Etta Place

Yes, I didn't do the math but I was assuming that Nate knew James would bet to cover, so betting it all wouldn't help him at all. His only chance was to bet to remain above what James would have if James got it wrong. (And to get it right himself, of course.)

Well, I was hoping James would not lose. That was a close one, it was exciting! I got FJ despite a limited knowledge of both jazz and New York transportation.

I'm interested to see that so many people struggled with the FJ. I rolled my eyes and said "oh they picked the easiest thing!" This is not back-patting, this is the it's-easy-if-you-know-it. I turned to my husband and he said ... "Was Vivaldi Russian?" Which I thought was crazy talk until he explained how he'd gotten there - Vivaldi, the Four Seasons ... I think he was actually, somewhere in the back of his mind, tuned into the pagan/spring connection and just took a left turn (at Albuquerque). For me, I was just like "it's probably the single most famous incident in classical music history, the riot at the premiere of the Rite of Spring. Stravinsky." And about the difference between standing there in person and answering from your couch, I have done it, and after the first question, I quit noticing anything at all on that stage except the board. What was difficult was on-the-spot math. I would have practiced that ahead of time somehow - maybe on a hot downtown street corner with a sign that says "pull a daily double scenario from the box". Then I'd have to come up with a plausible bet within 10 seconds.

Oh good, everyone’s already covered the main things I wanted to talk about! I’d like to see someone at a poker table try to go “all in” with more chips than they currently have. I was hoping they would just add $200 to his score and tell him that’s what he asked for. And secondly, they were so afraid of women authors that they just kept going to math, even though they clearly knew nothing about it. But hey, they successfully left 3 clues in the authors category on the board, so: WIN! My mathematician husband couldn’t stop laughing.

It aired here in central California as well.

That's a long-standing rule though. You can add words before or after the title as long as you don't misquote anything.

Airport codes seem to stick as nicknames for a couple of cities, I'm not sure why those in particular. ATL and PDX for Portland are two I can think of.

Yes, people frequently seem to take the poem to mean that there is something noble in taken the less traveled path ... but the poem doesn't say that at all. The poem says the roads are equally traveled and that in the future when telling the story the narrator will sigh and say he took the one less traveled. In other words, it's all about patting yourself on the back for being the trailblazer when you really weren't. 🙂

I've read some things about hot air balloons (why, I'm not sure) so I knew the Montgolfiers, but the information was more readily available to me because in Italian the word for hot air balloon is mongolfiera.

Why does Alex find Italian so difficult? I am guessing that Il Cortile in Little Italy doesn’t pronounce their name as Il Cor-teal, but rather the correct Il Cor-tee-lay. I grew up (in the 70s/80s) listening to oldies radio with my mom so the Everly Brothers were no problem. I was a bit dumbfounded by the TS of the Love Boat but my (younger) husband had no idea for that either. I assume it’s a sign of something that he and I have talked about before - the divide between people who grew up with limited channels and those who grew up with tons of cable channels, including ones catering specifically to kids. I watched a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t have chosen to watch if there were better options, but ... there weren’t! 🙂 I thought FJ was super easy although I appreciated that they quoted the “tricky” part (Frost always said that poem was a bit tricky). Looking forward to seeing teebax on the show tomorrow!

FJ: I sat there thinking "influencing"? But that was a generic word and 2008 seemed a little early for it. Nothing else came to me. As for the "streaking" - I think James is wanting to show that he's not TriviaBot9000, but as I said before, he's a little awkward.

I got The Glass Menagerie, but I think it's one of those situations where the less you know, the better. I saw 1944 American play and the only playwrights even in the ballpark who occur to me right away are Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. Fragile and shelf got me to the right answer from there. I don't like James, exactly, but I accept that he is probably just an awkward person and he's very good at this game.

Interesting that he has a Bachelor's in Math. And thanks for pointing this out, I have to explain this a lot when people are surprised on the occasions I figure something out more quickly (or more accurately) than my husband, who has a PhD in Math. Try going out to dinner with a table full of mathematicians ... But yes, it looks like James has always been good at mental math, according to his brother.

Yeah, I had to borrow money to get flight/hotel from Denver to San Francisco for the audition. (And I feel you on the grad student thing, we paid for the trip to tape the show out of my husband's grad student stipend ... which was also our only income.)

Well, I feel her there. I was so mad when I lost because we really could not afford the expense of the trip and I felt like I'd just let everyone down.

"Rare earth" meant absolutely nothing to me, nor did the atomic number, so I first thought of Californium for FJ and then settled on Francium. I'd heard of Americium (Mr. Place asked if that was a real element - hey, his PhD is in Math, not Chemistry), but not Europium.

I don't see how James doesn't fit into the category of ordinary people eager to test their knowledge. As far as I know, he's not a genetically engineered Jeopardy machine. He's good, very good, and it might look hopeless for the other contestants, but something will happen and he'll be beaten. Maybe it'll take long enough that the person who will beat him is taking his advice right now, reading voraciously through the children's section of their library to cram in as much info as possible, who knows.

I'm contemplating a strategy of going DD-hunting the second you get a clue right, and when you find it, betting $50. I know, I know ... but hear me out. If you get it, sure you "should have" bet more in hindsight, but if you don't, you haven't lost anything significant. If you could just get control of the board a few times (which contestants do) and be lucky enough with your strategic choice of clues (the strategic part has left much to be desired in most games so far), you could remove all of the DDs and neutralize a big part of James' accumulation of wealth. You still have the buzzer monster to contend with, but there's then a finite amount of money on the board. Just something I'm kicking around.

Well, my expectations were low given the show's history over the last couple of seasons in particular, and they were essentially met. It felt like it should be over here, without the epilogue, but I guess we'll see if that adds anything. My favorite things involve Ed, as always. Particularly Ed and Oswald, those two crazy kids. I liked how much of their last scene involved three of them really - Oswald, Ed and Ed's reflection. Nyssa bored me and highlighted one of my complaints about these last episodes in general - why are we trotting out new people when you know you're winding down? She didn't give a particularly epic feel to the battles of the last episodes. And Bane - eh. I think Bruce said the device would attract "certain flying mammals" and Selina said "What flying mammals?" and I'm like seriously, I know you never really went to school but come on, there's only one flying mammal. I always appreciate when they remember they even had previous stories.

For FJ, I got Henry, Edward and ... then I was stumped. So frustrating because the name George didn't even occur to me. How is that possible with the American Revolution and more importantly, Prince George?! Oh well. I came in late because Jeopardy was shown at a different time due to basketball(?) - what happened with the DD in the first round? When I tuned in it was gone and everyone had low scores. I assume James got it and got it wrong?

I got Aquaman right away although I had no idea if it was part of the correct franchise because I know essentially nothing about DC or Marvel so I could have easily been guessing something from the wrong side of the tracks. My husband, like others who, heard “seeking” and had a tougher time with it.

Well, I'll be the first to say I don't make a difference in the world - I'm an artist, just a small-timer not making any grand political statements etc. I'm okay with that. Not everyone has to be a philanthropist or otherwise devoted to the betterment of the world. I don't see that a sports bettor is making the world an appreciably worse place so I'm fine with that. As for having plenty of money already and yet still wanting to acquire more on Jeopardy - I don't see that as a crime either. Who knows what he is going to do with it and what effect that will have. I am intrigued by his success and the excerpts from the interviews remind me that we only see such a small slice of who a person is on the show.

This was a good FJ for husbands, apparently. I was thinking about that little outpost of Russia that's on the other side of Finland* (which has been part of Russia for longer than 2014, is much smaller, and I couldn't come up with the name anyway beyond "starts with a K"), but my husband said, "Hm, isn't the answer Crimea?" *I mean, it's not bordering Finland, it's just separated from Russia and to the west.

I would absolutely be in for a Year of Wow. I’m guessing they can spare it if it’s even a consideration for them. But my husband and I made a couple of international moves for post-doc positions that cost more than they paid and in spite of setting us back financially, I would not trade the experiences for the money. I got Iwo Jima, although I thought it was kind of a tough one for the Final just because of trying to figure out how to word it and then writing it all down in the time allotted, and that’s just if you had it immediately. I would have wondered if just “Iwo Jima” would have been enough and then thinking if “the flag raising at Iwo Jima” was better or worse because less is usually better so you don’t screw up some minor thing, etc etc ... I would have been hard-pressed to decide and write it in the 30 seconds.

My husband and I were discussing this very fact this morning. Jeff not saying "after the votes are read the decision is final," etc had significance, and I'm wondering about this change to the script too. But I couldn't really come up with anything that seemed plausible, just some vague feeling that maybe these aren't guaranteed to be on the final jury.