GreekGeek

I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one thinking this. I don't normally root against people, but he seemed so joyless, as if the whole experience was a horrible ordeal. I did feel bad when the audience laughed at his Mel Gibson FJ answer. Cecil B. DeMille isn't necessarily on your radar if you're young and not into old movies, and there haven't been many directors making Bible-based movies lately. Other than The Passion of the Christ and the one with Russell Crowe as Noah, have there been any live-action ones in the past 20 years? The Florida Turnpike clue and the mention of Yeehaw Junction took me back to my life in Florida in the 90's. I wondered if Alligator Alley would have been an acceptable alternative answer, but apparently they're not the same. I also wasn't sure if Romania would have been accepted in place of Transylvania. I had no idea about 88 having any particular connotations.

IIRC, the word was used in connection with the opera Carmen. Synopses of the opera still refer to her using the offensive term, so the writers (and the contestants and Ken) might have been thinking in terms of the way Carmen has always been historically identified.

I did not realize "Istanbul not Constantinople" went back to the doo-wop era. I thought it was a 90's song. It was on my mind as I thought "Byzantium...Constantinople...no, Istanbul! I got Water Music, stealing my thunder, Maya Angelou, Colette, the missed DD of War, and Qom. I was most surprised that Angelou was a TS, since she seems to be one of those clue-writers' faves. I wondered if there would be some mention that "gypsy" is no longer an acceptable word.

That was a good game, with three evenly matched players. New champ seems like fun; I liked his Blarney Stone story, and it’s always cool to hear a New Englander say “lobstah.” I knew arroz con pollo, the Solomon Islands, taverna, Actium, and the face that launched a thousand ships. For FJ I said rhinoceros horn, and I wondered if that would have been an acceptable answer.

I think it was the name "Oldsmobile" that (subliminally?) influenced people into thinking it was an "old fart car", rather than anything fogeyish about the car itself. In the late 60's they made ads calling it a "Youngmobile." See the first minute here.

This was my first real look at Anderson Cooper as host; I had a meeting Monday night and last night's show was largely pre-empted by the POTUS and VP's speeches on the Chauvin verdict. He's not bad, but he can be a bit slow to declare someone correct, thus slowing up the game. The champ was impressive; I felt bad for Max, who seemed very nervous. I was excited when he started to build some momentum with that geography category, but then he lost the points again. I knew Ruth and John but would have said Exodus for the DD in the Bible category. I also was surprised about no one's guessing Hamilton. I would never have connected Oldsmobile with "household name." Maybe because of this song? I said Chevrolet because of that "American Pie" line "Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry."

Another refugee from TWoP here. I discovered it right after my own Jeopardy! appearance in 2010. Nobody was snarky about me, but somebody commented that I looked familiar. I still have no idea who that was or where we may have crossed paths. I also knew the Tyrrhenian Sea from years of teaching Latin students the geography of Italy, and noble rot from a weird trivia fact: John Belushi wanted to make a movie about the wine industry called Noble Rot. I did not get William Blake, though. I guessed Edward Lear; he was the only poet/painter I could think of. I remembered the Munich Olympics because they were the first ones I followed closely and I knew about the Berlin Olympics. I would never have come up with Australia; my second choice would have been France. Dennis is amazing. You have to admire someone who can bet $7000 on a DD, miss it, and still make the game a runaway.

Yes, I thought Call of the Wild was a clue not too long ago. I got that plus Glasgow, Santo Domingo, and Horus. But I also got hung up on the rabbit in FJ, and all the bunny stories I could think of were by British authors. I knew the date was too early for Watership Down, anyway. I settled on The Velveteen Rabbit. Great game by Dennis!

I missed all but FJ last night (and said Buenos Aeres and Santiago). What did you hate about Pasquale?

OK, my memory is faulty on this. Something about the way Aaron said "We'll accept it" made it sound like they were grudgingly doing the contestant a favor. Alex would have said something more like "We don't penalize for spelling" .

I thought it was funny that he managed to say "Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky" but "Wolfgang Amadeus" was too much for him. I thought back to how beautifully Alex would have pronounced those names, especially Claude Debussy. Is there a reason "rodeo" is generally pronounced "ROH-dee-oh" but the ballet should be pronounced "Roh-DAY-oh"? I knew the Mambo Kings, Old Deuteronomy, Kingsford, and Piper. "The Producers" was the only one of the Broadway musical questions I missed. I would have bet big if I had hit that DD, and I would have cursed myself afterwards. I thought FJ was easy, and I did not think Aaron should have made a point of mentioning the misspelling of "Lizzy" when that's the sort of mistake nobody has ever been penalized for.

Frank Jacobs has passed away. His might not be the most instantly recognizable name, but if you were a reader of Mad magazine in the 60's and 70's, you remember his work.

I didn't know FJ either. I guessed Bob Barker. Thanks to @Opus for the link explaining Scott's FJ answer. The only TS I got was sackbut. If Aaron explained that "but" could appear anywhere in the word, I missed it. I thought Brandon should have been told to BMS when he said "What is the first coffeehouse?" instead of being declared wrong automatically. He won by a mile, so it didn't really matter, but still... I'm not a big fan of Aaron Rodgers' hosting, but he isn't setting my teeth on edge either. Aaron Paul?

Wow, I had no idea the real-life Alice died so young. I knew that Dennis and Hank Ketcham were estranged, but I always assumed it was because Dennis hated being depicted as a bratty kid forever. And there's another bit of my childhood gone. Dennis the Menace was part of my viewing lineup of family sitcoms during vacation mornings in the 60's and early 70's. It wasn't as memorable as Leave It to Beaver, but it was cute. Gloria Henry did well with a fairly bland role.

I finally got around to seeing this yesterday (in an actual theater!) and loved it. It felt like a totally fresh take on a story of immigrants. I was not familiar with the actors, so they were a revelation to me. I knew there would be some sort of major crisis at the end, but otherwise the film didn't go to any of the expected places. I kept waiting for one of the church people to say or do something bigoted, but nobody did, other than the kid who asked David about his "flat face." And even they ended up being friends. Every time David got to running, I was scared for him, but he turned out to be OK. And I have no experience of Korean grandmas, but this one seemed a true original. Now I want to try minari.

Right, and in Paradise Lost, Satan and Beelzebub were two different characters: Beelzebub was Satan’s second in command. Lots of TS’s in tonight’s game; I got Berkeley, the Berkshires, earthquake,Tricia Nixon, Spring Awakening, and accidentures as well as Satan. No idea on FJ. I guessed the Welsh language, thinking back to The Crown and the episode on Charles’s investiture as Prince of Wales.

What do you want to bet Bryce flops tomorrow? I knew Travers from Saving Mr. Banks, even if the movie did sugarcoat a few things. It suggested Travers was crying for joy at the Mary Poppins movie premiere, when she was actually grieving at the bowdlerization of her creation. If you want a good biography of her, I recommend Mary Poppins, She Wrote by Valerie Lawson. I also knew Jaws, bread, the Michelin DD, George Burns, John McCain, and demon. The show has a weird hangup about demanding the full names of Kennedys when they don't require it elsewhere. There was one clue a some time ago asking for JFK that included the word President. The contestant who said "Who is Kennedy?" was told to BMS. I know there have been lots of Kennedys in politics, but only one has been President. It's not just you. I was rooting against Cyndi for that very reason. ETA: Apparently other viewers found all contestants slow to choose, but she was the one who stood out for me.

Yes, we are channeling Alex.

Yes, I'm guessing she read The Butler and didn't realize they weren't asking for the title character. Like the ex-champ from a few days ago who responded to FJ with "Los Angeles" instead of a number. I would have guessed St. Petersburg instead of Moscow. I could hear Alex in my head saying, "No, the other one." Same with Tolstoy and "Dostivoisky."

Susan was really impressive. I hope she's more than a one and done. I knew Liev Schreiber, Mandarins, incontrovertible, and Catfish Row. I made a wild guess on FJ and was amazed it turned out to be right. I can't hear "incontrovertible" without hearing this jingle that I grew up hearing regularly on the radio:

You’re right, I forgot the one player did come up with a decent guess even though it was incorrect. And you’re also correct that there is no correlation between the TS’s and the host, who has no idea until the last minute what the board will be. What loyal viewer can forget the time all three players sat in silence throughout a football category? ETA: in case you forgot or missed it:

Yes, there were a lot of TS's. I got Shaw, tween, Ugg, 40 winks, combat boots, Escher, Tampa Bay, and Warhol. Interesting theory about board hopping. If you're going to play like James Holzhauer, you had better have his breadth of knowledge (and buzzer reflexes). I figured FJ would be "winter of our discontent" by the reference to December and January. Every detail is in FJ for a reason! Sad that two out of three didn't even have a guess. "Toil and trouble" isn't a bad guess. New champ is good, but I wonder how long she will last. There's been a recent pattern of people seeming like invincible juggernauts (as opposed to, say, winning by being wrong but losing the least in FJ) one day and losing the next. I'm not an Oz fan, but I thought he was an OK host, apart from the Empire/Emperor flub.

It's been awhile since I read the books too, but the following come to mind: She branded Marietta's forehead with "SNEAK", she trapped Rita Skeeter in a jar. she let Snape be set on fire, and she helped lure Umbridge to the Forbidden Forest to be terrorized by centaurs. You could argue that her victims deserved it, but it wasn't up to her to decide who should be punished and how. She also has a self-righteous and narrow-minded streak that leads her to dismiss things she doesn't understand, such as divination; or to act as if everyone must share her values, as with SPEW. I also thought it was sad that she messed with her own parents' heads to erase their memories of her existence, even if she was putting them into a magic form of witness protection.

It's been in development limbo forever, but I wish people would get their act together and bring John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces to the screen. The prospective actors to play Ignatius, from John Belushi to John Candy to Chris Farley to Philip Seymour Hoffman kept dying, but there should be a chubby young-ish character actor out there able to step into the role. It would be a mistake to cast a slob comic, though--Ignatius isn't just a flatulent fat guy but a gentleman and a scholar.

No, she didn't apologize.