Shalhoub's Broadway show ACT ONE a year or two ago, they misspelled his name too.

[BobF]

WLT Arkansas at $200?

[BigDaddyMatty]

I also gave Eve Marie-Saint probably best to just give surnames, eh?!

The category was something having to do with Saints, so surname alone wouldn't have been enough.

[cf1140]

WLT Arkansas at $200?

ban

[John Boy]

WLT Bob Dylan at $400?

Robert Zimmerman.

Seems like a YEKIOYD thing.

Many things are YEKIOYD, even on Jeopardy! One quite widely known fact is that Robert Zimmerman started singing professionally and writing songs a long, long time ago (60 years?) under the stage name Bob Dylan, and has been known continuously during that time by his stage name.

Including recently when he was awarded a Nobel Prize.

And that his fame has spread far beyond his initial niche of folk singing, to the point that he is pretty much a household name (by both names) in much of the world today.

So there's that....

[opusthepenguin]

I also gave Eve Marie-Saint probably best to just give surnames, eh?!

The category was something having to do with Saints, so surname alone wouldn't have been enough.

I wonder if they'd have accepted "Who is Marie-Saint?"

[davey]

I also gave Eve Marie-Saint probably best to just give surnames, eh?!

The category was something having to do with Saints, so surname alone wouldn't have been enough.

I wonder if they'd have accepted "Who is Marie-Saint?"

There's no hyphen in her name, and since her mother's name was Eva Marie Rice Saint, not much reason to consider Eva anything but a middle name, so no, I don't think so.

http://www.filmreference.com/film/0/Eva ... Saint.html

[Kenny]

I've decided we should retitle this thread "All About Eva."

Kudos to Justin for knowing "M" as the Fritz Lang film starring Peter Lorre. Anytime Lang's name comes up in a clue, my Pavlovian response is always "Metropolis." Disappointed in Alex for pronouncing it phonetically (rhyming with "Tang") instead of the correct Germanic "Long."

[TenPoundHammer]

WLT Bob Dylan at $400?

Robert Zimmerman.

Seems like a YEKIOYD thing.

Many things are YEKIOYD, even on Jeopardy! One quite widely known fact is that Robert Zimmerman started singing professionally and writing songs a long, long time ago (60 years?) under the stage name Bob Dylan, and has been known continuously during that time by his stage name.

Including recently when he was awarded a Nobel Prize.

And that his fame has spread far beyond his initial niche of folk singing, to the point that he is pretty much a household name (by both names) in much of the world today.

So there's that....

I know who bob Dylan is. I did not know his real name.

[This Is Kirk!]

Western Sahara never occurred to me. The debate is interesteing but I don't think it qualifies as a country under most definitions

And it certainly doesn't fit the "this U.N. member" qualifier part of the clue, so is there really even a debate here?

[Elijah Baley]

Western Sahara never occurred to me. The debate is interesting but I don't think it qualifies as a country under most definitions

And it certainly doesn't fit the "this U.N. member" qualifier part of the clue, so is there really even a debate here?

No, I don't think there was a debate about whether Namibia was correct; just that someone had mused that the clue was badly written because Western Sahara is a country named after a desert and it's sparsely populated. Which prompted some discussion back and forth about whether Western Sahara is, in fact, a country. But, I think everyone acknowledged that whatever it is, Western Sahara is not a UN member.

[Vermonter]

Kudos to Justin for knowing "M" as the Fritz Lang film starring Peter Lorre.

I pre-called "M" as the $2000 response when the category was announced. (I am usually incorrect, but I'll take what I can get.)

No, I don't think there was a debate about whether Namibia was correct; just that someone had mused that the clue was badly written because Western Sahara is a country named after a desert and it's sparsely populated. Which prompted some discussion back and forth about whether Western Sahara is, in fact, a country. But, I think everyone acknowledged that whatever it is, Western Sahara is not a UN member.

I had Western Sahara within 5 seconds and spent the remainder of the time debating whether it had UN status, rather than thinking of other places. It was an unnecessary red herring that could have been avoided with a better clue (perhaps even negating WS in the text itself).

[This Is Kirk!]

To me that seems like the exact reason they put in the bit about it being a UN member. Otherwise they would have potentially needed to accept Western Sahara as a valid answer. I thought it was a good clue because the wording specifically excluded Western Sahara.

[dhkendall]

"Namibia" is so much fun to pronounce, it seems a shame to waste it on a write-your-answer question.

Allen Goodman (aka 3318mead from the Sonyboard) undoubtedly has thoughts on this.