Welcome to another Saturday editorial here at The Jeopardy! Fan.
As Promised, More About “Homage”
A few people noted online this past week that they didn’t think that Ron Cheung should have been given credit for pronouncing the initial H in “homage” in Wednesday’s game due to the category specifically noting “SILENT H”. This is a precedented ruling: on Wednesday when it happened, I did note that Dave Mattingly got credit back in 2018 for pronouncing the G in Turkish leader Erdoğan, even though that clue specifically said the G was silent.
While I agree that the ruling was within the show’s precedents, I also think that rule should be changed. I believe that the constraints of the category or clue should supersede any otherwise acceptable pronunciations and that both of these previous instances should have been ruled incorrect.
This also leads me to a further tangent: At some point during the offseason, if rules do change, Michael Davies should have a short segment on Inside Jeopardy where he outlines upcoming rule changes. This way, if the rules change, fans aren’t caught off guard, making it easier for us to defend the new rulings when they do occur. (After all, baseball fans would have at least had the opportunity to hear about changes to the sport before showing up to the park on Opening Day.)
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.
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Why I’m Going To Be Publishing A Pre-Taping Tournament Of Champions Preview
After a little bit of consultation and thought—and hearing some very interesting thoughts on both sides—I’ve decided that I am going to publish a pre-taping Tournament of Champions preview this time around.
There are obviously some positives and negatives to doing so. One major reason for doing so are that it gives me the opportunity to make predictions without possibly being influenced by anything that might happen at the taping. Another is that it is extra content—and I can still post updated odds and further information once the pairings get released, as it would be interesting to see what players have had their ToC changes helped (or hindered) by the draw itself.
There are also some negatives: we don’t know what the pairings are going to be—the model would obviously be more accurate if it knew the pairings. Additionally, knowing the identity of the final player in the event would also have an effect on the prediction model. (As it stands right now, having zero knowledge of what is to come in Group 2 of Champions Wildcard, I have given the 27th player statistics equal to the average player in the Tournament of Champions.) Finally—and this was the negative that actually gave me the most pause—I was actually afraid that my words might be a distraction for players leading up to the event.
That being said: after enough thought, I thought that the positives of posting outweighed the negatives, and that preview will be posted later this afternoon. After all, the sport-ification of Jeopardy! is a thing, and I definitely think that this is the exact sort of content that I should be producing in this era.
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More Thoughts On The Play-In Games, Now That They’re Done
Now that the three Play-In Games have aired on TuneIn Radio, here are my thoughts:
- I really appreciated how the show listened to feedback from fans after the first two; Buzzy made sure to announce the scores for the listeners at each break and at each Daily Double. I found this very helpful when covering the games to make sure that my scoring charts were correct at important points of the games.
- I think that this should happen more often. In fact, I would say again that putting preliminary rounds such as this on non-traditional media are an excellent compromise between the wish for many fans to have as much regular plays as possible and the show’s wish to have a larger number of tournaments.
- In the future, though, I think some minor compensation should be given to players in these preliminary games, in order to offset the opportunity cost of potentially having to take time off work for what amounts to a non-guaranteed payout.
In Closing
I hope that everyone has a great week!
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I think you’re spot on with the first and last points, but I absolutely disagree with the one about the ToC preview. For all the positives it has, it will undoubtedly get into the mind of at least one player prior to taping and cause that player to feel substantially more pressure, which would lead to them not performing as well as they could’ve, which would make for a lower-quality show.
That one negative, in my mind, completely nullifies any benefit that the positives might bring.
Of course, for someone like Ben Chan, I highly doubt it would do much to him. After all, he did put up over $40,000 before Final Jeopardy against Hannah Wilson, of all people… But all of the other players are not Ben Chan, and there’s a nonzero chance of what I mentioned in the above paragraph happening.
I don’t often say this, but PLEASE, do not post the preview today and wait until the ToC lineup is finalized and the matches are revealed. Posting it today would have very negative effects and would probably make for worse television overall, which I think is the exact opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.
I respectfully disagree.
As I was told by a 2022 ToCer when mulling it over, “the advantage to posting before is there being no ambiguity that what actually happened factored Not At All”.
Whether we like it or not, Jeopardy! is becoming more of a sport and I believe it should be covered that way. Writers in other sports—even beat writers who have spoken with players innumerable times—would not have qualms about posting pre-game previews, and I believe this situation to be analogous.
Andy, I agree with you, but ONLY IF you make it clear at the top that it is a ToC Pre-Taping preliminary preview PRIOR TO the pairings even being announced and that you will post another early preview once pairings have been announced.
Also (as I think I recall you always do), please display your assessments of each contestant well separated (probably by each’s photo), preferably in alphabetical order, so that the actual contestants can choose to not read the entire preview, to read about the others but not about themselves, or to read it all (or maybe even JUST about themselves).
I agree with MD about the POTENTIAL negative affect on SOME contestants IF they CHOOSE TO read (and “study”) your previews, but that’s on them if they make that decision and it turns out harmful to them instead of helpful.
Considering the many parameters in the game — categories that may coincidentally be more advantageous to one or the other, LUCK as to location of the daily doubles (whether hunted for or not), who has the best timer mojo, etc., I can’t imagine anyone being able to tell that any of them are subpar from having read a not-so-positive (for them) preview [except maybe if their betting is obviously different than usual AND DOESN’T work out for them, but that wouldn’t be a sure sign as it could have been coincidental or their different betting style could actually be “better”, but they were just unlucky with the clue(s)].
I think posting a preview before the matches happen is a good move. No player going into a ToC is unaware of their own deficits, this is unlikely to make them think poorly of themselves for the first time. What it can do, though, is make a player consider that while there may be some less-than-perfect qualities to their game there are also many strengths. This can also help reinforce that this is true of their opponents too, and that they have a very real chance of beating anyone up there.
Even if it was an entirely negative review, that’s just bulletin board material! All the best players in other sports are experts at the “the analysts/fans/league disrespected us, now we need to show just how wrong they are!” motivation. There is no reason to think this isn’t true of Jeopardy.
Well said.
Since the ToC starts on the 23rd, I figured that the taping would have already started. Guess not.