Good evening Jeopardy! fans! Andy here with the Christmas Eve recap of Jeopardy!
First up: Registration opened today for the next round of online testing! January 8, 9, and 10! Go to the Jeopardy! website, sign up, and then come back and read the rest of this post!
Okay, done? Welcome back! I’m quite excited as there are auditions in Toronto this year!
This week’s contestants:
Sandip Amin, Matteson, IL
Gina Armstrong, Anniston, AL
Beth Copenhaver, Johns Creek, GA
Kris Hamilton, Dublin, OH
Nichole Mancone, Providence, RI
Tom McGrath, Chicago, IL
Paula Menasche, Coral Gables, FL
Debra Newman, Pound Ridge, NY
Allen Park, Washington, DC
Gonzalo Rufatt, Santa Fe, NM
and returning champion Mike Wallace, Sunnyside, NY
Later on the week, we may not be able to get full recaps up of all of this week’s games, but we’ve got some fun Q&As this week, though! I’m personally leaving very early Thursday morning for a Scrabble tournament in Albany, New York!
Tonight we have Gina Armstrong and Kris Hamilton battling returning champion Mike Wallace (2-day champion, $48,800 in winnings)
Interestingly enough, the 20 minute run-time of a Jeopardy! episode without commercials means that Mr. Wallace will have 60 Minutes’ worth of screen time by the end of this episode!
J! round categories:
LIFESCRIPT.COM
THE OLD TESTAMENT
ON CABLE
ADD A LETTER
IT’S A GAMBLE
THE “B”-GINNING & END OF THE COUNTRY
It has been a very long time since I’ve seen such a comprehensive domination of the buzzer like I saw from Kris to open up this game. He got clues 1, 2, 3 (on a rebound), 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13! (Reminded me of games I’d used to chart back in the summer and fall of 2004, to be honest!)
It also didn’t help that Mike made the common error on ON CABLE $600 (On HBO she plays “Veep” Selina Meyer) – the common mistake being the thought that the actress has the middle name Louise and not the compound last name that she does!
At the end of 13 clues, the show took what appears to have been a “mercy break”, ostensibly so that the contestant co-ordinators can give buzzer pointers to two players who got in a combined 3 times on the buzzer in 13 clues. At this point, the scores were:
Kris $5,400
Gina $1,000
Mike $-200
I wasn’t the biggest fan of Kris’ interview; he spoke of being a contestant at the first-ever National Geographic Bee. He seemed bitter about only making the state finals (I assume he was probably done in by a poor-ish question), and he referred to his Jeopardy! appearance as “redemption, and it’s very sweet.”)
The Kris domination show continued. Over the course of the entire round, Kris went 4/5 in LIFESCRIPT, 3/5 in THE OLD TESTAMENT, 4/5 in ON CABLE, 3/5 in ADD A LETTER, 3/5 in IT’S A GAMBLE, and 3/5 in THE “B”-GINNING & END OF THE COUNTRY!
I found the $1,000 clue in IT’S A GAMBLE to be slightly confusing; the writers made it sound like they were looking for something more specific than the general term the clue ended up being about. The clue was: A wager on the jersey number of the player to score the first touchdown in the Super Bowl is this 4-letter bet. I got the clue anyway myself, but I felt it could have been worded better.
I thought the Daily Double was going to be in THE OLD TESTAMENT, but it ended up being in the $1,000 slot in THE “B”-GINNING & END OF THE COUNTRY, on the 26th clue of the round.
Scores at this point:
Kris $7,600
Gina $1,200
Mike $400
Kris decided to bet just $2,000 here. His clue: Average elevation about 8,000 feet: Ends with N. After a bit of thought, he came up with the correct response, and that put him up to $9,600!
Kris picked up the $600 and $800 clues in THE OLD TESTAMENT to finish the round (Mike got $400), leading to scores of:
Kris $11,000
Gina $1,200
Mike $800
DJ! round categories:
A PLETHORA OF PICTURE PLOTS
TERRITORIAL GOVERNORS
SOUNDS LIKE A SANDWICH
SCIENCE & NATURE
AUTHORS AT WAR
“DED” ENDS
Kris got the first Daily Double here under AUTHORS AT WAR, after getting 2 of the first 4 clues in the category. Scores:
Kris $13,000
Mike $1,600
Gina $1,200
Kris bet $3,000. His clue: Auctioned in 2011, a letter by this author who satirized the military said, “In truth I enjoyed” fighting in WWII. Kris gave a guess which wasn’t a bad answer, but it wasn’t correct, either. He fell to $10,000.
After a “DED” ENDS category that tended to slow things down, Mike got the 12th clue of the round, and the 13th clue was a video Daily Double (Sigh.) Scores:
Kris $12,800
Mike $2,000
Gina $800
Mike made the only choice he had: True Daily Double. Clue: Saturn’s moons range from boulder-size moonlets to this enormous moon that’s larger than Mercury. Mike gave the correct response immediately and his score went up to $4,000.
This was a bit of a tougher round, I wasn’t doing as well either! It ended up being a round which saw only 18 correct responses out of 28 clues seen. I was enjoying A PLETHORA OF PICTURE PLOTS — it was a category of movie plots, written in alliterative form (example, the $1600 clue: 2001: Fantasy-fraught French Femme feels for friends). It helps that the film in question is one of my personal favourites!
When the out-of-time signal came on the Double Jeopardy! round, the scores were:
Kris $19,200
Mike $7,600
Gina -$2,800
It was a tough day for Gina, especially up against Kris!
FJ! category: 1960s ROCK MUSIC
FJ! Clue: This 1967 No. 1 hit contains snippets of “In The Mood”, “Greensleeves” & “She Loves You”
Mike 7600 – 7600 = 0
Kris 19200 – 3000 = 16200
Mark Barrett commented over at J! Board: “Nice debut by Kris and it seemed like he expected nothing less. He was a contrast to Jason Keller in today’s rerun making 36K+ and having an aw shucks quality to it.” I defintely must agree with those comments — especially the “expected nothing less”. I see Kris thus far as a player who’ll use buzzer timing to pick up low hanging fruit. I really think he’ll struggle on tougher material. Players like Jason will eat Kris alive if Kris gets to the Tournament of Champions.
Kris will be back to play again tomorrow, and I believe I’ll be blogging it! Merry Christmas, and see you then!
My Coryat today: $28,800 (36 right, 2 wrong, plus the Final).