Warning: This page contains spoilers for the September 28, 2023, game of Jeopardy! — please do not scroll down if you wish to avoid being spoiled. Please note that the game airs as early as noon Eastern in some U.S. television markets.
Here’s today’s Final Jeopardy (in the category Symphonies) for Thursday, September 28, 2023 (Season 40, Game 14):
Debuting at Carnegie Hall in 1893, it was written by a European living in New York & partly inspired by “The Song of Hiawatha”
(correct response beneath the contestants)
Today’s Jeopardy! contestants:
Barb Fecteau, a high school librarian from Beverly, Massachusetts |
Jilana Cotter, a senior data analyst from Dade City, Florida |
Michalle Gould, a librarian from Laguna Beach, California |
Andy’s Pregame Thoughts:
Week 3 of September 2023’s Second Chance play has reached its final two games. Michalle Gould, Jilana Cotter, and Barb Fecteau can now all call themselves Jeopardy! champions. Now, one of them will get to advance to this fall’s Champions Wildcard event. All three of these players have similar statistics through their first two games; I’m looking forward to an evenly-matched final.
I’ll have more to say about this in general in my Weekly Thoughts column this weekend, but I do want to point out that Executive Producer Michael Davies did say back in August regarding the schedule that the plan was to run competitions and tournaments with Season 39 returning players upon the return of the show’s writers. As best as I can tell, those games with Season 39 returnees are likely going to start somewhere around December 19. Also, according to show writer Mark Gaberman on social media, the writers will be returning to the office on Monday.
(Content continues below)
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Correct response: What is the New World Symphony (by Antonin Dvořák)?
More information about Final Jeopardy:
(The following write-up is original content and is copyright 2023 The Jeopardy! Fan. It may not be copied without linked attribution back to this page.)
As the show’s contestant coordinators said innumerable times in auditions in the 2000s and 2010s, “The best way to prepare for Jeopardy! is to watch Jeopardy!,” and it comes up again here. All of the parts of this clue—that it debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1893, that it was written by someone living in New York, and that it was partly inspired by “The Song of Hiawatha”—have come up on the show in the past. Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, best known as the New World Symphony or “From The New World”, has been a favorite topic of the show’s writers dating all the way back to the very first season of the show. This is an incredibly straightforward Final Jeopardy clue, in my eyes, and I believe that it is designed to reward a player willing to take a risk in Day 1 of a Final. Jeopardy! is a better and more exciting game overall when players are willing to take risks and make big bets, and I am completely in favor of rewarding risk-takers.
Moreover, I would like to reiterate my rebuttal to anyone who complains that the show will sometimes write easy Final Jeopardy clues: if Final Jeopardy was never “easy”, contestants would soon realize this, they would play more conservatively in Final Jeopardy as a result, and the game would be less exciting and more boring overall. “Easier” Final Jeopardy clues are absolutely necessary in order to keep contestants playing in a way that keeps the shows exciting for viewers at home.
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Game Recap & Tonight’s Game Stats:
Looking to find out who won Jeopardy! today? Here’s the Thursday, September 28, 2023 Jeopardy! by the numbers, along with a recap:
Jeopardy! Round:
(Categories: Beastly Literary Characters; Marvel Villains; Natural Biology; Seoul Food; People Who Knead People; New Words In The 1600s)
Jilana got off to a rocket start, picking up 8 of the first 15 clues! Both Michalle and Barb had good second halves of the round to pull slightly closer as the game reached the halfway mark.
Statistics at the first break (15 clues):
Jilana 8 correct 0 incorrect
Michalle 3 correct 1 incorrect
Barb 3 correct 3 incorrect
Today’s interviews:
Barb thinks school librarians are the “Swiss Army knife of educators”.
Jilana grew up watching Jeopardy! (or, as what she would call it as a toddler, Buppidy!)
Michalle has been studying American Sign Lanugage.
Statistics after the Jeopardy round:
Jilana 10 correct 0 incorrect
Barb 8 correct 3 incorrect
Michalle 8 correct 2 incorrect
Scores after the Jeopardy! Round:
Jilana $6,400
Barb $3,400
Michalle $3,400
Double Jeopardy! Round:
(Categories: We’ve Got To Stop Meeting Like This; Games People Play; Invest; Around The Horn; Fashion History; From The Greek)
It was a very close game when Barb got to the first Daily Double. Unfortunately, an incorrect response on a True Daily Double dropped her to $0. She struggled to get back on track after this, but a judge’s reversal on a late $2,000 incorrect response meant Barb got to play Final. Otherwise, Jilana had a good-sized lead going into Final!
Statistics after Double Jeopardy:
Jilana 22 correct 2 incorrect
Michalle 13 correct 2 incorrect
Barb 17 correct 7 incorrect
Total number of unplayed clues this season: 0 (0 today).
Scores going into Final:
Jilana $19,200
Michalle $11,400
Barb $3,200
Final Jeopardy was a triple get; Barb went all in, and Michalle and Jilana both bet $10,000! Jilana has the lead going into tomorrow, but it’s not over yet!
Tonight’s results:
Barb $3,200 + $3,200 = $6,400 (What is the New World Symphony?)
Michalle $11,400 + $10,000 = $21,400 (What is the New World Symphony)
Jilana $19,200 + $10,000 = $29,200 (What is the New World Symphony?)
Other Miscellaneous Game Statistics:
Daily Double locations:
1) BEASTLY LITERARY CHARACTERS $1000 (clue #5)
Jilana 1200 +1200 (Michalle 800 Barb -400)
2) AROUND THE HORN $1200 (clue #4)
Barb 5400 -5400 (Michalle 5000 Jilana 5200)
3) WE’VE GOT TO STOP MEETING LIKE THIS $1600 (clue #19, $10400 left on board)
Barb 400 -2000 (Michalle 7400 Jilana 17600)
Overall Daily Double Efficiency for this game: -100
Clue Selection by Row, Before Daily Doubles Found:
J! Round:
Michalle 1 2
Jilana 4 3 5*
Barb
DJ! Round:
Michalle 4 1 1 2
Jilana 5 4 3 3 4 5 3 5 3 5 2
Barb 3* 3 4 4*
Average Row of Clue Selection, Before Daily Doubles Found:
Jilana 3.86
Michalle 1.83
Barb 3.50
Unplayed clues:
J! Round: None!
DJ! Round: None!
Total Left On Board: $0
Number of clues left unrevealed this season: 0 (0.00 per episode average), 0 Daily Doubles
Game Stats:
Jilana $19,000 Coryat, 22 correct, 2 incorrect, 33.33% in first on buzzer (19/57), 4/4 on rebound attempts (on 8 rebound opportunities)
Michalle $11,400 Coryat, 13 correct, 2 incorrect, 22.81% in first on buzzer (13/57), 2/2 on rebound attempts (on 8 rebound opportunities)
Barb $10,600 Coryat, 17 correct, 7 incorrect, 36.84% in first on buzzer (21/57), 1/1 on rebound attempts (on 4 rebound opportunities)
Combined Coryat Score: $41,000
Lach Trash: $5,400 (on 7 Triple Stumpers)
Coryat lost to incorrect responses (less double-correct responses): $7,600
Player Statistics:
Michalle Gould, career statistics:
49 correct, 6 incorrect
4/5 on rebound attempts (on 13 rebound opportunities)
26.47% in first on buzzer (45/170)
1/2 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $0)
2/3 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $14,200
Jilana Cotter, career statistics:
59 correct, 5 incorrect
6/6 on rebound attempts (on 14 rebound opportunities)
30.99% in first on buzzer (53/171)
2/2 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $3,800)
3/3 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $16,200
Barb Fecteau, career statistics:
54 correct, 17 incorrect
3/6 on rebound attempts (on 12 rebound opportunities)
34.12% in first on buzzer (58/170)
1/4 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: -$6,600)
3/3 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $11,133
Andy’s Thoughts:
- Because the scores tomorrow can be doubled in Final Jeopardy, Jilana has an “effective lead” of $3,900 over Michalle and $11,400 over Barb.
- A reminder that the judges have the ability to isolate contestant audio and would have been satisfied of the acceptability of Jilana’s pronunciation of Amundsen. (And, quite frankly, I am too, on further reflection.)
- Today’s box score: September 28, 2023 Box Score.
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This is one of my favorite pieces of music. He loved Native American music and had traveled around the country.
I know that there is something called the New World Symphony, and that was enough for today. Maybe I should actually listen to it.
If you like orchestral music at all, you owe it to yourself 🙂
This was very similar to a regular (not FJ!) round clue from earlier this year, which made it easier.
I also knew about the New World Symphony by Dvorak because I remember my brother playing a similar piece by Dvorak during his college session.
Well, I was feeling embarrassed by my response to Barb’s 2nd DD until she had no idea, but I guess I still should be — I said ‘Malta’.
I actually immediately realized that Malta was not near the Black Sea, but I assumed I was miss-remembering which conference instead miss-remembering the pronunciation/spelling. [Yes, I realize that neither spelling nor pronunciation is true, but I am referring to how memory sometimes works vaguely.]
Andy;
I will accept your criticism of my belief that a recent Final Jeopardy was too easy for a being a Final Jeopardy. But there is easy (a Final jeopardy that just requires a moment or two of thought,) and, TOO easy, where most anyone who hears (sees) the answer goes AHA, immediately.
The Final Jeopardy for this game fit in the area of easy-if you have some knowledge of symphonies, which I do not.
Then there is also the chance that a contestant will think that the clue is so easy it must be a trick question and try to figure out what it REALLY means. Not all easy clues present this possibility, but some do. I had suspected that might be what happened with Sadie Goldberger when she did not leave herself enough time to finish writing “Harriet Tubman”.
[I suppose some might not consider that one to have been EASY, but I did not KNOW those facts at all, yet ‘Harriet Tubman’ came to mind immediately and the other two players got it right and (in a way) so did Sadie. Thus it is the closest example (of what I mean about “maybe it’s tricky rather than easy”) that I could specifically remember.]
I said the other day that I felt the Watson & Crick clue was easy… but that wasn’t a complaint. Just an observation that it made sense to me that all three contestants (and myself as well) came up with the correct response. I agree with your assessment that “easier” FJ clues help keep the game interesting and fun.
Yay! I figured this one out, straightaway. I, too, really like Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” Would recommend giving it a listen, if you haven’t heard it before.