Andy here with the recap of the final game of the week! We’ve had a succession of 1-time champions as of later; I guess that makes up for all of the longer runs that we’ve seen!
Phil Goldstein and Mary Graves are the challengers for Judy Arginteanu! It felt as though Johnny sped through the player introductions today — I wonder if that was to compensate for how slowly Judy played yesterday!
J! round categories:
TED TALKS
NFL DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR
BODY SNATCHERS
WEIGHTS & MEASURES
COUNTRY ROADS
TAKE ME HOME
And of course, Judy started off slowly. Literally. It felt as though it took forever to select the opening clue! However, as soon as Mary took over (selecting COUNTRY ROADS $800), she found the Daily Double!
Scores were:
Judy $600
Mary $600
Phil $0
Mary bet the full $1,000. Her clue: The Karakoram Highway has this superlative distinction amongst international highways.
Coming out of the Daily Double, Mary got 4/5 in TAKE ME HOME and Phil took 4/5 in NFL DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR (sadly negging on the $1,000 clue: 2009: cornerback Charles Woodson of this team). The scores at the end of the first segment (after 16 clues! Amazing what keeping the slow players off the buzzer will do!) were:
Mary $5,000
Phil $1,200
Judy $800
The clues were much more evenly matched coming out of the break! Phil picked up 5 of the final 14, Mary 5, and Judy 4!
The following clue sent me to do some more research, because it sounds like an interesting story (BODY SNATCHERS $1000): In 1973 this country-rock pioneer known as “GP” was treated to a homemade cremation by his drunk buddies. Not really being familiar with it, I was worried this cremation occured while the subject was still living! But it was not — it was lighting the corpse after dousing him with 5 gallons of gasoline!
Scores at the end of 30:
Mary $7,400
Phil $5,000
Judy $3,000
DJ! round categories:
CELEBRITIES’ FAVORITE BOOKS
COVERING YOUR BASES
TV SHOWS BY DAD
EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY
ART SUBJECTS
-E-I-E-I- OH!
Judy found the first Daily Double under ART SUBJECTS $1200. The scores:
Mary $7,400
Phil $5,000
Judy $3,800
Judy looked absolutely horrified that she’d found it! She bet just $2,000. Her clue: It took him to make a masterpiece in 1662 out of “The Syndics of the Amsterdam Drapers’ Guild”. Judy’s correct response put her at $5,800.
If the buzzer skill of Mary was to be believed after the Daily Double, Judy missed her opportunity. Of the next 9 clues, 7 were Mary’s, with a pair of Triple Stumpers.
Jane Goodall’s clue reading in CELEBRITIES’ FAVORITE BOOKS seemed about as slow as anyone’s in the history of the show!
A tough neg for Phil on COVERING YOUR BASES $2000, where he’d failed to notice a key word in the clue: Found in a British Harry Potter title, this stone was sought by alchemists to turn base metals into precious ones. Phil added “…or Sorceror’s Stone”, which made his response incorrect (after all, the clue did specify British!).
The final Daily Double went Mary’s way in EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY, and after the judges took a large sum of money away from Phil for his earlier neg, the scores were:
Mary $15,400
Judy $7,000
Phil $4,200
Mary bet $2,400. Her clue: In 1677 he drafted the first charter guaranteeing separation of church & state in the Quaker colony of west New Jersey. Mary had the look of “I should have gone for the obvious” after her reponse was ruled incorrect, and she fell to $13,000.
6 clues were left when the “minute to go” signal was given, and 2 clues in -E-I-E-I- OH! were left at the end of it!
Scores going into Final:
Mary $11,800
Judy $9,800
Phil $3,400
FJ! categories: COUNTRIES’ HIGHEST POINTS
FJ! clue: This country is home to the highest mountain outside Asia
Phil 3400 – 3300 = 100
Judy 9800 – 2500 = 7300
Mary 11800 – 6900 = 4900
Somehow, Judy ends up with the most money after this trainwreck of a Final, and she will return on Monday as a 2-day champion! I’ll see you late next week!