Today’s contestants were 2-time champ Mike Hodel, Dylan Payne, and Carol Denny.  Dylan said during his interview that he had been married ten days to a former contestant named “Meredith,” who I’ve determined from the Jeopardy! message boards is Meredith Robbins.  Her episodes aired almost exactly two years ago.
     I recorded today’s episode on a VCR at my parents’.  After the commercial break, I accidentally fast-forwarded through some of the category names.  My dad likes to give a thumbs-up or -down to each category (and I like it when he does that).  I rewound so he could do that and I said something about it out loud, but my dad had picked up the newspaper while I fast-forwarded, and he was completely oblivious to the categories and to what I had said.  🙂  Oh well.
     At the end of the Jeopardy round, Mike had 3400, Dylan had 6400, and Carol had 5000.  Did you guys know this triple-stumper in The Hound of Music?: “Title question posed by Patti Page in a 1953 smash.”*  My mom and I answered it, and my dad knew it too.  My dad said that it was his favorite song when he was a kid, and my mom said  it was hers, too!  I guess I just guessed on it not knowing it was a real song.  I guess I thought it was just an old song that everyone knows, like “The Farmer in the Dell.”
     When Mike found the first Daily Double in Libraries, he had 7400, Dylan had 9600, and Carol had 13400.  Mike wagered everything (!) on this clue: “Raffaele Farina, known as Bibliothecarius XLVI, is its head librarian.”*  Mike got it right and so did I. 
     The other Daily Double was the last clue of the round.  My dad had just gotten done asking if there wasn’t another Daily Double left on the board.  Carol found it, in Jersey Girls.  She had 14600, Mike had 20000, and Dylan had 12000.  She wagered 4000 on this clue: “Governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001, she appointed the state’s first female attorney general.”*  She got it right.  I knew it and one of my parents did, too.
     The Final Jeopardy category was Prisons.  Here is the clue: “Nazi Rudolf Hess in 1941 and the notorious Kray twins in 1952 were among the last people briefly held here.”*  I guessed Dachau, which I was glad to learn was the guess of at least one other person (someone on the Jeopardy! message boards), even though he said he was kind of embarrassed about the guess.  The answer stumped the three contestants and the three of us watching, too.  Dylan wagered everything (which I’d have done, too).  Carol lost 5401.  Mike lost a whopping 17300, making Carol the winner today.  Do you guys think she is strong enough to win more than one game?

*”How Much is That Doggie in the Window,” the Vatican, Christine Whitman, the Tower of London