Two recent season 25 Coryats:
originally 2-2-09: 28400 (30600 without negs)
originally 2-3-09: 32800 (36000 without negs)
Today’s contestants!
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| Betsy Chisolm of Greeley CO |
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| Martin Powell of Bowie MD |
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| Susan Petracco of Viera FL |
Did any of you former contestants think of contestant coordinator Maggie when the category Send Me a Text was revealed? She makes a big point during her spiel that she’s never sent a text in her life (at least as of December last year!). I heard the spiel twice since I taped on Wednesday and not Tuesday of that week.
Betsy won her first (only?) game yesterday. I was not very surprised she went to Literary Houses first today – yesterday she kept going back to the category about female authors. She got 3 of the 5 today. And she is, after all, a “volunteer storyteller”! Mr. Trebek asked her about this today. She reads fantasies, fairy tales and folk tales to first- and second-graders. I just went to the library today – Does you walk on air like I do when I get a stack of appealing books? I’m working on “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser, which I learned of when I was perusing that book of New York Times Book Reviews. Have you guys read it? It’s really good!
I got this triple-stumper in the Jeopardy round’s The English Beat, and I pre-called Mr. Trebek correcting his little boo-boo (adding “The” to the band name when revealing the correct response): “Perhaps Euterpe inspires Dominic Howard when he drums for this ‘Black Holes and Revelations’ band.” I must admit I wouldn’t have gotten this one without the “Euterpe” TOM.
That was the last clue before the first break. Betsy had gotten 8 right and had 4400! Okay like for real, I wasn’t gonna mention it but this number “4400” keeps coming up in recent episodes! There’s yesterday, here, here, here, and here, all from this season. And it seems like there are more! It stands out to me because it was my total at the end of my episode. Anyway Susan had gotten 3 right and had 1000. Martin had gotten one right and had 200.
Martin found the first Daily Double of the game! It was in The Hudson River. He’d gotten 2 right and one wrong since the break and had 1200. Susan had gotten one wrong and had 600. Betsy had gotten one right and had 4800. Starting now Martin appeared nervous to me, sometimes stammering just a little bit. He wagered all on this clue: “This Italian explorer reached the Hudson river in 1524, 85 years before Henry Hudson.” Martin and I got it wrong.
I’m gonna take time from now on and read how categories are spelled before I start playing – I always have my head down writing them! I might not have clammed here if I’d known the spelling was Shrink Rap: “This development of close relationships with family members & friends sounds like you’re gluing them together.” The correct response crossed my mind but I ruled it out.
We got to see every clue in the Jeopardy round! Betsy got an impressive 8 more right and one wrong since Martin’s Daily Double, and had 9400. Susan had gotten 2 right and had 1400. Martin had gotten one wrong and was in the hole 600.
Martin didn’t dread opera – He started with that category in the Double Jeopardy round. He got two of them right, and Betsy got two. Susan got two in Words in U.S. Capitals, then came this triple-stumper which I got: “This noodle in California’s.” (You have to know the capital, then think of the appropriate word within that word.) Susan got the next one right, then found the Daily Double. It was still pretty early, and she’d gotten 3/4 right in the category. And she was way behind. She had 4200, Betsy had 11400, and Martin had 1400. She wagered 3000, which I think is a pretty good wager, on this clue: “This Roman poet in Rhode Island’s.” She and I got it right before the clue had moved out of the way!
Martin then swung back, getting 3/5 in Who “R-U”. Betsy, though, found the next Daily Double in The English Beat. Yes, it’s the same category name as in the Jeopardy round! That category was about British drummers. This one was about battles in which the English were involved. Betsy still had a commanding lead, having gotten 2 right since Susan’s Daily Double. Betsy had 13400, Susan had 7600 (one right), and Martin had 3400 (3 right and one wrong). There were 10 clues left after this one, and no warning yet that time was running out. Betsy wagered 2000. I think that’s reasonable. Here is the clue:
So you see she missed it, but there was not too much harm done. With 7 clues left, Mr. Trebek gave the less-than-a-minute warning. Bravo for Martin for cut Mr. Trebek off during the warning and went to a 2000 clue! Susan too took a 2000 clue when she got the chance. Alas, 2 clues were left covered. Betsy had gotten 6 right since that second Daily Double of the round, and to make matters worse for Susan, 2 of those were clues Betsy picked up when Susan negged on them. 🙁 As a result, Betsy just had a lock on the game with 18600 to Susan’s 9200 and Martin’s 5800. (Susan and Martin had also each gotten 2 right since the second Daily Double of the round.)
The Final Jeopardy category was Children’s Rhymes. This might be one of my favorites in a while. Til now I didn’t know I could have a favorite Final! Here it is: “Oddly, this mammalian character with a rhyming name suffers from alopecia.” True to form, Betsy had the right answer and her opponents did not. Martin lost 3400. Susan lost 2401. Betsy gained 2200, giving her a 2-day total of $25,999. So for Andy to put Betsy on the upper chunk of the ToC list tomorrow, she would have to win and with $28,001. It could happen!
I don’t mind Betsy at all. She strikes me as perhaps a little eccentric but not too much, and well-read.
My Coryat today was 25600; 29200 without negs. By the time, since I’m not blogging tomorrow and Andy is, I’ll mention it now: Tomorrow (the 24th) is my one-year anniversary of getting The Jeopardy Call.