Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

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teapot37
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by teapot37 »

I recall that there was a clue in the UToC semifinal that referred to Eric Rudolph pleading guilty to the Olympic bombing on April 13 2005 (which I think was the day before the episode taped) and it aired May 19 of that year.
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Lefty
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by Lefty »

Bamaman wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 11:03 pm
LucarioSnooperVixey wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 6:34 pm I'm not sure if it's known who is the youngest ever regular play Jeopardy! contestant is, but this morning, I watched the Season 14 Premier on Netflix and Atish Choudhury revealed he was 18. You must be at least 18 in order to be a regular play contestant.
The subject of FJ died on June 25, 1997, and this game aired on September 1. That was a pretty quick turnaround for a FJ clue.
Looking at the next game I was reminded of how close Dan Melia came to being retired as a two-day champ.
Spoiler
I remember reading somewhere that Alex said that the simple "Luther's theses" would have been accepted.
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seaborgium
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by seaborgium »

Lefty wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 11:43 pm
Bamaman wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 11:03 pm
LucarioSnooperVixey wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 6:34 pm I'm not sure if it's known who is the youngest ever regular play Jeopardy! contestant is, but this morning, I watched the Season 14 Premier on Netflix and Atish Choudhury revealed he was 18. You must be at least 18 in order to be a regular play contestant.
The subject of FJ died on June 25, 1997, and this game aired on September 1. That was a pretty quick turnaround for a FJ clue.
Looking at the next game I was reminded of how close Dan Melia came to being retired as a two-day champ.
Spoiler
I remember reading somewhere that Alex said that the simple "Luther's theses" would have been accepted.
And in his fourth game, FJ was a sole get by third place, who was too far behind to beat him.
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Woof
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by Woof »

I would go further and say that there was a good chance that no one would have heard of Dan Melia at all. His first win came with him trailing Patrick Friel, no slouch himself, and requiring a sole get in FJ. Then his next two games were against Atish and he barely eked out the win after a tie the previous game.
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by cheezguyty »

TenPoundHammer wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 9:18 pm I've mentioned those infernal Radio City Music Hall celeb matches from 2006 many times. They have to be some kind of record for unrevealed clues, with 11/17/06 being the frontrunner at 16 in J! and 10 in DJ! This was due to an insane amount of buffoonery and the inexplicable decision to have Broadway performers come out and do a live Audio Daily Double that went on for ages. I believe someone else also pointed out that the game went to the first commercial break after only 7 clues.

With that in mind... what is the most unrevealed clues in a regular play game, either by-round or cumulative?

The archive indicates three different games with 9 left on the board in DJ! Even more interestingly, all three games had the J! round board cleared.

* 3/15/10 (no idea what the possible time-sink was here, since two of the unrevealed clues were in the Clue Crew category)
* 9/19/12 (video clues in both rounds + random overlong Michelle Obama clue)
* 2/15/16 (DJ! likely cut super short due to a long video category in J!)

Have any games had a larger number of clues unrevealed in total? Or an unusually large number left behind in the J! round?
There are many examples from the first four seasons where there were ten or more clues left on the board (the most egregious example I could find is Show #20, with 21 (!!) clues left uncovered). Beginning with Season 5, that almost never happened again (outside of celebrity games). This can most likely be attributed to Harry Eisenberg becoming editorial associate producer (basically, the head writer). He mentions in his book how he "preferred short, snappy writing to long, convoluted clues" and that "short clues also helped Alex to clear the board".

The most unrevealed clues that I could find for a regular-play game from the last 30 years was ten, with eight occurrences (most recently on February 22, 2018). One of those games, from February 17, 1998, had a record eight clues left behind in the J! Round (Alex explained that it was "because we were making mistakes, me included").
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MarkBarrett
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by MarkBarrett »

I've got the Battle of the Bay Area Brains episode from 1998 at 25 and 20 clues for 15 not seen.
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by TenPoundHammer »

cheezguyty wrote: Tue Jul 02, 2019 7:18 pm There are many examples from the first four seasons where there were ten or more clues left on the board (the most egregious example I could find is Show #20, with 21 (!!) clues left uncovered). Beginning with Season 5, that almost never happened again (outside of celebrity games). This can most likely be attributed to Harry Eisenberg becoming editorial associate producer (basically, the head writer). He mentions in his book how he "preferred short, snappy writing to long, convoluted clues" and that "short clues also helped Alex to clear the board".
Wow, what ate up so much time in that game? I don't see anything long-winded there.

I remember in the few S1 games I've seen, there was that long preamble where AT would explain the rules of the game. I think it was actually confirmed that not one game in S1 was played to 60 clues.
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by Bamaman »

The audience would also clap a lot in early games. Also, you could ring in whenever you wanted so it wasn’t uncommon for there to be a lot of misses.

I also saw a game where they had a clue about Teddy Roosevelt and Alex explained the origin of the teddy bear in the middle of the game.
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by LucarioSnooperVixey »

threearruda wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 8:16 pm
LucarioSnooperVixey wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 6:34 pm I'm not sure if it's known who is the youngest ever regular play Jeopardy! contestant is, but this morning, I watched the Season 14 Premier on Netflix and Atish Choudhury revealed he was 18. You must be at least 18 in order to be a regular play contestant.
The same thing ran through my mind hahah ... Recent JHL Alix Basden came to mind in terms of other young contestants; when her episode aired, someone on Reddit mentioned that her tape day was also her 19th birthday.

ETA: With Atish's tie-win though, I'd be willing to bet that he's the youngest regular-play champion in J! history.
I think we can confirm that Alix is the very first regular play Jeopardy! contestant born in the 21st century. :)
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by econgator »

LucarioSnooperVixey wrote: Wed Jul 03, 2019 11:52 pm I think we can confirm that Alix is the very first regular play Jeopardy! contestant born in the 21st century. :)
How so?
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by kprather895 »

Woof wrote: Tue Jul 02, 2019 10:47 am I would go further and say that there was a good chance that no one would have heard of Dan Melia at all. His first win came with him trailing Patrick Friel, no slouch himself, and requiring a sole get in FJ. Then his next two games were against Atish and he barely eked out the win after a tie the previous game.
Similarly look at how Jeopardy history would have been different if the judge had decided that "Who is Jones?" wasn't specific enough.
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by polaris »

seaborgium wrote: Fri Oct 19, 2012 3:32 amBut if you double pre-doubled amounts, it looks like Frank Spangenberg's comeback from $600 against Tom Nosek's $13,600 (aided by Tom's blindly wagering everything from second*) wins.

*Tom Nosek was in two two-game finals, and bet everything on FJ in all four games. That has to be some kind of record.
He also bet it all in his UToC match.

He broke the combo in the BotD, however.
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by seaborgium »

seaborgium wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2013 12:08 am High-earning 3x champ Matt Handel made his first appearance after Steve Chernicoff was retired. Steve had won $24,700 in his fifth game; Matt won $23,400 in his first. I'm thinking that together, those two scores make the highest total won in back-to-back games by two different champions. I have to imagine the post-doubling record holders are Myron Meyer and Jake Maeroff, who won $50,000 and $41,201 respectively. Steve's and Matt's totals, when doubled, add up to a higher amount than Myron's and Jake's, but I'll give Myron and Jake the record for highest combined back-to-back scores by two champions that actually played against each other (unless/until someone finds a higher scoring pair).

By the way, the highest earnings by one champion in two consecutive games is $127,000, by Ken Jennings ($52,000 + $75,000).
I just realized that the highest two-day total for consecutive wins by different champions probably now belongs to James Holzhauer and Emma Boettcher, and I was right: James's last win of $79,633 and Emma's first of $46,801 total $126,434, whose average only 9 contestants have ever cleared (7 if you don't count Jerome Vered and Doug Lach, who cleared $31,608 in single days of the pre-doubled era).

And regarding the latter paragraph, James had already broken Ken's two-consecutive-days record a few times over by the (first) time he exceeded it in a single game and pushed the record up to $237,308.
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