Welcome to Andy’s Weekly Thoughts for June 8, 2024—I suspect that these will definitely stir some controvery within the world of J!.
A Thought On Pat Sajak’s Retirement
Pat Sajak’s final episodes of Wheel of Fortune aired this past week. (For the uninitiated, Jeopardy!‘s seasons last seven weeks longer than Wheel of Fortune‘s do, and have since 1986–87, when Jeopardy! went from a 39-week season to a 46-week season.) I don’t normally watch Wheel myself these days, and I certainly don’t agree with most of Pat Sajak’s political views in general, but I do want to say that I’m happy for Pat for one reason.
Pat Sajak gets to enjoy retirement—and that’s something Alex Trebek didn’t get to do. Alex basically was “working” until he died in 2020, and while I feel like deep down that would be Alex’s nature, I’m still a little bit disappointed that Pat gets to enjoy retirement while Alex didn’t.
Regardless, though, congratulations to Pat on his 42-and-a-half years as host; enjoy your time away from the camera.
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.
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On Determining Potential Candidates To Return To The Show
Over the past week, some shocking news surfaced from the USA branch of the Online Quiz League: a player, long-considered one of quizzing’s best who also won two LearnedLeague championships and was also seen as one of the best players in OQL, was removed for “break[ing] the rules to secure an advantage for himself”.
While the initial motive for tweeting this news was to point out that James Holzhauer had been mocked in 2015 for electing to accuse this person of dishonest play, it also leads to another discussion point in a Jeopardy! context: You can’t 100% trust online play to determine who the top players are.
This removed player had shown up on several people’s “he should come back to Jeopardy!” list (as he lost to Alex Jacob in his lone appearance in 2015), especially after Victoria Groce and Brandon Blackwell performed as well as they did in the Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament. Hearing of this player’s removal means that the show was right in only considering televised or proctored in-person performances in considering what unexpected alumni should return to the show—and that policy should continue going forward.
Whatever Happened To…
One of the major midweek pieces of news was the announcement that Drew Basile, who competed on Season 45 of Survivor, will be on the June 19 episode of Jeopardy. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Season 45 air this past fall?
That’s one thing that I’m finding slightly concerning about some of the show’s more recent processes: In the not-so-recent past, contestants have had to wait for a year between game shows in order to be eligible to participate, and I am starting to feel that such matters are being ignored.
Basically, those rules were agreed to by the networks in order to remove the incentive to be a “professional” game show contestant in the aftermath of the scandals of the 1950s; in my opinion, these rules exist for a reason, and removing some of these safeguards might lead to unintended consequences.
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An Uncomfortable Truth
The evening of the Masters final, Yogesh Raut made some further comments regarding the state of Jeopardy! fans that I’ve been pressured to comment on, presumably because these fans are expecting me to somehow disagree with Yogesh’s characterizations.
Here’s the thing, and this may come as a shock to you: Yogesh’s characterization of the Jeopardy! fandom is one hundred percent correct. This fandom is littered with absolutely terrible people. Some of these are white supremacists who have deluded themselves into believing they are intelligent Americans simply by virtue of them being a longtime fan of the nation’s longest-running nationally televised quiz. Others are stalkers who send creepy letters to female contestants after their appearance. And those fans are so terrible that they are willing to send threats and harassment to those who do not 100% completely agree with them: Yogesh included—and myself included.
Interestingly enough, when I said pretty much the exact same thing about the show’s fandom in my editorial on May 11, one Reddit moderator took it so personally that he decided that it was appropriate to turn the mechanisms of a 100,000+-subscriber subreddit into a barrage of harassment against me—once again, proving my point and proving Yogesh’s point.
The thing about Yogesh is that he is absolutely willing to speak uncomfortable truths about both individuals and groups of people, regardless of whether or not those recipients agree with the characterizations. And his issue with the show in the interim between his original appearance and the Tournament of Champions was that the show publicly minimized the harassment that Yogesh faced. Thankfully, the show was sufficiently contrite regarding their own actions in the aftermath such that Yogesh felt comfortable participating in Masters.
If you’re a fan reading this who feels angry enough about this characterization that you’d want to actually send angry words someone’s way,—or worse, try to spur on 100,000 people to send angry words someone’s way—I strongly suggest you do some personal introspection here. Your view of yourself and the rest of the world’s view of you are significantly different. And treating Yogesh as if he’s Jeopardy!‘s version of Colin Kaepernick is improper and incorrect. I strongly urge you to get help before the headlines scream of a deranged fan harming someone.
In Closing
We’ve got a great champion on our hands—I hope her run continues!
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Okay, I’m going to try to respond to these in order as I see fit.
Determining Potential Candidates – What’s happening with that player in LL is pretty much exactly the reason I stay away from online trivia. I’ve considered signing up for LearnedLeague and even gotten an invitation to School of Trivia from Alex Jacob (we follow each other on Twitter), but the entire “online trivia” deal just feels like something that really welcomes cheaters. Cheaters do exist in every single community, but cheating to make people think you’re smart is WAY bigger than cheating to make people think you’re good at a game. Hopefully something like this doesn’t happen again.
Survivor and Jeopardy – I was a bit confused as well, but I do not have a definite resolution, so I will not try to chase one. I’ve noticed it go in the opposite way as well – for instance, Tyler Jarvis appeared on Weakest Link about a month after his J! appearance – so I’m curious as to how much the game show laws of the 1950s still hold.
Uncomfortable Truth – I may have disagreed with what Yogesh has said in the past regarding J!, but he is absolutely, completely, one thousand percent correct when it comes to this. There are so many absolutely terrible people in the fandom that sometimes I have to question whether I should even interact with the fan community at large. The contestant you linked to regarding creepy letters even mentioned that this wasn’t the first time that specific person had done something like that. I just don’t get it. It takes so little energy and so little brainpower to NOT be creepy towards female contestants, and yet we have people like this. We as a whole community need to do better.
Apologies if there are any typos I missed. It’s been a very exhausting week.
“Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Season 45 air this past fall?”
Drew was on S45 which ended in December 2023. Filming for that season ended in May 2023.
Not the same case, but Tyler Jarvis taped an appearance on “The Weakest Link” that took 18 months to air. In between that taping and airing, Tyler appeared on J!
Matthew Marcus appeared on GSN’s “Master Minds” in between his regular J! wins and ToC appearance.
I was actually a little disappointed that Jeopardy did not take a second to honor Sajak, given that they are sisters shows, and he hosted the April Fools Day show
I am kind of surprised to hear about some of these semi-close game show appearances, but I don’t think Survivor nor that race-around-the-world show should be considered game shows. I feel that they are just “reality shows” (that are a bit more real than others) that chose to award prizes. Though a bit different, I feel the same would go for contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race, Say Yes to the Dress, etc. — at least for Jeopardy! which one must intellectually qualify for.
As for letting a single person appear on lots of such shows (and game shows), mostly that is just not fair to all the other people trying for a chance to get on them.
[I like Weakest Link, but I’d like it better if its contestants had to “intellectually qualify” a bit more.]
Maybe the rules for multi-participation should be officially loosened some now that there are far more than 3 networks. On the other hand, the more shows there are, the more people COULD get on them. On the other other hand, hasn’t it been said that trivia shows (or at least Jeopardy!) should be considered (or at least treated like) a sport? Well, people CAN be on multiple sports even at the professional level, right? [And the line has been blurring for some time between amateur and professional sports.]
I am going to comment only on your closing remark. Absolutely thrilled with Adriana’s run on Jeopardy! I believe that, from the stats MasterDoge supplied me with a few days ago, Adriana is now the winningest Hoosier in the record books for both number of games won and total money earned. So very proud here in the Hoosier State!
It is sad that Alex didn’t live long enough to enjoy retirement like Pat Sajack will. Presumably, if hee had there wouldn’t have been the Mike Richards debacle, and, Ken would’ve been named his replacement (with, or, with out Mayim,) sooner.
I don’t know what some people’s problem with Yogesh is. In his interviews with Ken, he seemed personable enough. I hope that any criticism of him is based on his gameplay, and, not on anything else.