Welcome to another slightly shorter dose of Andy’s Weekly Thoughts!
Watch Out! Another Carriage Dispute
If there’s one thing that we see a lot of these days interrupting Jeopardy! airings for a lot of people, it’s a carriage dispute between a cable provider and a local broadcast station. And the latest one could affect you if you’re in the Washington DC, Baltimore, or Harrisburg television markets.
The latest dispute is taking place between Verizon FIOS and Sinclair, with the current contract expiring on December 31, and negotiations are coming down to the wire. So, if you’re in Washington, Baltimore, or Harrisburg and get cable service via Verizon, watch out—you may be Jeopardy!-less come Monday.
My friends over at Geeks Who Drink have introduced a daily trivia game—Thrice! Existing to make daily clever trivia content accessible to a wide audience, it's a daily challenge that tries to get you to the answer via three separate clues. It has a shareable score functionality to challenge your friends and new questions every day will give you a new daily social ritual. You can find it at thricegame.com.
Are you going on the show and looking for information about how to bet in Final Jeopardy? Check out my Betting Strategy 101 page. If you want to learn how to bet in two-day finals, check out Betting Strategy 102. In case the show uses a tournament with wild cards in the future, there is also a strategy page for betting in tournament quarterfinals.
Are you looking for information on how to stream Jeopardy! in 2024? Find out information here on how to stream from most places in North America!
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You can find game-by-game stats here at The Jeopardy! Fan of all 17 players, now including Adriana Harmeyer, that have won 10 or more games on Jeopardy!
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I Will Be Covering UK Jeopardy
The UK version of Jeopardy!, hosted by Stephen Fry and airing on ITV, will be debuting on Monday at 5:45 PM GMT, moving on Tuesday to 4:00 PM GMT. These episodes will be an hour long, and will be airing until January 26.
I just wanted to make everyone aware that I will be providing coverage of the UK version of the game, providing the same level of game recap that I do for the American versions. I should note that I’ll be watching the game at the same time as everyone in the UK.
Yes, It Really Is Okay When Final Jeopardy Is Easy
One of the clichéd clickbait tabloid article topics of the last two years has been “Jeopardy! Fans Say Final Jeopardy Too Easy”, and we saw another round of those articles this week.
I have constantly said this in my recaps over the years and will continue to say this until I am blue in the face: There need to be easy Final Jeopardy clues from time to time. Otherwise, basic strategy will dictate that players should make less exciting bets.
In the alternate universe where there are zero easy Final Jeopardy clues, the overall get rate in the round will trend downwards. Once Final Jeopardy moves away from close to a 50/50 proposition (plus or minus a couple of percent), it would, therefore, be in the contestants’ best interests not to make aggressive bets, instead making more boring, conservative wagers in Final Jeopardy.
There are prospective contestants who absolutely are tracking Final Jeopardy difficulty and will use it to inform their strategic choices; removing the possibility of ever having an easy Final Jeopardy would make for a less exciting game overall.
Personally, I think that the round currently has a good balance between easier and harder clues, and I’d like to close this section with one more thing, to the people who might not like easier Finals in general: Just because you personally don’t like something doesn’t make it inherently bad.
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In Closing
Happy New Year, have a great 2024, and enjoy next week’s games!
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Happy New Year to you as well! 🙂
My general rule of thumb for Final Jeopardy is as follows – if it’s sports-related and I get it right, then it’s too easy.
I kid, of course. I think the writers do a generally excellent job of balancing out the difficulty of Final Jeopardy over a long stretch of time. I think that if Finals were consistently super difficult, not only would that lead to more conservative and less exciting wagers, but it also opens the door for a lot of media press that the show really doesn’t need. (Namely, if a leader bet small and second place decided to go all-in for whatever reason – if Final broke a certain way, there’d probably be about a dozen or so tabloid articles about fan reactions before the day is over.)
UK Jeopardy will be interesting! If the rounds go Single-Single-Double-Final, I’m curious to see how that’ll affect strategy on the Daily Doubles. Maybe contestants will have more of an incentive to bet aggressively in the first two rounds? Who knows!
I can’t wait to see what the show has in store for 2024!
Happy 2024! Where can I find the UK Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune?
Regarding UK Jeopardy!: recall that this publication is geared toward a North American audience. You may be ninety minutes ahead of the “earliest” of us, but it might be worthwhile to at least give the Eastern Time equivalents. (Alternatively, just go “full British” and replace the colons in the times with full stops.)
I certainly agree with the last section about Final Jeopardy! difficulty. In particular, I emphatically endorse the second bolded statement in its entirety. In defense of that premise, may I submit Exhibit A: the criticism of the choices Michael Davies and his team made regarding Season 40. Just because you personally don’t like that criticism doesn’t make it inherently bad.