First, in case you missed my previous post, there was an issue with leaving comments where I was not receiving them and thus could not publish them. This seems to have been resolved now. I hope you will resubmit your comments on previous posts! I would still love to see them.
On to today’s episode: We found out today what 2-day champ Jeff Johnson, who’d been identified as a “transcriber,” actually transcribes: “news shows and TV shows,” as Mr. Trebek put it. No wonder Jeff is Jeopardy! champion. I always thought it would be fun to be a closed captioner, and I’d still like to try it one day. If you don’t currently use your closed captioning, I recommend it. My family and I have had some hearty laughs from it. For example, during one tennis match we were watching, the closed captioner, obviously not a fan, referred to a phantom let as a “fat up left” and the Bryan Brothers as “the Brine Brothers.”
Did you wonder what response the judges were looking for after J.R. Lind (yes, lanky) responded “horse tack” to this clue in Parts of a Whole?: “Cheek strap, snaffle rein.” Mr. Trebek looked at the judges, who decided to accept it, but he didn’t say what they wanted. I think “bridle.”
At the beginning of Double Jeopardy, Jeff was in third place at 2200 and thus selected first again. I believe he only answered one clue in that round until there were the equivalent of two categories remaining. When stay-at-home mom Felicia Ko found the first Daily Double of the round, she had 13000, J.R. had 10200, and Jeff had 3200. It felt a little desperate (but maybe it wasn’t!) when Jeff skipped to the bottom of the board and selected a 2000 clue. But the match felt more competitive after that. At the end of the round, Jeff had 10600, Felicia had 14200, and J.R. had 14600.
This was the Final Jeopardy clue, in American Politicians: “Frank Sinatra came out of retirement to sing their praises; “They’re both unique…the Quaker & the Greek.”* Coincidentally, J.R. had mentioned one of these names in his interview with Mr. Trebek after the first commercial break. Furthermore, after I looked him up on Twitter, I learned this “newspaper reporter” covers politics for the Nashville Post. Naturally, he answered this clue correctly, and so did the other two. Also no big surprise, J.R. wagered more than 13000. He needed to anyway in order to win if Felicia doubled her score. So he is your new champ, and with a healthy haul. I hope he can make it at least two.
*Nixon and Agnew