I hope everyone’s Thanksgiving was excellent! Here’s a week of fresh—not leftover—thoughts from behind the editorial desk!
Introducing: A Mailbag Column
As I’m interested in still imparting advice and being useful to the Jeopardy community at large, I’m going to be starting a “Mailbag” column next week. If you have any questions about Jeopardy history or other show-related topics, email me (mailbag at thejeopardyfan dot com) and I’ll answer some of them every week!
Look for the Mailbag column starting next Sunday!
What Ed Showed Us This Week In Terms Of Shoutouts
If you’d watched on Thursday, you noticed that Ed Hashima felt he had time to write a shout-out on screen during Final Jeopardy, but then didn’t have enough time to change his response later in Final Jeopardy. Certainly, I would say going forward that this is the #1 reason why you shouldn’t do shoutouts—every second used to think of your shoutout wording is one less second that you could be using to think about the clue itself, and it was clear that Ed could have used an extra couple of seconds on Thursday.
In fact, the only reason why a shoutout should ever be attempted is if you’ve bet $0 in Final Jeopardy. This was the same advice Michael Dupée gave in the late 1990s—his advice even went further, suggesting that a $0 bet should always be followed by either a shoutout or a clear failure to attempt a response. (This is because it also avoids questions later of a “Why did you bet $0 when you knew it?” from less-informed fans.) To that end, what Daniel Nguyen did earlier this season in his Champions Wildcard quarterfinal is an example of this—he bet $0 and then gave a shoutout to a recently deceased colleague who was beloved at his school.
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My Predictions For The Upcoming Schedule:
There’s been a little bit of speculation online about the upcoming tournament and regular play schedule. Based off what I’ve seen publicly announced (as well as inferences based on the On Camera Audiences schedules and other things), here’s what I am predicting:
- The Hearts bracket of Fall 2023 Champions Wildcard brings us to December 18.
- 4 weeks of Season 39 Second Chance (the first fully “post-strike” episodes with the intended returning contestants) — December 19–January 15.
- 2 Champions Wildcard brackets, January 16–February 2 & February 5–February 22.
- A 23, 25, or 27-player Tournament of Champions (Michael Davies said on Inside Jeopardy that this would be the largest one ever), beginning on February 23 and ending between March 12–20 (depending on field size and how many games the finals goes). It should be noted that the first round of March Madness begins Thursday, March 21—this is another day where the show gets pre-empted on a number of CBS stations around the country. I would say that it is important for the show to make absolutely sure that the Tournament of Champions does not run into March Madness pre-emptions.
- A 27-player Jeopardy Invitational Tournament, 14 episodes following the Tournament of Champions (ending between April 1–9, depending on Tournament of Champions length), with the winner of JIT getting a spot in this spring’s Jeopardy Masters. (I will post a preview of who we might see in that event in the coming days.)
- The remainder of the season: regular play (between 78–84 episodes).
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In Closing
I think that next week is going to be an exciting one—I hope you enjoy it!
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Shoutouts and jokes: I wonder if it might be time for the show to universally adopt the “Holzhauer interpretation” and consider shoutouts and jokes like any other part of the response, including ruling against something that would otherwise be correct. This would still allow for them to be deployed when nothing has been wagered, or in other cases when the response is inconsequential, such as Dhruv Gaur’s “We ♥ You, Alex” in the 2019 ToC.
Pre-emptions: Nothing on this topic, huh? I think the show has backslid on this in recent years; it used to be that it would post information on them on the “where to watch” page, but this wasn’t done this week. Also, after the show placing last year’s Election Day episode on its YouTube channel, doing so (even just until the completion of Clubs) was therefore possible, particularly for the Black Friday game, which I estimate was pre-empted more widely than 2022-11-08. It’s thus fair to fault the show for not availing itself of that option, and it could also be considered for March Madness (though I agree that the ToC should be concluded before then).
The schedule: Interesting estimate, but it’s incomplete without discussion of the roster alongside it. Four Second Chance winners and two Champions Wildcard brackets means 50 of the 65 S39 1-3 game champions in the CWC. Eight of the remaining fifteen could be placed directly into the ToC to get that to 27. That leaves over seven champions. How do you account for that?
(The turn of phrase “other things” is doing a fair amount of work there.)
In terms of the schedule—I am working on the assumption that there are people who are either unable (possibly understandable) or unwilling (not sure why, but that’s not my place to judge) to return in such an event.
Hello Andy,
Are you also a bit disappointed that the Hearts bracket players seemingly won’t be revealed until the conclusion of the Clubs bracket?
Jeff