Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

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Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

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Game Recap for Show #6260, 2011-12-02

CONTESTANTS
Suzanne Judson-Whitehouse, an education program director from Greenfield, Massachusetts
Bhibha Das, a postdoctoral research associate originally from Mt. Zion, Illinois
Jan Zasowski, a stock trader from Chicago, Illinois (whose 2-day cash winnings total $46,601)

OPENING REMARKS
Alex: Thank you, Johnny. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen and welcome. If you've been watching our show for the past two days, you know that Jan is a good player, but he's also a jumper. He likes to jump all over the board, trying to uncover those Daily Doubles. We're gonna see what happens today as he welcomes Bhibha and Suzanne as his two challengers. Good to have you here. Let's start with the Jeopardy! Round and these categories for you...

JEOPARDY! ROUND CATEGORIES
THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL (3/5)
MIDDLE INITIAL C. (4/5)
GOING NATIONAL (5/5, including 1 correct Daily Double) (Alex: ...because you have to give us the nationality most associated with the items in the clue.)
SHADES OF GRAY (5/5)
E-I-O (5/5) (Alex: Those letters in order.)
WALT DISNEY (4/5) (Alex: Images from the [*] Family Museum in San Francisco.)

THE RIGHTS & THE WRONGS
Bhibha: 14 R (including 2 rebounds), 3 W
Jan: 8 R, 2 W
Suzanne: 4 R (including 1 DD), 0 W

Clues revealed: 30
Triple Stumpers: 4
Jeopardy! Round Potential Lach Trash: $3,200



SCORES AT THE FIRST BREAK
Bhibha: $1,600
Jan: $400
Suzanne: $0

CONTESTANT INTERVIEWS



Alex: Welcome back. Let me present you all with an interesting choice--you're in London. You can either go to see a Grateful Dead concert or stick around and spend time with Prince Charles. Which would you do? Suzanne Judson-Whitehouse had that decision to make, and which one did you choose?

Suzanne: Oh, I totally stayed around to meet Prince Charles.

Alex: Oh, really? And a lot of your friends went to see the concert, the Grateful Dead concert?

Suzanne: The vast majority, sure.

Alex: Uh-huh, and were you happy with your decision?

Suzanne: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Alex: What was special about the meeting?

Suzanne: Um, he was very charming and very personable and asked us all where we were from, welcomed us to England. It was just--and my grandmother was born in London, so she was just over the moon.

Alex: Yeah, the Grateful Dead you can see anywhere in the world where they're performing; Prince Charles--it's kind of special in London.

Suzanne: Yeah, once in a lifetime.




Alex: All right, Bhibha Das--postdoctoral research associate, who is on the cover of two textbooks?

Bhibha: That's right. Two. So in my previous life, I used to work at a textbook publishing company...

Alex: Mm-hmm?

Bhibha: And they needed cover models. Um, so one of the books that I was was about teaching self-defense to children, which I have no business being on a cover of. But the second one was a textbook for college students and health, and I actually wrote two chapters in that book as well.

Alex: Oh, good for you.




Alex: Jan Zasowski from Chicago, Illinois--you're a stock trader, but you're also a citizen of how many countries?

Jan: Three, Alex. Um, I didn't know you could do that, but, uh, by right of birth, I was born in South Africa, which is where my parents met. And they're both Polish, and by right of inheritance, I'm a Polish citizen. And I moved here when I was about 3 years old, and I've been here for long enough that I'm, uh, happily an American citizen.

Alex: Well, that's great. Do you have three passports?

Jan: Uh, no, the South African one, I'm afraid that I'll get into military service or something, so I just don't bother.

Alex: Okay.

JEOPARDY! ROUND DAILY DOUBLE
Suzanne found the Daily Double on the 19th clue. Jan had $800, Bhibha had $3,400, and Suzanne was at $800. Suzanne made it a True Daily Double, wagering $800.

GOING NATIONAL $1000: Bean beetle &
beaded lizard

TRIPLE STUMPERS IN THE JEOPARDY! ROUND
WALT DISNEY $1000: An artist at Disney Studios designed a torch for the 1960 winter Olympics that were held in this California valley

THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL $400: In 1870s New York society, Newland Archer falls in love with Ellen Olenska in this novel
(Bhibha: What is Vanity Fair?)

THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL $1000: Chester Gillette's murder of his pregnant girlfriend inspired this 1925 Thodore Dreiser novel
(Bhibha: What is Sister Carrie?)

MIDDLE INITIAL C. $800: A 5-star general & Defense Secretary, in 1953 he became the first career military man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize
(Bhibha: Who is Ralph Bunche?)

SCORES AT THE END OF THE JEOPARDY! ROUND
Bhibha: $6,200
Jan: $2,600
Suzanne: $2,200
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

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DOUBLE JEOPARDY! ROUND CATEGORIES
YOU'RE AN ANIMAL! (3/5)
WHAT'S ON "TAP"? (4/5)
VICE PRESIDENTS (4/4)
NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS (4/5, including 1 missed Daily Double)
ROCK'S FRONTMEN & WOMEN (5/5) (Alex: You identify the group.)
THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS (3/4) (Sarah: ...from New Orleans, where some of the biggest projects in the Corps' history will protect residents from future disasters.)

THE RIGHTS & THE WRONGS
Jan: 11 R (including 2 rebounds), 2 W (including 1 DD)
Suzanne: 6 R, 1 W
Bhibha: 6 R, 2 W

Clues revealed: 28
Triple Stumpers: 4
Double Jeopardy! Round Potential Lach Trash: $6,800



FIRST DOUBLE JEOPARDY! ROUND DAILY DOUBLE
Jan snagged the next Daily Double on the 7th clue. Jan had $3,400, Bhibha had $4,600, and Suzanne was at $3,800. Jan made it a True Daily Double, wagering $3,400.

NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS $1200: Pregnant women take this, also called vitamin B9, to reduce the risk of birth defects of the brain & spinal cord
(Jan: What is niacin?)

TRIPLE STUMPERS IN THE DOUBLE JEOPARDY! ROUND
THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS $2000: (Sarah of the Clue Crew reports from New Orleans, LA.) These structures are being built to withstand 250-mile-per-hour winds, & with the capability to operate canal gates & pumps via satellite; they're called this 4-letter type of room, which will protect the system operators
(Jan: What is a lock?)
...
(Alex: They are called [*] rooms--those 4 letters.)

YOU'RE AN ANIMAL! $1200: The tail of this lizard is easily broken off during an attack, hence its fragile name

YOU'RE AN ANIMAL! $1600: Of the 6 living members of the camel family, it's the only one spelled with a tilde
(Suzanne: What is an acuña?)
...
(Alex: You were so close, Suzanne. It's not an acuña--it's [*].)

WHAT'S ON "TAP"? $2000: To place close together for comparison or contrast

SCORES ENTERING FINAL JEOPARDY!
Bhibha: $11,000
Jan: $9,200
Suzanne: $7,400

FINAL JEOPARDY! CATEGORY
WORD ORIGINS

VENUSIAN MONOLOGUES/MARTIAN CHRONICLES
Evenly spaced scores with two-thirds for first.
Bhibha: Wager $7,400--wagering any more risks falling behind Jan's wager of $5,600.
Jan: While wagering all $9,200 may be a rational possibility, your more optimal choice is to wager $5,600.
Suzanne: Wager $7,400.

FINAL JEOPARDY! CLUE
This word for a friend comes from the Latin for "with whom you would eat bread"

FINAL SCORES
Suzanne: $7,400 - $4,000 = $3,400 (What is Buddy?) (3rd place: $1,000)
Jan: $9,200 + $9,194 = $18,394 (What is a companion?) (2nd place: $2,000)
Bhibha: $11,000 + $9,201 = $20,201 (What is companion?) (New champion: $20,201)

Total Potential Lach Trash: $10,000

GAME DYNAMICS
Image

CORYAT SCORES
Jan: $12,600, 19 R, 4 W (including 1 DD)
Bhibha: $11,000, 20 R, 5 W
Suzanne: $7,600, 10 R (including 1 DD), 1 W
Combined Coryat: $31,200

BATTING AVERAGES
Bhibha: 21/58 = .362
Jan: 20/59 = .339
Suzanne: 10/59 = .169
Team: 51/63 = .810

MISCELLANEOUS INTERESTING CLUES
WALT DISNEY $600: Walt has more Oscars than anyone else in history, including the unique one for this 1937 classic

WALT DISNEY $800: Walt pushed boundaries in this film, using abstract art, classical music, & characters like Hyacinth Hippo & Ben Ali Gator

WALT DISNEY $200: Too young to enlist in World War I, Walt signed up with the Red Cross instead & drove an ambulance--one of these Fords

WALT DISNEY $400: At his wife's urging, Walt's mouse went from Mortimer to Mickey & starred in this cartoon, whose art is seen here

MIDDLE INITIAL C. $600: This author of the 1956 sci-fi novel "The City and the Stars" was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998
(Jan: Who is Isaac Asimov?)

GOING NATIONAL $600: Linen &
potato
(Alex: [*] or Irish, yes.)

SHADES OF GRAY $400: The Gray Lady of Scotland's Glamis Castle is said to be Lady Douglas, an accused witch who met this fiery fate
(Alex: You are right, with a minute to go.)

SHADES OF GRAY $800: Brodick Castle's Gray Lady is said to be a woman who was locked in the dungeon because she carried this deadly disease
(Jan: What is leprosy?)

THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS $1200: (Sarah of the Clue Crew reports from New Orleans, LA.) These stations that could have shortened the Katrina nightmare by lowering water levels largely failed due to power loss; they're being stormproofed with backup generators
(Bhibha: What's a levee?)

THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS $800: The levees USACE is building in the New Orleans area will use enough clay to fill 12 of this local structure opened in 1975
[Alex reads "USACE" as "the Corps" in the clue.]
(Bhibha: What's the Astrodome?)
...
(Alex: [*] in New Orleans--not the Astrodome.)

VICE PRESIDENTS $400: While still vice president, he wrote the 1987 autobiography "Looking Forward"
(Jan: Who is Bush?)
(Alex: Which one?)
(Jan: Who is [*]?)

ROCK'S FRONTMEN & WOMEN $400: Steven Tyler
(Alex: Yes, with less than a minute to go.)

YOU'RE AN ANIMAL! $2000: Don't complain about this forest-dwelling bird seen here

ROCK'S FRONTMEN & WOMEN $800: Debbie Harry
[The end-of-round signal sounds.]

CORRECT RESPONSES
Mexican
Squaw Valley
The Age of Innocence
An American Tragedy
Gen. George C. Marshall
folic acid
safe
a glass lizard
a vicuña
to juxtapose
companion
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Fantasia
a Model T
Steamboat Willie
Arthur C. Clarke
Ireland
burning at the stake
the plague
pumping stations
the Superdome
George Herbert Walker Bush
Aerosmith
a grouse
Blondie
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by laubla999 »

Finally an instaget FJ :-)
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by NoName84 »

Got too caught up in trying to come up with responses that started with "pan" rather than having it in the middle.
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by StevenH »

I think that the new champion should have been negged on the CoQ10 clue. The judges don't seem to be consistent on rulings about contestants correcting themselves. I also misread it and said just "10."

Taking Latin made this FJ an instant get for me. I'm hesitant to say that it was a super easy clue, but at the very least I think that it was easier than most word origin FJ clues.
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by vellore »

StevenH wrote:I think that the new champion should have been negged on the CoQ10 clue. The judges don't seem to be consistent on rulings about contestants correcting themselves. I also misread it and said just "10."
I was a little surprised that she got the prompt to complete her answer. Wonder why Jan was asked to be more specific for Bush, but that Bhibha wasn't for Rockefeller. There has only been one Vice President Bush.
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by jeff6286 »

...and I'm back. I just got through a marathon session of this week's games after a long week of work, so here are the FJ clue and scores for Friday's game. Hopefully someone has been filling this role in my absence, (I haven't read any of this week's game threads yet) and in case no one has been, anyone should feel free to jump in for the rest of December, as my viewing schedule will probably be irregular at best until the new year.

Word Origins
This word for a friend comes from the Latin for "With whom you would eat bread".
Spoiler
What is companion? Suzanne said buddy.
Bhibha Das: $11,000+$9,201=$20,201...now a 1-day champion with $20,201
Jan Zasowski: $9,200+$9,194=$18,394
Suzanne Judson-Whitehouse: $7,400-$4,000=$3,400

That was an interesting wager by Bhibha, one I don't seem to recall ever seeing before. Did she have such low confidence in her math skills that she didn't trust herself to bet enough to cover Jan's score, so she just went with a dollar more than his pre-FJ total, just to be safe? I guess that's one way to take math out of the equation. Interestingly, if Bhibha had made the standard cover bet, she would have still won on a triple stumper with $3,599 to Suzanne's $3,400. I'm not sure what Suzanne was going for with her wager, but she could have severely regretted it if this had been a more difficult clue, and if Bhibha had made the more common bet from the lead.

As for me, I managed to go 5 for 5 on this week's FJs, which is the first time in...well, pretty much ever, as far as I can remember, so yay for me!. Latin is not exactly my strong suit, so I had very little confidence in today's answer, but I couldn't think of anything else even remotely feasible. Amigo? Compadre? I don't think so.
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by legendneverdies »

if time hadn't run out on Jan's last correct response with two clues left(VPs $2K and Army Corps $400), he probably could have gone to VPs $2000 which in all likelihood was the second DD, to try to get the lead back and ice his third win, but oh well. Jan did come back from $0 to get second place after going True DD with $3600 on Nutrition Supplements $1200 and missed. MOre than likely the second DD was going to be in VPs over the Rock Frontmen/women category.
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Budphrey »

Bhibha reminded me of a 100-meter hurdler who runs flat out and clips every dang hurdle board with her heel. All three players tonight had good runs but I credit Jan with a fine comeback that fell short.
Poo-tee-weet? So it goes.
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Bamaman »

jeff6286 wrote:...and I'm back. I just got through a marathon session of this week's games after a long week of work, so here are the FJ clue and scores for Friday's game. Hopefully someone has been filling this role in my absence, (I haven't read any of this week's game threads yet) and in case no one has been, anyone should feel free to jump in for the rest of December, as my viewing schedule will probably be irregular at best until the new year.
Actually, no one has. My DVR did not record Thursday, so if you could do that oine, it would be great.
jeff6286 wrote: Word Origins
This word for a friend comes from the Latin for "With whom you would eat bread".
I recall Latin for with is cum, so went looking for com- words. First thought was comrade, then companion. Only pan I remember from Latin was the guy who played the flute. But went with it and it panned (sorry) out.
jeff6286 wrote: Bhibha Das: $11,000+$9,201=$20,201...now a 1-day champion with $20,201
Jan Zasowski: $9,200+$9,194=$18,394
Suzanne Judson-Whitehouse: $7,400-$4,000=$3,400

That was an interesting wager by Bhibha, one I don't seem to recall ever seeing before. Did she have such low confidence in her math skills that she didn't trust herself to bet enough to cover Jan's score, so she just went with a dollar more than his pre-FJ total, just to be safe? I guess that's one way to take math out of the equation. Interestingly, if Bhibha had made the standard cover bet, she would have still won on a triple stumper with $3,599 to Suzanne's $3,400. I'm not sure what Suzanne was going for with her wager, but she could have severely regretted it if this had been a more difficult clue, and if Bhibha had made the more common bet from the lead.
Bad wagers all around. If Bhibha best the shut out bet of $7,401, she has $3,599 if she is wrong.

If Jan bets to shut out Suzanne with a bet of $5,601, he has a total of $3,599 if wrong.

Suzanne overbet by $200 to win on a TS assuming logical betting by the others, but would have won anyway on a TS.

Given horrible betting all around, its best the pre-FJ leader got it right and won the game.
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by alietr »

Oh, Suzanne! How could you have made that choice!?!?!
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Bamaman »

alietr wrote:Oh, Suzanne! How could you have made that choice!?!?!
I thought she had gone to the Dead concert. My thinking was that hanging out with Prince charles is something you'd expect a geeky Jeopardy person to do, so the story is interesting because she went against the stereotype.
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Woof »

This game was pretty painful for me to watch with all the negs, but my pain was salved because Bhibha was so cute (not to mention a demon on the buzzer). Lots of Lach trash, though I stupidly negged with Jan on niacin for folate, and FJ was an instaget for me too. Yeah, Bhibha did seem like a hurdler plowing through the hurdles. Let's see if, as champion, she's any more circumspect about buzzing in.
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by GMB »

Bad wagers all around. If Bhibha best the shut out bet of $7,401, she has $3,599 if she is wrong.

If Jan bets to shut out Suzanne with a bet of $5,601, he has a total of $3,599 if wrong.

Suzanne overbet by $200 to win on a TS assuming logical betting by the others, but would have won anyway on a TS.

Given horrible betting all around, its best the pre-FJ leader got it right and won the game.
I agree that all contestants miswagered. This game is actually an example of "Evenly Spaced Scores." breakpoint. Both the first and second place contestants should go for the tie with their nearest trailing opponents doubled score, so that the first and second place contestants don't lose to each other if they both get it wrong.

Here is what I think each contestant should have bet:
Bhiba should have bet $7,400.
Jan should have either bet $5,600 (to avoid being usupred by Suzanne, while also avoiding losing to Jan on a double get), less than $1,800 (to be guaranteed to win on a triple stumper)
Suzanne should have bet between $3,401 and $3,799 (beating Jan's safe "triple stumper' bet, while still beating Jan and Bhiba on the triple stumper (if Jan and Bhiba) do the cover bets.

The wagering calculator says Suzanne should bet all her money and win on the double get with Jan, but I disagree with that because even if Jan offers her the tie, and they both get FJ right, Bhiba still has to get FJ wrong. More likely than not, on Jeopardy when the first place person gets it wrong, the third place person gets it wrong.
Last edited by GMB on Sat Dec 03, 2011 9:07 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Turd Ferguson »

vellore wrote:
StevenH wrote:I think that the new champion should have been negged on the CoQ10 clue. The judges don't seem to be consistent on rulings about contestants correcting themselves. I also misread it and said just "10."
I was a little surprised that she got the prompt to complete her answer. Wonder why Jan was asked to be more specific for Bush, but that Bhibha wasn't for Rockefeller. There has only been one Vice President Bush.
This was all Alex in both cases, though, wasn't it? (I don't get the impression that "prompting" comes from the judges table) Wasn't it also Bhibha whom Alex saw fit to prompt to complete the title on the "Snow White" clue at the start of the game? That also seemed a bit "off" to me. Combine this with the comments at the top of the show about Jan's Daily Double hunting (which Alex didn't seem to me to be "praising"), and one might get the impression that Alex (intentionally or unintentionally) actually favoured a contestant to a small extent on this episode.

I may be "misremembering", but wasn't Jan searching for the DD on the first clue of the game? I didn't really understand the point of that (since his DD-hunting strategy appeared to be "offensive", rather than "defensive")
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by dhkendall »

Sad that everyone is anxious to state how "insta" their FJ get was. I didn't know the Latin for bread, but I do know the French for bread is "pain", and French is closer to Latin than any other language that I know the word for "bread" in (which is only one other), so I used that as my base. "Companion", unfortunately, didn't come to me. "Compatriot" did and, while I wasn't 100% happy with it, stuck with it for lack of anything else. (For the record, had I come up with "companion", I don't think I'd be much more confident, but it would have been my choice). At least I was somewhat close ...

Jan's playing style always reminds me a bit of my own when I play Wii Jeopardy and the like, I always go for the middle row clue first rather than the "expected" top row clue - not for DD hunting, as I continue to do it after the DD's been found, but primarily to get a feel for the category - if the middle clue is a bit too difficult for me I know to take the earlier clues, if the category is OK from the middle clue, I'll take the higher valued ones next, so that I could take the money and run (leaving the top clues for last if possible). Jan's strategy was a lot like mine, and I can see how to the untrained eye it could be seen as DD hunting, but in my case, it isn't. (It might very well be in Jan's case, I'm not him, but it's very similar to mine, which isn't.)
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by seaborgium »

As someone who blames the unrevealed clues in the past couple games on Jan's clue selection style (I sense a disturbance in the Flow), it amused me no end to see his comeback cut short by the "time's up" signal. If you ever read this, Jan, sorry, but I feel you earned this loss. Congratulations on your strong showing.

That's two 5/5 FJ weeks in a row for me!
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by opusthepenguin »

GMB wrote:
Bad wagers all around. If Bhibha best the shut out bet of $7,401, she has $3,599 if she is wrong.

If Jan bets to shut out Suzanne with a bet of $5,601, he has a total of $3,599 if wrong.

Suzanne overbet by $200 to win on a TS assuming logical betting by the others, but would have won anyway on a TS.

Given horrible betting all around, its best the pre-FJ leader got it right and won the game.
I agree that all contestants miswagered. This game is actually an example of "Evenly Spaced Scores." breakpoint. Both the first and second place contestants should go for the tie with their nearest trailing opponents doubled score, so that the first and second place contestants don't lose to each other if they both get it wrong.

Here is what I think each contestant should have bet:
Bhiba should have bet $7,400.
Jan should have either bet $5,600 (to avoid being usupred by Suzanne, while also avoiding losing to Jan on a double get), less than $1,800 (to be guaranteed to win on a triple stumper)
Suzanne should have bet between $3,401 and $3,799 (beating Suzanne's safe "triple stumper' bet, while still beating Jan and Bhiba on the triple stumper (if Jan and Bhiba) do the cover bets.
I'm having trouble following that. Should it maybe read "Suzanne should have bet between $3,601 and $3,799 beating Jan's safe 'triple stumper' bet, while still beating Jan and Bhibha on the triple stumper (if Jan and Bhibha do the cover bets.)"?

GMB wrote:The wagering calculator says Suzanne should bet all her money and win on the double get with Jan, but I disagree with that because even if Jan offers her the tie, and they both get FJ right, Bhiba still has to get FJ wrong. More likely than not, on Jeopardy when the first place person gets it wrong, the third place person gets it wrong.
Agreed. If Suzanne bets it all and the other two wager "correctly", she wins on a sole get and only ties on a double get with Jan. Better to wager as we suggest and win on the sole get or the triple stumper.
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by harrumph »

Do we have an official lexicon page where we can put Alex's term "jumpers"?
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Re: Friday, December 2, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by opusthepenguin »

dhkendall wrote:Sad that everyone is anxious to state how "insta" their FJ get was. I didn't know the Latin for bread, but I do know the French for bread is "pain", and French is closer to Latin than any other language that I know the word for "bread" in (which is only one other), so I used that as my base. "Companion", unfortunately, didn't come to me. "Compatriot" did and, while I wasn't 100% happy with it, stuck with it for lack of anything else. (For the record, had I come up with "companion", I don't think I'd be much more confident, but it would have been my choice). At least I was somewhat close ...
It wasn't an instaget for me, but I was able to work my way toward the answer in time. I didn't remember the Latin for bread, but I remembered that the English use "corn" to refer to any sort of grain and grain is what we use to make bread. I also know that r and n can look an awful lot like an m when they're right next to each other. So I figured we were looking for a word that had "corn" or "com" in it somewhere.

With that settled, I thought of the word "ion" and how it refers to a positively charged particle. I thought, well, friendship is a pretty positive thing, isn't it? You gather together with friends and you try to expel the negative elements (i.e. the "electrons") so everybody gets along. I knew "ion" was from the Greek, but I figured Latin might be similar.

So I tried out cornion, comion, ioncorn, and ioncom in my head and could tell I wasn't getting anywhere. That's when I remembered that the clue had talked about the friends eating bread together. Clearly I needed a third phoneme to refer to eating. But what could it be?

After a bit of thinking on the subject, my mind naturally turned to Gargantua and Pantagruel, the two voracious giants created by François Rabelais. I knew "Gargantua" just meant "huge", but I seemed to recall that the name "Pantagruel" had something to do with the giant's appetite. I reasoned that "gruel" must be what the poor fellow ate, so "panta", or maybe just "pan", must refer to the process of eating it.

From there it was just a matter of assembling the parts. "Corn" for bread, plus "ion" for friendship, plus "panta" for eating. After a few false starts--ionpantacorn, cornionpant, pancomion--I hit upon the combination that made sense.

There you have it. Child's play, really. But I thought spelling out the steps would be helpful for those of you who hope to be on the show some day. You'll need to practice teasing out the knowledge buried in your noggin. If the above example helps turn you to a new way of thinking, I'll be immensely gratified. If I ever get on Jeopardy, maybe I'll get lucky and be up against one of you fine people.
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