Today’s Final Jeopardy – Thursday, February 9, 2023

13 Comments on "Today’s Final Jeopardy – Thursday, February 9, 2023"

1. Dan (not the one who played today) | February 9, 2023 at 7:35 pm |

   I don’t think it’s fair to criticize Dan for his DD3 wager. He essentially had two options – everything or next to nothing. He picked one of the two right options.

   • Andy Saunders | February 9, 2023 at 7:37 pm |

     He did pick one of the two best options. I was just making the case that the other option was—counterintuitively—slightly better.

     • Dan | February 9, 2023 at 7:58 pm |

       I thought there was a comment that was outright calling it a bad wager but I may have just been imagining that.

   • Eric U. | February 9, 2023 at 11:17 pm |

     There is a third reasonable option: bet $4301 to get in a crush game position if correct, while still having a possibility of winning the game if incorrect.

     I think this is slightly better than making a small bet, but I don’t have the data for all the relevant probabilities.

     That said, four of the five DDs that Dan had seen were missed (including two by a four-day champ.) Totally understandable that he elected to bid low.

     • Michael Johnston | February 10, 2023 at 8:21 am |

       Tricky… just on its face, giving up a guaranteed leader’s side of a 4/5ths game, versus a crush for you (if you’re right) XOR a crush for your opponent (if you’re wrong) seems unfavorable in general. Perhaps if you were a little more comfortable with the category?

       • Eric U. | February 10, 2023 at 9:07 am |

         Back of the envelope: Success rate on $2000 DDs is right around 67% over the past season and a half. Success on DDs is a bit under 50%, but I’ll round up for sake of simplicity. The piece I’m missing is the degree of correlation between top two contestants’ FJ success rate, but let’s suppose the outcomes RR, RW, WR and RR have .3, .2, .2 and .3 probability respectively.

         Dan wins if he gets the DD right and the FJ outcome is anything but WR. If Dan gets the DD wrong Mira wouldn’t have a crush. However, assuming that Dan bets to cover Scott and Mira bets to cover Dan, he would only win if the FJ outcome is RW. Dan’s win probability would then be:

         (.67)(.8) + (.33)(.2) = 60%

         That’s a little better than the 56.5% that Andy quotes in the original post for the small bet.

         It should be pointed out that we’re talking about the average contestant here, as Andy also correctly notes in the OP. It’s entirely possible that according to Dan’s own estimates of his category, DD and FJ abilities that the small bet was optimal. And Dan would be more familiar with his own abilities than anyone else.

2. Andy P | February 9, 2023 at 7:38 pm |

   I think the female name and the date threw me. I didn’t think Peter Pan was until like ten years later, and I was thinking a clothing harness because of the timeframe. I have no idea why. I went “DUH” right after. That’s me overthinking again. I absolutely should’ve gotten this.

   I don’t get the avoidance of Daily Doubles. If you get it, your opponents don’t, so even if you bet small (i.e. finding one in your worst subject), you’re at least preventing them from betting big and taking over. I get why the first wasn’t found until late – they went for other categories first – but one being the last clue is… bad. Everyone should’ve been gunning for that to take (or, in Dan’s case, keep) the lead going into FJ.

   Happy Mira won, though. I enjoyed watching her since she’s showing some personality. The way she was kind of embarrassed to hum that obnoxious song’s beat – yet still did it anyway – was endearing. That alone says a lot about her and I like how she’s not just a gamebot. I too hope she can win her way to the TOC!

3. Jay J. | February 9, 2023 at 9:31 pm |

   Armchair wagering is like armchair quarterbacking. Criticizing after the fact that some other tactic or play would have worked better.

   Of course, if he had bet big on that DD and missed it, many of the same people would probably be criticizing that he shouldn’t have risked taking himself out of contention for FJ with such a large late DD wager.

4. Ray | February 9, 2023 at 11:24 pm |

   The only classic character I could think of that needed to fly and needed a harness was Peter Pan.

   I thought this game would be a battle of the history teachers, but Mira turned out to be the dark horse. When Mira answered the Baby Shark question, I loved that she sung the notes with a smile, which made it easy to root for her. I always think that I would be too nervous to do anything but answer the question in a straight manner, even if I was confident of the answer.

   I love strong contestants but I also like a good battle till the end.

5. Bill Vollmer | February 10, 2023 at 11:24 am |

   I was surprised as well that this Final Jeopady wasn’t a “triple get.” Knowing nothing about the scene from “Pygmalion”/”My Fair Lady” attributed to by a previous poster, hearing/seeing actress, and, a harness, immediately came up with “what is Peter Pan?”

6. Debbie Stover | February 10, 2023 at 12:04 pm |

   I wish Ken would stop “correcting” people’s correct pronunciation of names. He’s done it a number of times. Once was when he corrected a contestant who said “Neil Gaiman” by insisting “GUY-man” — which of course is incorrect. Someone must’ve clued Ken in, because the next time Gaiman’s name came up, Ken pronounced it correctly.

   Then on this show, a guy who’s written multiple books on film history pronounces Sophia Loren’s name in a precise but unfamiliar way, and Ken steps in to “correct” it. But I looked it up, and guess what, the proper Italian pronunciation of Loren is exactly the way the contestant rendered it.

   It might seem like a trifling point, but I don’t think it is. Jeopardy is a show that celebrates knowledge. Ken should not assume his own is always superior. After all, his base of knowledge is, in his words, “a mile wide and an inch deep,” yet here he was, correcting someone was working in his own professional wheelhouse.

   • Bill Vollmer | February 10, 2023 at 12:39 pm |

     I would presume that somehow the producers are directing Ken to give the “popular” pronounciations as not to confuse the audiences, I didn’t hear the “correct,” Italian pronunication of Loren given my the player. But if I had, I HOPE my reaction would have been that it was just the player’s way of pronouncing the name, but it was clear enough of his/her intention to rule it right.

     • Lisa | February 13, 2023 at 2:56 pm |

       I don’t think that ruling it right or wrong was the point. They’d clearly ruled it right, it was just the audacity of correcting the pronunciation when the contestant had been just as correct if not more so. I think the idea that it was meant to offer the “popular” pronunciation so as not to confuse the audience may be true, but I don’t like it — we [the audience] get that there are multiple pronunciations for a lot of words (especially names and most especially foreign names) and they’d be unlikely to have been so different that we think Jeopardy! was wrong to declare the contestant’s response correct [though we might think we’d had a problem with our hearing or our TV’s reception/sound]. If anyone did so, then just let that audience member revel in their belief rather than trying to embarrass the contestant. But if clarity is called for, say “more commonly pronounced” instead of “[correctly] pronounced”.