So if you haven’t been keeping up, CBC tells us that last night Robert Kennedy, who now lives in California, defeated current Ottawa resident, George Tsuji, to become the current Jeopardy champion.
The lovely and talented Conor Cronin, who plays on the “Spoiler Alert!” pub quiz team at the Downtown Royal Oak on Wednesdays, gives us a quick rundown on last night’s show.
George got off to a great start where at $600 and he landed on the Daily Double and bet the full $1000 just as he had on last night’s show. Unfortunately he could not identify Samuel Adams as the brewery which runs the Longshot American Homebrew Contest. Unsurprising, though, since no one in Canada drinks Sam Adams and under the rules and regulations of the contest, Canadian residents are barred from participating. The whole game seemed to have an American bias more than usual (although Megan, the lone American, answered a question on the metric system correctly) . None of the contestants were able to dominate the board and at the first commercial break only Megan was on the plus side.
After the commercial, George showed his cleverness and the experience he gained from last night’s show by being quickest with the buzzer. At the end of the Jeopardy round he was in the lead.
In Double Jeopardy, Bob, University of Ottawa alum, started rolling. He was clearly quicker on the buzzer. George’s quiet confidence turned into timidity and, though he didn’t seem to get any answers wrong, he couldn’t answer enough questions to get the lead back from Bob; Bob’s buzzer skills were the deciding factor.
The Final Jeopardy question was held a somewhat American bias as in order to answer correctly contestants needed to know that 1,320 feet equalled a quarter mile and there was such thing as a Quarter Horse breed. Though in second, George strategically bet less than everything he had in the hope that Bob answered incorrectly.
George loss owed more to Bob’s ability to buzz in faster than it did with the contestants’ knowledge. Many say Ken Jennings was so successful for that very reason. George also showed that he could play the game better than many other contestants by betting strategically in Final Jeopardy; obviously a skill he learned by not betting the full two on the Wildcard and waiting to make sure his team got the answer in the Rush Round instead of guessing on the five point clue.
If you have no idea what that last sentence meant, you should really get out to an Ottawa Trivia League night.
The Ottawa Citizen offers up a run-down of some of the questions.
Check it out here: http://bit.ly/eHS9R7
Nice, thanks Ottawa Citizen!
Answers and Questions
Here are some answers-and-questions to which Robert Kennedy responded on Jeopardy.
Answer: “Traditionally used to make Thanksgiving pies, this gourd is rich in Vitamin A.”
Question: “What is pumpkin?”
Answer: “An area where a group of colonists lived together.”
Question: “What’s a settlement?”
Answer: “A rooster bred for fighting.”
Question: “What’s a gamecock?”
Answer: “A type of golf scoring measured by holes won, not strokes.”
Question: “What’s match play?”
Answer: “A 1912 telegram. This: ‘We are sinking fast. Passengers are being put into boats.’”
Question: “What’s the Titanic?”
Answer: “In 1897, hearing his obituary had been published, he cabled that the report of his death was an exaggeration.”
Question: “Who is Mark Twain?”
Answer: “Edward Teller notified this New Mexico lab site about the first successful H-Bomb test with ‘It’s a boy.’”
Question: “What’s Los Alamos?”
Answer: “It’s said this Spaniard who painted Three Musicians in 1921, paid for some meals by doodling on napkins.”
Question: “Who is Picasso?”
Answer: “For his actions during the invasion of the Philippines in 1945, Sgt. Raymond Cooley of Dunlap received this high award.”
Question: “What’s the Medal of Honor?”
Answer: “Adolph S. Ochs, who started in newspapers in Knoxville, adopted this motto for the New York Times.
Question: “What’s all the news that’s fit to print?”
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Ottawans+square+Jeopardy+showdown/3874699/story.html#ixzz16DjR43QY
Fun blogs, thanks. Funny you’d say I looked timid, because it was sort of the opposite. I remember getting really p***ed off at one point, and could see myself trying (somewhat successfully) to hide my anger through much of Double Jeopardy. It certainly didn’t help my “buzzer mojo” at all.
I think the difference was, having already won I thought on some level that I “should” be able to get in anytime I tried (forgetting that isn’t what happened the game before), and “dammit, this should be working!” is a less useful reaction that the “ha ha, beat to the buzzer this time, oh well, will try the next one” from my first one.
Oh and yeah, if I’d been able to Dump a category in DJ, it certainly would have helped! (though I’d have liked to dump at least 4 or 5 of them)
You were awesome! It was so great to see you up there, we were all rooting for you.
Thanks for dropping by and telling us how it went from your perspective!