Andy here; it’s an all-text recap today; sorry that I won’t be able to have any pictures, but I’ve been having some issues with my normal watching as of late!
Deepa Savatzky and Keith Whitener are the challengers today for Betsy Chisolm ($25,999, 2 day champ)
THE RUM DIARIES, GREAT IDEAS, BEASTLY COLLECTIVES, TV THEME SONG HITS, THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE, WHICH WORD IS MIZPELED?
A few costly negs, especially in GREAT IDEAS, led to the two ladies in the red early on! It didn’t help that Keith got to the Daily Double at the bottom of that category! Your scores:
Keith $1,200
Betsy $-1,000
Deepa $-1,000
Keith bet only $500. His clue: In 1971 3 guys at this company first put a computer CPU on a chip. His correct response put him at $1,700
I found the WHICH WORD IS MIZPELED very difficult, to be honest! I think I’ve seen so many misspellings of things that my brain is just trained to understand what the word is supposed to be! I did like the category, though, and might introduce it into one of my own games!
At the first break, we had scores of:
Keith $2,900
Betsy -$200
Deepa -$200
Deepa got her mojo going and ran BEASTLY COLLECTIVES to bring herself back into the lead right out of the break. Betsy had some good gets in THE RUM DIARIES and TV THEME SONG HITS to put her score in the right direction as well!
Sadly, our players left some clues on the table in THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE; I was hoping to see Nixon’s near-landslide in 1972 as one of the clues!
At the end of our first round, we had our scores at:
Keith $4,500
Deepa $4,200
Betsy $3,400
DJ! Round categories: THE FORMER EASTERN BLOC, COMMUNICATION, WHAT THE DICKENS!, THE 2012 OLYMPICS, THE GUN FIGHT AT…, THE “OK” CORRAL
The first Daily Double came out early! WHAT THE DICKENS! 1200 had it, and Betsy got to play it. Scores were as follows:
Keith $4,900
Betsy $4,600
Deepa $4,200
Betsy bet $2,000. Her clue: This novel set in London & Paris was first published serially in 1859. Betsy knew right away; her score went to $6,600!
Hurting Keith more was the $2,000 neg (picked up by Betsy) on the following clue (Little Nell, but not the proverbial cat, dies in this 1840-41 work); can a Jeopardy! game ever change in an instant!
Keith seemed very disinterested to me as we moved through the Double Jeopardy! round; his lack of applause when Betsy hit the Daily Doubles was very noticable, rare, and telling! Speaking of which, Betsy hit a Video Daily Double (time for me to start cursing!) at THE FORMER EASTERN BLOC $1600. Scores:
Betsy $14,600
Deepa $5,400
Keith $4,500
Betsy bet $2,000. Her clue: This present-day country used to be part of a larger nation, and kept the old flag, seen here. Sadly, Betsy wasn’t as up on her European flags, and her incorrect response dropped her to $12,600. Being a hockey fan, I see that specific flag quite a bit!
(Fortunately, the flag is easy to find a separate copy of!)
I’ll be honest: I have a great deal of difficulty cheering for contestants that actively try to stay away from sports categories. Keith did pretty well for himself in THE 2012 OLYMPICS to bring him close, but not quite close enough to take the lead!
Scores going into FJ!:
Betsy $17,800
Keith $12,500
Deepa $8,600
FJ! category: THE ELEMENTS
FJ! clue: This element was discovered extraterrestrially in 1868; it took 27 more years until someone isolated it on earth
Deepa 8600 -1600 = 7000
Keith 12500 + 12500 = 25000
Betsy 17800 – 8800 = 9000
I found this to be a pretty difficult Final and thought Keith did well to get it; of course, I then remembered that he is a person that works in a science laboratory! His lucky day, for sure!
He’ll be back tomorrow to defend; I’ll be back tomorrow to recap!