Wednesday, February 26, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[bomtr]

Bieber never even crossed my mind in FJ; my best guess was LeAnn Rimes.

I do my absolute best to keep this little putz out of my mind, and I was successful for the entirety of this FJ.

And dhicton, it's not the onset; we're well on the way.

[morbeedo]

Assuming I heard correctly, there's no such thing as the NYFD. It's the FDNY.

The night of September 14, 2001, the Los Angeles Fire Department came to my apartment complex to fight a fire. On the hook-and-ladder truck was a black wreath with a sign reading "NYFD." You tell them they were wrong.

I've lived in NYC for 20 years and I've never heard the Fire Department referred to as NYFD. FDNY is what everybody knows- at least here in NYC. It's the police department that's referred to as the NYPD.

I think the rulings on NYFD and Jolly Green Giant could have gone either way, but I was personally hoping that Chu would be penalized for at least one of them. Add a bungled pronunciation of philately (reducing the word from 4 syllables to 3), and I think Arthur showed some real vulnerability tonight. Surprised to see comments saying this was his best game, although the last minute of play had me falling off the sofa.

I do like Arthur, but after a few consecutive wins, I always start routing for the challengers. Both contestants put up a good fight, though lab tech girl was really cooking with gas. Got frustrated watching her lose on the buzzer at the end when she really needed the cash!

As a sidebar, when a game starts to look like an inevitable lock, especially with a super champ like Chu, shouldn't the contestant with the lowest score stop buzzing in and give the second place player a chance to grab enough cash to avoid a lock? One aspect of J! Game theory that I haven't seen discussed here...

[econgator]

As a sidebar, when a game starts to look like an inevitable lock, especially with a super champ like Chu, shouldn't the contestant with the lowest score stop buzzing in and give the second place player a chance to grab enough cash to avoid a lock?

Hell no. I'm not there to help someone else win (or just roll over for the third place prize).

[morbeedo]

As a sidebar, when a game starts to look like an inevitable lock, especially with a super champ like Chu, shouldn't the contestant with the lowest score stop buzzing in and give the second place player a chance to grab enough cash to avoid a lock?

Hell no. I'm not there to help someone else win (or just roll over for the third place prize).

It was pretty clear that #3 couldn't catch Arthur, so I'm saying in this case, why not stop buzzing, let #2 get enough cash to avoid a lock, then it's anybody's game. Otherwise you're playing for 2nd or 3rd place. Really talking about that last minute of this game in particular.

[Golf]

As a sidebar, when a game starts to look like an inevitable lock, especially with a super champ like Chu, shouldn't the contestant with the lowest score stop buzzing in and give the second place player a chance to grab enough cash to avoid a lock? One aspect of J! Game theory that I haven't seen discussed here...

If this is a level then it's pretty funny, if this isn't a level then it's absolutely hilarious!

It was pretty clear that #3 couldn't catch Arthur, so I'm saying in this case, why not stop buzzing, let #2 get enough cash to avoid a lock, then it's anybody's game. Otherwise you're playing for 2nd or 3rd place. Really talking about that last minute of this game in particular.

Oh. Never mind.

I can see it now...

Alex: Less than a minute to go, therefore Dunce, since you're currently in 3rd place, you should stop trying to answer now to give not so Duncy a chance to catch not a Dunce. You only get 14 minutes of fame.


Dunces. Dunces everywhere.

[lieph82]

It's an idea that sounds crazy at first, then starts to make a little sense when you think about it a little, but when you think about it for more than a few seconds you see it's not such a bright idea. If A has $20,000, B has $8,000, and C has $6,000, with $3000 left on the board, assuming no negs, C is playing for second place. Even if B were to break the lock and have $11,000 to the leader's $20,000, A will almost certainly make a standard lockout wager, which does not allow C a chance to win. So C really has no chance to win the game, and C's best chance at second is to get as much of that remaining $3000 as he/she can.

If there were a much higher probability of the leader wildly miswagering in a crush game than in a lock game, your strategy would make some sense.

[VAdame]

Add a bungled pronunciation of philately (reducing the word from 4 syllables to 3), and I think Arthur showed some real vulnerability tonight.

But "fɘ - LATE -lee" is absolutely consistent with the spelling, which is the rule. I think Arthur's strategy of phonetically sounding out words that may be in his reading vocabulary but not his speaking vocabulary - as well as ethnic names like "Inouye" -- is pretty smart. As long as he doesn't completely misremember the spelling, he's going to be ruled correct. But seriously -- last night's "GREEN-witch"??? That was a little bizarre! There are quite a few "GREN-itches" in the world besides the one near the Prime Meridian (Village? Connecticut?!) -- and surely Arthur's run across the one of them in his lifetime!

[Paucle]

As a sidebar, when a game starts to look like an inevitable lock, especially with a super champ like Chu, shouldn't the contestant with the lowest score stop buzzing in and give the second place player a chance to grab enough cash to avoid a lock?

Hell no. I'm not there to help someone else win (or just roll over for the third place prize).

It'll work, but it only works if second place can get right on the leader's ass, or at least within a certain "first vis–à–vis second+third" equation. If the best they can do is "avoid the lock," it'll probably do third place no good.
Someone here can probably explain the math involved much more clearly than I can. (Or, alternatively, can explain to me why my math is wrong.)

[morbeedo]

It's an idea that sounds crazy at first, then starts to make a little sense when you think about it a little, but when you think about it for more than a few seconds you see it's not such a bright idea.

Gotcha!

[Vanya]

I do like Arthur, but after a few consecutive wins, I always start routing for the challengers. Both contestants put up a good fight, though lab tech girl was really cooking with gas. Got frustrated watching her lose on the buzzer at the end when she really needed the cash!

Were you rooting for a rout (where have I heard that before)?

[El Jefe]

I think the rulings on NYFD and Jolly Green Giant could have gone either way, but I was personally hoping that Chu would be penalized for at least one of them. Add a bungled pronunciation of philately (reducing the word from 4 syllables to 3), and I think Arthur showed some real vulnerability tonight. Surprised to see comments saying this was his best game, although the last minute of play had me falling off the sofa.

'Gone either way'? Nah, IMNSHO it would be scandalous to reject either one. The JGG question read: LE SUEUR PEAS GO INTO THE CANS OF THIS BIG GUY'S BRAND, FORMERLY THE MINNESOTA VALLEY CANNING COMPANY. Because of the ambiguous clue writing, they were either looking for the THIS BIG GUY or BRAND, FORMERLY MVCC, so both should have been acceptable. Concerning the FDNY question, yes, the official abbreviation is that, but interchangeable on the Wikipedia page is New York City Fire Department, so again, both formats that include all 4-5 words or their initials should be acceptable. By way of comparison- unless the clue is specific, like 'POTUS stands for this,' The President of The United States is just as acceptable as The US President. AMAZON and AMAZON.COM and amazon.com are equally acceptable.

Mispronouncing words does not make responses incorrect, so while you may judge someone personally for them, no official penalty. At its core it's just great comic relief- I don't know about you but I heard him say 'fellate-Lee' and thought the Civil War could have been over much sooner if that had happened...

[Mathew5000]

Someone here can probably explain the math involved much more clearly than I can. (Or, alternatively, can explain to me why my math is wrong.)

From the perspective of third place, we don't care about first's lock over second (i.e. having twice as much), what we care about is whether first has a lock over third. The condition for that is, that third place's score is less than the difference between first and second.

So let's say there's just one clue remaining on the board, worth 2000 (not a DD), and the scores are 13000, 7000, 4100. The current difference between the scores of first and second is 6000. We will be in contention (from third place) if either we get the clue, bringing our score above 6000 or if second place gets the clue, bringing the difference between first and second down below 4100. If the daily doubles are gone in the endgame, then there is never any situation where we in third place would prefer that a given clue be gotten by second place, rather than by us. (Certainly from third we would prefer that a given clue be gotten by second place rather than by first, but that's something we have no control over.)

If there is still a daily double remaining, then it is conceivable to have a situation where our best strategy in third place is not to ring in even when we know the correct response. For example, suppose we're in third with 1300, the other players have 15000 and 7000, and there are two clues remaining on the board of which one is the daily double. It would be a huge strategic error for us to ring in, because if we give a correct response we might be forced to take the DD, when our only possibilities of being in contention are if second place is correct on the DD and gets close to first's score, or if first place is wrong on the DD and (foolishly) wagered enough to fall close to second's score.

[JeopRDFan]

Fantastic run to get the lock at the end there.

Allow be me to the first to howl about a wrong answer, though. Assuming I heard correctly, there's no such thing as the NYFD. It's the FDNY.

Yeah, and I noticed there was a little hesitation on Alex' part in accepting it. I went with Michael Jackson for FJ after considering Donny Osmond as well -- the Biebs never occured to me.

[Bamaman]

After the FJs on the cast of Glee, Taylor Swift and now Beiber, I think it is safe to assume that the next time the FJ is "This artist set a record for.........", it is going to be somebody very recent, very young, that you most likely don't listen to but would at least have heard of. So go with the teeny boppers in that situation.

[opusthepenguin]

Went through Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, and Britney Spears before guessing Shirley Temple. Alex's comment, while harsh, was true: she has very little in common with Bieber!

Sometimes Alex's comments don't reflect whether a contestant made a plausible guess so much as whether that guess was close to the correct response. Those aren't always the same thing. All in all, I think Shirley Temple was a halfway decent shot. She flitted through my mind and, in Stephen's situation, I might have gone with her. In MY situation, I knew better. Stephen apparently lacked the foresight to have read a couple of recent Shirley Temple obituaries. Otherwise he might have remembered that the articles made no mention of a recording career.

Bieber was my first thought. I had no confidence in it, so I kept going. Temple was another thought. Taylor Swift and Donny Osmond were two more. Spears didn't come to mind. She definitely would have gone into the mix if she had. But as the Think! music ran down, I didn't like any of my choices. So I decided to let my subconscious make the decision. It hasn't screwed me over. Lately. If it coughed up the Biebs first, maybe it knew what it was doing. I mentally wrote down Bieber, still with zero confidence.

As the Temple and Spears guesses were revealed, I waited with curiosity to see what Alex would say. Once he'd nixed them both, I upped my confidence level to 1%.

[opusthepenguin]

Someone here can probably explain the math involved much more clearly than I can. (Or, alternatively, can explain to me why my math is wrong.)

From the perspective of third place, we don't care about first's lock over second (i.e. having twice as much), what we care about is whether first has a lock over third. The condition for that is, that third place's score is less than the difference between first and second.

I think this is true, but only because second-place contestants often wager as though it is true.

[georgespelvin]

Correction to soxfan99, Arthur did not risk the lock with his $7,000 DD wager. He wagered just enough for a miss not to cost him his lock. Granted, that might have been more aggressive than he needed to be to win the game, but the way he was beating the other contestants to the buzzer, it really didn't matter.

He most certainly did risk the lock. Had he bet a smaller amount, he would have been guaranteed the lock,

Actually, no. Arthur was $4801 shy of a guaranteed lock when he uncovered that last DD. Here are the stats:

Arthur: $27,200
Lindsey: $10,000
Stephen: $5800
Value of clues still on the board: $6000 (6 $400 + 3 $800 + 1 $1200)

While I did not remember the exact numbers, I knew that at that point of Double Jeopardy, even with only low hanging fruit left on the board, that only a big wager could guarantee a lock. This was very different from the situation
yesterday(?) when Arthur had a chance at a guaranteed lock several clues later in the game by wagering small on a late DD so that a miss would not hurt him.

I'm old enough to remember that Michael Jackson's early solo career pretty much ended in 1973, only to pick up with a vengeance in 1979 when he was out of his teens. Donny Osmond had his successful solo career end in 1973. I forget who brought up Stevie Wonder. I never thought of Stevie Wonder, but that is an excellent guess because he had hit singles throughout the 1960s. However, he did not start his slew of No. 1 albums until he got into his 20s.

I apologize for being so dogmatic concerning the notion of offering a tie in a lock. I just happen to be of the belief that it's never a good idea to play the same people that you played the day before. Certainly, if I were Arthur I don't want to play Lindsey again. On the other hand, if it were the opponents from Tuesday. . .

[ArthurChu]

I actually grew up in Rhode Island and knew that the "East Greenwich" there is pronounced GREN-itch. In the heat of the moment I was not confident enough in my assessment that this was generally "How it is pronounced" to use that as opposed to the "phonetic" pronunciation, because I haven't heard anyone say the "Greenwich" in "Greenwich Mean Time" aloud in a while.

Part of the contestant orientation is being told that if you're even the tiniest bit unsure to "Say it like it's spelled" because they literally are not allowed to rule you incorrect if you do so, whereas if you pick a pronunciation and it happens for whatever reason to be "wrong" you'll get dinged.

I don't know but I'd guess that this would be especially true when your average English speaker would use the differing pronunciation to differentiate between the two places, like how Notre Dame College is "noter dayme" as opposed to "Notre Dame" ("notruh dahm") Cathedral, or Cairo, Egypt ("KYE-ro") vs. Cairo, Illinois ("KAY-ro").

It may be I'm overthinking this, and that itself may be because I live in NE Ohio where there's a town called Mantua that's pronounced "Man-away" to distinguish it from the one in Italy.

[ArthurChu]

Also yes, I will staunchly defend the fact that Jeopardy clues often hinge on what, specifically, is being asked for and the Green Giant clue was asking for the mascot ("This big guy"), not the company.

Was it still a bad idea to say the big guy's full name "Jolly Green Giant" rather than "Green Giant" and wait for a BMS? Of course, but everyone's human.

[georgespelvin]

Congratulations Arthur on a great game! What was the name of the improv group you were in when you were in D.C.? I didn't even know that you had been here for awhile. I have a number of friends in Improv groups and I wonder if you worked with any of them (Ric Anderson mostly, as he works on the Hill).