Jeopardy! Season 36 (2019-2020)

[Katy M]

I didn't get FJ.  I said Chattanooga 'cause why not?

I did get guard and Foucault's Pendulum.

I said grenade instead of shrapnel.  Like grenade would be someone's last name.  Silly me.

I think they should have asked for a BMS on Medici.  

[Browncoat]

I was really surprised that Mr Science in the middle missed FJ.  Oak Ridge was an instaget for me — it’s not terribly far away from where I grew up.

I also got the TS of guard, business, Jacksonville, and Foucault’s Pendulum, and I was not sad that Jennifer won again.

[chessiegal]

I would have been embarrassed not to get FJ. When I worked for ATF (which made it into J! tonight - woohoo!), I visited the DOE Oak Ridge Lab. Lots of jokes about things glowing in the dark.

[saber5055]

3 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

I knew it had to have something to do with horses - I loved how his books always had some relation to racing.

Mr. Francis was a steeplechase jockey, and rode four seasons for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. I liked that his books were good stories that didn't need to stray from pretty much a G rating. I was sad when he passed away.

[Clanstarling]

6 minutes ago, saber5055 said:

Mr. Francis was a steeplechase jockey, and rode four seasons for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. I liked that his books were good stories that didn't need to stray from pretty much a G rating. I was sad when he passed away.

I'd forgotten that he rode for the Queen. But other than that, I knew about his background. His wife did his research, and his books suffered after she died. His books were the one thing I had in common with my MiL (except the mister, of course.)

[saber5055]

I follow WaPo journalist Dan Zak on Twitter. He authored a book, "Almighty: Courage, Resistance and Existential Peril in the Nuclear Age," and is an expert on nuclear everything. He interviewed Sister Megan Rice, a Catholic nun, who was 82 years old when she and two companions, ages 63 and 57, cut through the fence at Oak Ridge and painted anti-nuke symbols on the building walls. They remained there in protest until they were arrested. Most employees and locals had no idea what was going on at Oak Ridge. Scary as heck.

[kathyk2]

I was happy Denise knew Worcester Mass. I live there and most people have no clue where it is. I was shocked that Jennifer was the only one to get Final Jeopardy right. Alex needs to stop commenting on her bets as long as she wins who cares?

[BuckeyeLou]

2 hours ago, Katy M said:

I didn't get FJ.  I said Chattanooga 'cause why not?

I did get guard and Foucault's Pendulum.

I said grenade instead of shrapnel.  Like grenade would be someone's last name.  Silly me.

I think they should have asked for a BMS on Medici.  

Definitely should have asked for more info on Which Medici!  There were several famous diMedicis.  And yea, I said grenade too 🙂

[annzeepark914]

It still amazes me how fast they come up with the answers.  I can see the answer in my mind but I need another minute to provide a name for it. Pleased to get TS - bowler (hat). I laughed when the clue was about a second most populated city with an awkward name - Woooostahhh. Alex was kind and spelled it after he provided the correct name, Worcester. I enjoyed tonight's game and contestants.

[Grundoon59]

The sinus surgery fog is lifting.  I got FJ thanks to drives down I-75 from Michigan to points south - goes quite near there and Mother Grundoon has a high school friend whose husband was assigned there in the WWII era.

Worcester was also a road trip get.  My late aunt lived in Maine and we have driven through there frequently.  I have the worst luck with traffic there.  Seems like a lovely town but I'd rather not spend 45 minutes standing still looking at it.

[peeayebee]

3 hours ago, Katy M said:

I said grenade instead of shrapnel.  Like grenade would be someone's last name.  Silly me.

Hey, I was thinking cannonball. 😄 

I got was bowler and muslin.

When Jennifer's answer of Oak Ridge was revealed, it was a big DUH moment for me.

[Bastet]

I missed tonight's game, so just read the archive - yay, Jennifer!

The bowler, business, guard, muslin, and verismo clues were all ones I thought at least one contestant would know, but no real surprise TS in this game.  I'm not surprised Jacksonville was a TS, but I am surprised only one contestant took a guess at it.  (In that same category, I was amused by the wording of the Worcester clue, as the Boston accent pronunciation has long tickled me.)

I had no idea some ticks can go over a year without feeding, so that was my bit of trivia for the day.  Thanks, Jeopardy!

[Katy M]

9 hours ago, kathyk2 said:

I was happy Denise knew Worcester Mass. I live there and most people have no clue where it is. I was shocked that Jennifer was the only one to get Final Jeopardy right. Alex needs to stop commenting on her bets as long as she wins who cares?

I know where it is (more or less) and I know how to pronounce it:) I have even been there once.

[peeayebee]

9 hours ago, Bastet said:

I had no idea some ticks can go over a year without feeding, so that was my bit of trivia for the day.  Thanks, Jeopardy!

Yes, thanks and ewww.

[proserpina65]

15 hours ago, Katy M said:

said grenade instead of shrapnel.  Like grenade would be someone's last name.  Silly me.

Well, before I learned about Mr. Shrapnel, I would never have thought that was someone's name either.  I read that years ago, and it stuck with me.

[saber5055]

Having multiple dogs and living in the cornfields where all sorts of varminty critters also live has given me full knowledge of tick life. I knew they hang out all winter waiting for spring thaw so they can fall on me and my dogs. Last week I had a discussion about possums eating ticks. Truth is, possums eat the ticks they pull of their own bodies, which they can do because of the "thumbs" on their back feet, and they clean themselves like a cat. It's like they are wearing their lunch.

Enjoy your breakfast everyone.

[Tabasco Cat]

Will no one rid me of this tedious refugee from a wax museum?

Edited December 13, 2019 by Tabasco Cat

[M. Darcy]

Damn, she’s good.

The only one I could think of was Lillian Hellman and I knew it was wrong because she refused to testify and she’s probably considered more a playwright than an author. 

[Sharpie66]

The two TS I got were McKinley and CSI, and I got FJ after thinking for a while, but I would have managed to get “Rand” written before time was up. 

[Browncoat]

I got hung up on the movie part of FJ, and couldn’t think of any authors, woman or otherwise.  But I did get McKinley and mall.  Granted, I got McKinley because he was the only president from Ohio I could think of off the top of my head, but I did get it. 

[wilsie]

I like Jennifer a lot.  She's very smart and has eased herself into almost $200,000.  

[zoey1996]

1 hour ago, M. Darcy said:

Damn, she’s good.

The only one I could think of was Lillian Hellman and I knew it was wrong because she refused to testify and she’s probably considered more a playwright than an author. 

I also thought of Hellman.  😕

[BuckeyeLou]

8 minutes ago, zoey1996 said:

I also thought of Hellman.  😕

Same here, I thought of Lillian Hellman...

[peeayebee]

I said Gertrude Stein, but I think I was trying to think of Lillian Hellman. 🤔

The only TS I got was CSI.

Jennifer sure is impressive.

[biakbiak]

I hate Rand with a passion so it was an IG. I like to know a lot about my enemies!

[solarfire]

I'm really liking Jennifer a lot.  She seems so shocked that she's still there, making a lot of money and "living the dream".  It's so endearing!  It was also cute at the end where she was showing Alex how shaky her hands were, but calm enough to be the only one with the correct answer in FJ.  Lol.

My TS was CSI.  Surprised no one knew it.  And a shout out to Taraji P. Henson for Person of Interest.  Loved her on that show.

[Mystery Author]

Finished our Mamma Mia run (I had a blast!) and I'm now rehearsing for the Christmas musical (Panto) GRINCHED. I'm catching J! every night, but usually too tired to post on the forum.

Re: FJ: Ethel Rosenberg E. Roosevelt has to be one of the dumbest answers I've seen in a long time.  I did the alphabet thing, got to A, thought Ayn, but might not have had time to write down Ayn Rand.

Me: "Why don't they have a MEN AUTHOR category?"

Mr. Author: "You say that every time."

[SpiritSong]

On 12/11/2019 at 7:53 PM, kathyk2 said:

I was happy Denise knew Worcester Mass. I live there and most people have no clue where it is. I was shocked that Jennifer was the only one to get Final Jeopardy right. Alex needs to stop commenting on her bets as long as she wins who cares?

I like Jennifer but her "Uhh....(long pause) before naming the clue she wants is annoying AF. And whenever Alex says there is less than a minute to go she always picks the lowest value clue instead of the one that will add the most to her total. What's up with that? And I don't understand her miniscule wagers. Tonight she found the DD very early in the game. Instead of wagering her entire $1800 she bet $600, on a $400 clue! But, she's a seven day champion, so it's clearly working for her. I am rooting for her to go over the $200,000 mark. Her breadth of knowledge is impressive.

[MrAtoz]

Jennifer is interesting, in that she's doing better than she sometimes seems to be.  In the game a couple of nights ago, I thought that she was looking weaker, and the other two contestants seemed to be ringing in a lot and giving a lot of right answers.  I was thinking that maybe this was the game Jennifer was going to lose.  I was absolutely shocked when they got to the end, and she had a runaway lead.

Her Daily Double wagers are on the timid side, and she's probably lost out on a lot of money that she could have had.  But then again, she's made almost $200,000 in only seven games, so who I to criticize?  She does seem very nervous at times, which is a little surprising at this point when she's been such a dominant player.  I have to keep reminding myself that for her, this has all happened within a couple of days.  I can see how she's a bit overwhelmed by it all.

When do we start calling her "Jeopardy Jennifer," to go along with Jeopardy James and Jeopardy Jason?  I think we've finally cracked the secret to winning big on the show--have a name that starts with J!

[Clanstarling]

13 hours ago, M. Darcy said:

Damn, she’s good.

The only one I could think of was Lillian Hellman and I knew it was wrong because she refused to testify and she’s probably considered more a playwright than an author. 

I thought of Hellman first, then thought "wrong politics" and went for the one I knew would have happily testified in the manner stated.

[M. Darcy]

I knew Oak Ridge because I used to live in Knoxville but once again, The Simpsons has all the answers. 

From Bart on the Road "First things first-Where is Knoxville? It's in Tennessee, right next to the Oak Ridge nuclear facility birthplace of the atomic bomb." 

[saber5055]

5 hours ago, MrAtoz said:

I think we've finally cracked the secret to winning big on the show--have a name that starts with J!

There's a discussion about just that on today's TheJeopardyFan.com. I found it interesting, being a J name myself. IRL anyway. Unfortunately, it has not made me any smarter.

I thought of everyone here with the FJ category of WOMAN Authors. Then there was that darned giveaway in the clue, "she." No doubt put there in case you didn't notice "Woman" in the category.

[Bastet]

Between skipping the airing for football and Christmas shopping fatigue, I was pleasantly buzzed by the time I read the archive last night.  There were only two TS I'd have thought someone would know - CSI (I've never seen a minute of any of those shows, but the main casts of the big ones are easy to pick up via pop culture osmosis, never mind when studying for this game) and Luna/Lunik - and neither truly surprised me; it seemed like a good game on "paper".

Go ahead, Jennifer!

The Rhymes With a Season category belonged in the first round, not DJ, but I'll grant "up-and-comer" was a tough one in context.

Another Women Authors category.  It's basically trolling at this point.

[saber5055]

Thursday's FJ made me think of The Oak Ridge Boys, so I looked them up to see if they were from that glowing town. Turns out they are from Texas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Alabama, and were originally named the Georgia Clodhoppers. Seriously! While living in Knoxville, Tenn., they played regular gigs in Oak Ridge, so changed the group's name to the Oak Ridge Quartet. This in the 1940s. They became the Oak Ridge Boys in 1966.

Ya'll will thank me when they are a Jeopardy! category.

[Bastet]

I won't be home tonight, so I checked the archive, and according to what's written there, Lisa was given credit for "McDonald's" in FJ.  If accurate, that's bullshit; the clue asked for the guy's last name, not the name of his restaurant.  I don't care that it still put her in third place; having to avoid making that dumb mistake was the only thing that made the clue slightly more challenging than Toddler Tournament level to begin with.

Bar was a surprising TS.

While I didn't know the Matrix character (but did know that was the film; I've somehow picked up Neo = The Matrix via cultural osmosis), I was a little surprised none of them did, either.  Isn't that franchise incredibly popular?  (So are Star Wars and The Princess Bride, and I didn't know those, either - bad category for me after the first two clues.)

I didn't know a single one of the Literary TV Adaptations clues, either, yikes.  But I did get everything else in DJ, including all the Pope clues, even though Vatican II was my joke guess.

[Browncoat]

I couldn't for the life of me think of the character's name in The Matrix.  Do you think they would have accepted, "That guy played by Laurence Fishburne?"  Yeah, I didn't think so.

Similarly, my first response for "Higgs Boson" was "god particle" -- I like to think that would have been accepted.

FJ was an instaget for once.

[Grundoon59]

Just as I was being so proud of two Michiganders being contestants together, Elmore Leonard is a TS.  😂

Not sure I would do any better but yikes Lisa was making some off the wall guesses which made me think - is it better to guess wildly or not guess at all?

[SpiritSong]

44 minutes ago, Bastet said:

I won't be home tonight, so I checked the archive, and according to what's written there, Lisa was given credit for "McDonald's" in FJ.  If accurate, that's bullshit; the clue asked for the guy's last name, not the name of his restaurant.  I don't care that it still put her in third place; having to avoid making that dumb mistake was the only thing that made the clue slightly more challenging than Toddler Tournament level to begin with.

It was a very poorly worded clue. I immediately said Ray Kroc. For some unknown reason they probably would have counted that wrong.

[chessiegal]

I'm going to be picky and say "hot water heater" should not have been ruled correct. It's a water heater.

[Bastet]

2 hours ago, chessiegal said:

I'm going to be picky and say "hot water heater" should not have been ruled correct. It's a water heater.

I laughed at that one, because until it came up in the House Hunters thread a while back, I had no idea how many people said "hot water heater" -- I guess it's common enough to be an acceptable J! answer.

3 hours ago, SpiritSong said:

It was a very poorly worded clue.

I didn't find anything wrong with the clue ("it's the last name of the man who said {quote}" is straightforward and the category is "business namesakes" so that last name has to be part of the business), just her answer; his last name is McDonald, not McDonald's.

Edited December 14, 2019 by Bastet

[opus]

3 hours ago, Bastet said:

having to avoid making that dumb mistake was the only thing that made the clue slightly more challenging than Toddler Tournament level to begin with.

Good to know.

 I said Kroc.

[peeayebee]

I got Morpheus, Elmore Leonard, and You, which I've never watched, but had heard of. 

I guess I'd forgotten that McDonald's wasn't originally owned by Ray Kroc, so I didn't have an answer for FJ.

[Sharpie66]

I would have gone for the Nellie Bly category right away—I named my cat after her, since she’s one of my childhood heroines. (My cat didn’t hide for a second when I brought her home from the shelter but explored. I said she went around the apartment in 72 minutes, so she became Nellie instead of her old name Mango.)

I remember a few years ago when Nellie Bly was a FJ answer that no one got. Highly disappointed in those contestants!

Edited December 14, 2019 by Sharpie66

[zoey1996]

9 hours ago, peeayebee said:

I got Morpheus, Elmore Leonard, and You, which I've never watched, but had heard of. 

I guess I'd forgotten that McDonald's wasn't originally owned by Ray Kroc, so I didn't have an answer for FJ.

I'd never heard of Elmore Leonard that I can recall.  Also didn't get You; I said It.

I wasn't listening closely enough to FJ, so I said Kroc. 

[Clanstarling]

13 hours ago, Bastet said:

While I didn't know the Matrix character (but did know that was the film; I've somehow picked up Neo = The Matrix via cultural osmosis), I was a little surprised none of them did, either.  Isn't that franchise incredibly popular?  (So are Star Wars and The Princess Bride, and I didn't know those, either - bad category for me after the first two clues.)

I thought one of them answered "The Matrix."

13 hours ago, Browncoat said:

I couldn't for the life of me think of the character's name in The Matrix.  Do you think they would have accepted, "That guy played by Laurence Fishburne?"  Yeah, I didn't think so.

Had the same experience. Very frustrating, I've watched that movie at least half a dozen times (or at least bits of it).

13 hours ago, SpiritSong said:

It was a very poorly worded clue. I immediately said Ray Kroc. For some unknown reason they probably would have counted that wrong.

It would have been wrong, because it wasn't Kroc. The original burger place was owned by a guy named McDonald and Kroc bought it from him.  There's a pretty good Michael Keaton movie "Founder" (he plays Kroc) about how it happened. Fun piece of trivia - Mark Knopfler's song "Boom Like That" is about Kroc.

[saber5055]

12 hours ago, opus said:

I said Kroc.

I said Sonic. The clue referenced speed, and slow carhops. While Sonic isn't a great last name (neither is Shrapnel), it does mean speed, and Sonic has carhops, some wearing roller skates. A+W also has/had carhops, but I tossed that one out.

McDonald('s) never occurred to me.

I wear Crocs. And I love them.

[Bastet]

3 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

I thought one of them answered "The Matrix."

One of them did.  But none of them knew the character's name (nor did I; I knew it was someone from a Matrix movie, but I've never seen them and Neo is the only name from them I've picked up through cultural osmosis, so I had no shot at guessing who was talking to him [him? her? it?]).

[peeayebee]

4 hours ago, zoey1996 said:

I'd never heard of Elmore Leonard that I can recall. 

First time I heard of him was when Get Shorty came out.

Quote

Also didn't get You...

Well, I don't get you either. 😛

2 hours ago, saber5055 said:

I said Sonic. The clue referenced speed, and slow carhops.

That's the first thing that occurred to me, too, but I knew that couldn't be it unless it was founded by Bob Sonic.

[saber5055]

11 minutes ago, peeayebee said:

That's the first thing that occurred to me, too, but I knew that couldn't be it unless it was founded by Bob Sonic.

I was going to crack up if it turned out Bob Sonic founded that chain. So I looked it up and it was Troy Smith. So close ... no cigar.

[SyracuseMug]

5 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

It would have been wrong, because it wasn't Kroc. The original burger place was owned by a guy named McDonald and Kroc bought it from him.

It wasn't one guy. It was two. The brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald founded the chain fifteen years before Ray Kroc bought them out in 1955. I have no idea which brother made the statement referenced in the clue, but I'm wondering if a BMS should have been required. Maybe not, if the question asked for only the last name. I can't recall. But a BMS probably would have guaranteed that none of the three players would have answered correctly.