Monday, January 20, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

[DBear]

FJ:. Just thought of which positions were around since the beginning & went from there.
Didn't know Alan Alda was Second City, but directing that many MASH episodes, WECIB.

[opusthepenguin]

Traci here -- I am in fact good at the "fun stuff" I guess? I'm also good at the non-fun stuff. And yes, that DD wager haunts me to this day.

Dang, Traci! Rough way to go. I started out rooting for Dennis because I liked him from yesterday. He's just a smooth, mellow guy. But you won me over with the game you brought. Even with the low DD bet--perfectly defensible in the moment if tweakable in hindsight--you had a commanding lead. So I was happy to say goodbye to old friend Dennis as it looked like we'd be congratulating a new champ. Then... it just didn't work out that way. Really sorry about that.

[thenextofken]

Tonight may be the first time one of my relatives has been mentioned in a clue. Scott Adsit is a distant cousin--his Mom and My Dad are first cousins. Last time I was him was almost 40 years ago.

[MarkBarrett]

Well done by Dennis for knowing how to open play in NIAGARA FALLS with the proper "Slowly I Turned" cadence. Credit to Superman II for my knowing the name of the water vehicle there.

Others might remember it from The Office or from Wonderfalls. Some will remember it from, you know, having been on it. Back in 1974. Good to see the old girl's still chugging away.

Wonderfalls! I'd been looking for somewhere to watch that, and never found anywhere. I had only seen the first episode and it seemed so promising that I still want to see the rest of them.

0+0 for me seeing The Office or Wonderfalls. On YT I did a search for "wonderfalls" and found what looks like all 13 available through a guy who uploaded complete. I tested a couple in different spots and they seem fine with good quality.

[opusthepenguin]

The usual "Old Guy" gets: LT on "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (which I read when it was a cult favorite in the 70s). Univac, Folies Bergeres (sp?), Alan Alda. But of course not close to a 4th-podium win.

Yep, I got the Robert Pirsig book and was a little surprised it went begging. I guess it dropped out of public consciousness rather than hanging around to be a symbol of the time. You never know which way those things will go. I got Folies Bergère from the song by that title in the Broadway musical Nine. You can have it too with your spelling as long as you didn't pronounce your final S.

I would've guessed Alan Alda on a DD but wasn't sure enough to buzz in from the couch. For the $1600 Second City clue, I said, "I don't know. Andrea Martin. Catherine O'Hara. One of those two." So Dennis rang in and negged with Andrea Martin, and Traci picked up the rebound with Catherine O'Hara. To quote Broadcast News, "I say it here, it comes out there."

UNIVAC! Dang. I said ENIAC with such confidence. Any rules of thumb on when to guess which one?

[Traci_on_J!]

Thanks to everyone for being so nice! I can't emphasize enough that I was legitimately shocked to be in the lead when that DD came up, and that definitely affected my thought process. Oh and Alex told me I played beautifully and then complimented my nail color, so my life was made right then.

[talkingaway]

Ugh. That FJ! was way easier than I made it, but with a 30-second time limit, my trick didn't come to me. Monday evening quarterbacking, there's an easy trick: Presidential succession order. If you know that, after VP, Speaker, and Pro Tempore, the next four in line are State, Treasury, Defense, and Attorney General, you're halfway there. Those MUST have ben the four in Washington's cabinet, because the succession order is dictated by oldest cabinet posts first. Add to that the fact that "Department of Defense" was "Department of War" (a fact that I thought of at the time), and you have an immediate 1/3 shot at eliminating the rogue office. Knowing Clinton and/or Albright for State, which is pretty easy, bumps it up to a coin flip. I honestly would have passed up Yates for Reno if I had to name a woman who was AG, because I can't help remembering Will Ferrell in a royal blue dress interviewing Rudy Guiliani on "Janet Reno's Dance Party".

Of course, I didn't think of succession order in 30 seconds, and just mindlessly thought of another department besides State, which I figured had to be one of the earliest. I went with Interior, just to say something. Oops.

Fell for the Moulin Rouge negbait ce soir. C'est la vie.

They cut away from the clue REALLY fast on the hidden treasure category. Ugh. Not a fan of the category. It's not even wordplay. It's a wordhunt.

And Traci, you looked like you were having a LOT of fun up there! I hope you did, even if the result wasn't what you wanted.

[davey]

More kudos from me for Traci as a very appealing contestant in a real heartbreaker.
Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy's sitcom Schitt's Creek has been getting a lot of attention lately. I love those two in particular from SCTV but I just don't think the current show is very funny (starting with the title... )... Andrea Martin, another brilliant actor, has her own projects - she recently closed in the Broadway production of A Christmas Carol (as Christmas Past).
FJ was an epic fail for me. I had a vague memory that Attorney General wasn't in the original cabinet. What I was remembering is that the AG's venue wasn't called the Justice Department till 1870 (so presumably writing State and Justice wouldn't have passed muster)...It doesn't help that the first few AGs aren't familiar names (though I should remember William Bradford since he was from my native PA...) I think I would have realized my error with a few more seconds, and I should have written AG anyway, since I was pretty sure what I did write, Treasury, wasn't right...

[Volante]

Well done by Dennis for knowing how to open play in NIAGARA FALLS with the proper "Slowly I Turned" cadence. Credit to Superman II for my knowing the name of the water vehicle there.

Others might remember it from The Office or from Wonderfalls. Some will remember it from, you know, having been on it. Back in 1974. Good to see the old girl's still chugging away.

Bruce Almighty here

[CasualJeopardyFan19]

Dennis is definitely really good at turning things around, that's for sure!

[trainman]

Wonderfalls! I'd been looking for somewhere to watch that, and never found anywhere. I had only seen the first episode and it seemed so promising that I still want to see the rest of them.

It was released on DVD (I know because I own it), so I wouldn't be surprised if you can check it out of a local library.

[Peachbox]

Thank you! I haven't seen the game yet so hopefully I look way less nervous than I was.

You looked composed up there, and like you were having fun. Sorry you didn't win; you played very well.

[mas3cf]

Coryat: $31,000 (43R, 2W)
DD: 3/3
FJ:
LT: groundhog, Ash Wednesday, Alan Alda

Blitzed SJ (ran Niagara Falls, Slowly I Turned and “Step” By Step) and struggled mightily with DJ (shut out on French Arts and Culture). Missed my first $2000 in a while when I misplaced UNIVAC with ENIAC.

Instaget FJ, I was 95% sure those would’ve been Cabinet posts from the beginning.

Coryat $29800 (39 R, 2 W)
DD 2/3
FJ

I had the same $2k neg, thinking that UNIVAC didn't come out in time for the 1950 census. Poll request?

Picked Lady Bird Johnson for DD3. Need to remember SMU = Laura Bush as a Pavlov.

Congrats to Traci for a strong showing. She experienced my biggest Jeopardy fear, leading at the end of DJ and getting overtaken on a tough FJ.

[DanKirshner]

Thought Sect. of State was obvious. I went hunting for the second. AG never occurred to me, although it probably would have if I had more time to think about it. Went with Education based on the current office holder.

[acthomas]

Traci here -- I am in fact good at the "fun stuff" I guess? I'm also good at the non-fun stuff. And yes, that DD wager haunts me to this day.

You looked and played super composed, Traci! Sorry it didn't work out in the end but you played a game we should all be lucky enough to emulate.

[acthomas]

UNIVAC! Dang. I said ENIAC with such confidence. Any rules of thumb on when to guess which one?

I also bit it on this one. From a little research, it looks like "first computer/WW2" is a good guideline for ENIAC and "early 1950s/Census/1952 election/first commercially available computer" is UNIVAC.

And "computed for the H-Bomb" is the appropriately named MANIAC.

[Robert K S]

And "computed for the H-Bomb" is the appropriately named MANIAC.

Except that the first major problem solved by ENIAC was related to the H-bomb. Metropolis and Frankel went to Philadelphia to set it up.

Another way you could have gotten this, if you really knew your computing history, would have been to realize that the given vacuum tube count was too low to be ENIAC, which had 18,000 tubes. The logical arrangement of the ENIAC was terribly inefficient; it was basically the electronic equivalent of ganging together a bunch of desk calculators. By the time they were halfway through building ENIAC, they had figured out the CPU concept, and so UNIVAC I was able to do more with a lot fewer parts.

[1stlvlthinker]

I had the same $2k neg, thinking that UNIVAC didn't come out in time for the 1950 census. Poll request?

Picked Lady Bird Johnson for DD3. Need to remember SMU = Laura Bush as a Pavlov.

Congrats to Traci for a strong showing. She experienced my biggest Jeopardy fear, leading at the end of DJ and getting overtaken on a tough FJ.

Are we the same person? Because I answered the same way.

I'm like "Oh, Texas, who came from Texas. LBJ did. And apparently no other President, like no one who could have possibly owned the Texas Rangers with a librarian wife."

[Leander]

Thought Sect. of State was obvious. I went hunting for the second. AG never occurred to me, although it probably would have if I had more time to think about it. Went with Education based on the current office holder.

Similarly for me, State was an instaget and I struggled to find the second one. I think I might have gotten sidetracked by automatically thinking of cabinet members with Secretary in their title.

I too was rooting for Traci, who played a great game.

[yclept]

Traci here -- I am in fact good at the "fun stuff" I guess? I'm also good at the non-fun stuff. And yes, that DD wager haunts me to this day.

You played extremely well and I am not even sure what an optimal wager would have been with that DD. You opted to protect the lead which forces Dennis to get FJ correct while you get it wrong. It did sting to see that actually happen.

And yes, you dominated the pop culture/“fun stuff” on this board which is important on Jeopardy. Many lose because they don’t know a lot about those topics. I have no doubt that you are probably well-rounded in many other types of categories as well...