jepkid97 wrote: Also, was it just me, or was the ZergCam unnecessary tonight?
I, for one, enjoyed it, as I believe it is the first time that I have ever seen a ZergCam "live", at least since I knew what it was. I liked seeing Linda's shock and excitement when she realized that she was walking away with more than $30K. Why wouldn't we want to see that?
Absolutely agree. For someone to get that once-in-a-lifetime experience, and pull out a victory that was by no means certain until the final reveal of Tim's response, is the highest drama you get on this show. It is the human aspect, not just "do you or don't you know the material?"
What a cherished moment that must have been for Linda, and for us vicariously as viewers and fans and wannabes. Why would you NOT want to see that?
Bamaman wrote:Now I've gotten more steady work requiring travel, so I don't always know when or if I'll see the show every day.
Congratulations on regaining full employment, even at the expense of Jeopardy watching, and sorry I spoiled FJ for you.
Yeah, well there are always sacrifices we have to make. At least with DVR, I can see it when I get home. Don't worry about spoilage, I didn't even read your post, I just saw Peary while scanning by.
seaborgium wrote:I said Scott for FJ, realized too late that he probably wouldn't have died on Antarctica if he could have sent messages out.
I also thought of Scott, and ended up going with Peary, happily. But looking up the big names of polar exploration after the show - Scott, Peary, Amundsen, Byrd and Shackleton - I realized that Scott was British anyway. The message only fits an American, so everyone is out except Peary and Byrd, and Byrd is better associated with aviation over the poles, in which is tougher to nail a flag to a pole.
"And has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
It ended up not mattering, but Brian should have wagered martian on that second row Daily Double in the Art category. If he had, he could have led going into FJ.
I also don't think that Brian should have wagered $0 in FJ, but at least he had the right idea. The person in first place usually wagers to cover, but the person in second place is generally more of a loose cannon in what they are going to wager. Anne Boyd and Christian Haines in their semifinal ToC games are good examples of this. And if you are able to wager up to $9200 and win on a triple stumper when the players ahead of you make the conventional FJ wagers, there's good reason to wager so that you at least pass their pre-FJ scores on a get.
This was another fantastic game. This may have been one of the best weeks of regular Jeopardy ever, even with boards that were of mediocre quality. I think that this week has gone to show that there may be a lot of luck that goes with who gets called to the studio at the same time that you do.
I lost out on the 50 50 90 guess between Peary and Byrd.
On the subject of the ZergCam, I was just wondering if the contestants have any way to see what is revealed on their opponents' monitors. Is there some screen that they can see that shows the responses/wagers when they are revealed, or do they only go by Alex's reaction to find out if they win or lose?
jeff6286 wrote:On the subject of the ZergCam, I was just wondering if the contestants have any way to see what is revealed on their opponents' monitors. Is there some screen that they can see that shows the responses/wagers when they are revealed, or do they only go by Alex's reaction to find out if they win or lose?
The contestants don't see what's on their opponents' monitors, so it can be very nerve-wracking up there, particularly in a close game.
debramc wrote:Can a mod change the title of this thread? Not that I'm that picky, but in case someone is searching for July 22, 2011 sometime in the future...
Mea culpa. Fixed for the topic header. A bit too much trouble to fix for each individual post.
jeff6286 wrote:On the subject of the ZergCam, I was just wondering if the contestants have any way to see what is revealed on their opponents' monitors. Is there some screen that they can see that shows the responses/wagers when they are revealed, or do they only go by Alex's reaction to find out if they win or lose?
The contestants don't see what's on their opponents' monitors, so it can be very nerve-wracking up there, particularly in a close game.
Eh? The monitor used for video clues displays the reveals. In my last regular game you could see me hang my head in defeat the moment second place's FJ response appears, before Alex reads it.
jeff6286 wrote:On the subject of the ZergCam, I was just wondering if the contestants have any way to see what is revealed on their opponents' monitors. Is there some screen that they can see that shows the responses/wagers when they are revealed, or do they only go by Alex's reaction to find out if they win or lose?
The contestants don't see what's on their opponents' monitors, so it can be very nerve-wracking up there, particularly in a close game.
Eh? The monitor used for video clues displays the reveals. In my last regular game you could see me hang my head in defeat the moment second place's FJ response appears, before Alex reads it.
Thanks for the response? I figured there was a monitor somewhere, but I had never seen any reference to it before. So would that have been the anti-Zerg cam that captured your reaction? Maybe the Grez-cam?
jeff6286 wrote:Thanks for the response? I figured there was a monitor somewhere, but I had never seen any reference to it before. So would that have been the anti-Zerg cam that captured your reaction? Maybe the Grez-cam?
Not exactly. It was the guy in the middle who won, and I am barely visible to his right in wide screen. I doubt they (have or will) ever cut away to an unrevealed contestant's reaction.
(I'm proud of myself for having used a single word in three different tenses simultaneously!)
So, my name is Tim Wagner, and I had the illustrious experience of finishing in third place in this episode. I'll share with you a couple of thoughts that were going through my head during that show.
First, my Daily Double wager: I assumed that being a daily double clue about the bible with a nominal value of $1000 that they'd pull out Rehoboam or Nebuchadnezzer or some other Old Testament character that I'd barely heard of, so I went small. Go back and look at your DVRs to see just how disappointed I am when I saw just how simple the clue was.
As for Final Jeopardy: I was one of the people who didn't even register that it was a clue about polar exploration. My thought process was basically, "hmmm... sounds manly and patriotic, and Teddy Roosevelt was president for part of 1909. I'll go with him and hope for the best." And when Alex said in his pre-reveal discussion that it had to do with the north pole, I knew I was sunk. When Brian risked nothing, my tiny, tiny hopes for backing into a win were gone. The thing is, even if I had figured out that it was a clue about the North Pole, I'm 95% sure that I would have put down Byrd and still been wrong. Basically, the only pathway for my victory in that game would have been to make it a runaway, and against that competition there's no way that was going to happen, especially with all three of us getting a Daily Double correct (I'm sure that one of you can tell me what color tie Alex was wearing the last time that happened). I knew four of the five Final Jeopardies that were used this week (yes, even the one about Joe Kennedy) but I didn't know the one that counted. Them's the breaks, I suppose.
Watching the rebroadcast, I had no idea just how close that game was while I was playing it. I only glanced at the score during commercials and Daily Doubles, so I had no idea that during Double Jeopardy the separation between first and third was often in the hundreds of dollars. I also didn't really realize until Friday just how stacked against my own strengths the Double Jeopardy board was. To have an art and a literature and a royalty category together really hurt me and really helped Linda (not to take anything away from her performance otherwise. She was just plain solid.)
Still, it's far, far better to have been a contestant and lost than to not have been one at all. Those of you who have been on the show know that it's just so much fun being a part of it. What disappointed me most was not losing out on the money but instead not getting to come back the next day and play again. I had my shot, I came *this close* to being a champion, and now it's someone else's turn. That's okay. Now I've got a story to tell for the rest of my life, and I've got a fun new nemesis in Robert Peary.
I had two goals when I arrived in LA: first, to not embarass myself; and second, to have fun. I accomplished both of those goals in spades.
tim_wagner wrote:I had two goals when I arrived in LA: first, to not embarass myself; and second, to have fun. I accomplished both of those goals in spades.
You certainly didn't, Tim.
It looked like they had a LOT of good contestants our week.
tim_wagner wrote:So, my name is Tim Wagner, and I had the illustrious experience of finishing in third place in this episode. I'll share with you a couple of thoughts that were going through my head during that show.
First, my Daily Double wager: I assumed that being a daily double clue about the bible with a nominal value of $1000 that they'd pull out Rehoboam or Nebuchadnezzer or some other Old Testament character that I'd barely heard of, so I went small. Go back and look at your DVRs to see just how disappointed I am when I saw just how simple the clue was.
As for Final Jeopardy: I was one of the people who didn't even register that it was a clue about polar exploration. My thought process was basically, "hmmm... sounds manly and patriotic, and Teddy Roosevelt was president for part of 1909. I'll go with him and hope for the best." And when Alex said in his pre-reveal discussion that it had to do with the north pole, I knew I was sunk. When Brian risked nothing, my tiny, tiny hopes for backing into a win were gone. The thing is, even if I had figured out that it was a clue about the North Pole, I'm 95% sure that I would have put down Byrd and still been wrong. Basically, the only pathway for my victory in that game would have been to make it a runaway, and against that competition there's no way that was going to happen, especially with all three of us getting a Daily Double correct (I'm sure that one of you can tell me what color tie Alex was wearing the last time that happened). I knew four of the five Final Jeopardies that were used this week (yes, even the one about Joe Kennedy) but I didn't know the one that counted. Them's the breaks, I suppose.
Watching the rebroadcast, I had no idea just how close that game was while I was playing it. I only glanced at the score during commercials and Daily Doubles, so I had no idea that during Double Jeopardy the separation between first and third was often in the hundreds of dollars. I also didn't really realize until Friday just how stacked against my own strengths the Double Jeopardy board was. To have an art and a literature and a royalty category together really hurt me and really helped Linda (not to take anything away from her performance otherwise. She was just plain solid.)
Still, it's far, far better to have been a contestant and lost than to not have been one at all. Those of you who have been on the show know that it's just so much fun being a part of it. What disappointed me most was not losing out on the money but instead not getting to come back the next day and play again. I had my shot, I came *this close* to being a champion, and now it's someone else's turn. That's okay. Now I've got a story to tell for the rest of my life, and I've got a fun new nemesis in Robert Peary.
I had two goals when I arrived in LA: first, to not embarass myself; and second, to have fun. I accomplished both of those goals in spades.
Secretly, I blame your PSYOPS tactics for my loss, Tim. (You know what I'm referring to.) But welcome aboard anyway!
markrunsvold wrote:Secretly, I blame your PSYOPS tactics for my loss, Tim. (You know what I'm referring to.) But welcome aboard anyway!
Oh, man, I totally forgot that I was pretending to psych you out during the post-lunch rehearsal! For everyone else: I had a heck of a time getting in a groove with the buzzer during rehearsals. I was always getting out-buzzed. So while Mark and I were buzzing against each other, I joked that I was just sandbagging to lull him into a false sense of confidence when really I just couldn't beat anyone. Fortunately, that post-lunch session was when I finally figured out how to make it work. My technique: pure reaction time. Anticipation was just not working for me.
I was both relieved and disappointed that I didn't get to take you on directly. I think it would have been fun.
Thanks, both Mark and Samer, for being part of an unforgettable day. And thanks, Samer, for the kind words. You did great too, you just happened to be sandwiched between two buzzsaws. We did have one heck of a contestant cohort that day.