Monday, June 24, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[Archivists]

Placeholder for J! Round

[Archivists]

Placeholder for DJ! Round

[Golf]

Malta = Buddhism? Did she even know where Malta is located? Although it did seem like she rushed an answer when she had several more seconds to think.

No surprise she didn't even try to win with her FJ wager, and apparently she subscribes to TPH's newsletter on answering. Surprised the champ did his best to give it away.

Cool FJ question, half was a gimme, the other half simply depended on what you focused on. If you got stuck with mountains you're in trouble, if you look at it another way you probably ration it out. Not shocked the challengers didn't tumble to it, thought the champ would.

[jeff6286]

World Geography
Names of the 2 geographical features on a 2012 postage stamp issued jointly by Nepal & Israel.

Spoiler

What are Mt. Everest and the Dead Sea? (the highest and lowest points* on Earth) Britta had no guess; Joel said Mt. Ararat & Mt. Everest; Andrew said Mt. Everest and Mt. Sinai.

*This is essentially what Alex said, but it's not the most precise definition. The shore of the Dead Sea is the lowest point on dry land, at 418 meters (1,371 feet) below sea level.

Andrew Moore: $16,800-$10,000=$6,800...now a 6-day champion with $137,803
Joel Hart: $10.600-$6,200=$4,400
Britta Waller: $7,100-$2,500=$4,600

[whammy007]

First round of play went pretty well for me - not my best categories, but I still managed to top the $10,000 mark, running 6-Letter Elements easily. Double Jeopardy wasn't necessarily a trainwreck as far as play-alongs go, but a couple clams and a category full of nothing but question marks (Countries' Major Religions) kept me from really getting into an acceptable scoring range.

On Final, I got into exactly the trap that Golf posed, ended up with the guess posed by the challenger that actually HAD a guess. Hindsight earns me no points, but it lets me appreciate the elegance of the clue now that I think about it a second time.

[Bamaman]

No surprise she didn't even try to win with her FJ wager, and apparently she subscribes to TPH's newsletter on answering. Surprised the champ did his best to give it away.

Well, if she had bet zero, she'd have won the game!

I had Andrew's question on FJ. I couldn't figure out why Israel and Nepal put out a stamp together and thought maybe they were going with an important mountain in their country. Bleah.

[pinkfreud]

I thought this was a very clever and gettable FJ, even though I missed it (I said Everest & Sinai).

[dhkendall]

Cool FJ question, half was a gimme, the other half simply depended on what you focused on. If you got stuck with mountains you're in trouble, if you look at it another way you probably ration it out. Not shocked the challengers didn't tumble to it, thought the champ would.

I am curious as to which boardies didn't think of a mountain for the Israeli half. (I came up with the same thing as the champ, furthest I got from a mountain was the Temple Mount).

[TenPoundHammer]

Ran First Name, missed only KS/NE in States.

0/5 in DIY. I knew the thing at $200 was a caulking gun, but wasn't grokking how it was a way to save energy and money.

Got Letterman and Conan O'Painfully-Unfunny in Late Night. I like Ferguson a lot, but I haven't seen him do "ESPN UK".

On Reading for $400, what was supposed to lead to Juliet over Romeo? I'm surprised no one went for the coin flip, though I know I would've picked wrong. "Singin' in the Rain" was also a surprising TS.

Ran "Tur" in DJ! but got only 5 other clues (the middle three in Reading, plus two of the Blue States). The DD seemed to rely too much on whether or not you know your Winnie the Pooh, and I don't.

I had Everest, but was stuck in the mountains and didn't think to contrast it with a polar opposite. Not even Alex saying "lowest point" triggered anything. I would say the chances are good of "I had only Everest" being a poll question this week.

[econgator]

Cool FJ question, half was a gimme, the other half simply depended on what you focused on. If you got stuck with mountains you're in trouble, if you look at it another way you probably ration it out. Not shocked the challengers didn't tumble to it, thought the champ would.

I am curious as to which boardies didn't think of a mountain for the Israeli half. (I came up with the same thing as the champ, furthest I got from a mountain was the Temple Mount).

I started at temples and the Wailing Wall, but then went to the Dead Sea next. Once there, the other half was obvious.

I dismissed Mt Sinai immediately, as that's Egypt.

[skullturf]

I had a good game, and I actually did better in the DJ round than the J round. In the J round, I missed five of the six $1000 clues, but otherwise did well. (Granted, in DJ, I got some of them just a fraction of a second before the contestant said it, so I probably wouldn't have managed to ring in successfully on the show.)

Regarding the most prevalent religion in Malta, I was vacillating between Islam and Roman Catholicism, but leaning toward the latter. The one thing I did happen to know about Malta is that they have a Semitic language which is written in the Latin alphabet.

I managed to get FJ in time. I agree that this was a cute and clever one. My reasoning was: there's one rather obvious geographical landmark associated with Nepal. At first, I thought Mount Everest would be paired with another mountain. I thought Ararat was in present-day Turkey, and I was thinking of Sinai which I knew was probably in either Israel or Egypt. But then I had my little "aha" moment where it clicked, in time to write everything down. Everest isn't just any mountain; it's the highest point on Earth. So rather than pairing it with what's geographically just some random mountain (culturally significant though it may be), Everest could be paired with the "opposite" of the world's highest mountain.

[StevenH]

I wasn't a big fan of this board, but I'll admit that I didn't do very well on it.

I guessed Greek Orthodox on the "Malta" DD. It sure would have been helpful to have already seen the "Greece" clue. I did make a lucky guess on the "gloomy" DD, though.

I had the same answer as Andrew on FJ. I was thinking that that was too random to be the correct response and figured that I was missing something easy.

Congrats to the dawg, Andrew, on becoming a superchampion!

[Austin Powers]

Boy that middle contestant did her darnedest to make a mess of this game.

I thought this board was fairly tough, so I was surprised it wasn't a lock. I do think Andrew is the current TOC favorite.

Again, I don't see the point of hanging around the bottom as it is currently being done. The opponents don't seem to be thrown by it and it seems to offer no advantage with DDs. A strategy I'd like to see is going BY ROW. That might throw more opponents, especially in wordplay categories. As it stands, the only nice aspect to this strategy is all tough clues get cleared. If Andrew wants to throw opponents off then he needs to try an actual Forrest Bounce. IMHO.

Got FJ 15 seconds in. Everest was the gimme and the linchpin. I toyed with the Temple Mount but that seemed too controversial (as well as uninteresting from Nepal's point of view). There's not an obvious mountain in Israel proper that would work, but Israel does have one geographic feature of general note...

[elijahjt]

Well, I got the FJ quite quickly. The Dead Sea instantly came to mind for the Israeli half, and I initially didn't remember why. And then I remembered that, yes, I did read about this stamp and the reason for the selection of the two locations.

That being said, even without this background knowledge, it was quite guessable. The Dead Sea is probably the most well-known geographic feature in Israel -- neither of the guesses by Andrew and Joel were even in Israel, after all. If one weren't (potentially) primed to think about mountains from Mt. Everest and just asked to think about geographic features associated with Israel, the Dead Sea would probably be at or near the top of that list. So, long story short, if Britta (or anyone) just wrote down a well-known geographic feature in Nepal and a well-known geographic feature in Israel, there's a reasonable possibility it would have been correct. Then again, considering she guessed Buddhism for Malta (apparently not knowing where that is), perhaps not.

And, yeah, so brutal for Britta, given a $0 bet would have caused her to win. And the $2500 bet she made was of no use; a get did not surpass Joel's pre-FJ score.

[Austin Powers]

Andrew's FJ bet... yeesh. Another round number. Fortunately, middle lady had that $2500 which did little to help her. I am surprised that she did not bet zero.

[Paucle]

Got Everest immediately, after all, what else is Nepal known for? Couldn't think of a mountain in Israel, at least one that would "match up" with the highest point on Earth. And that's when it hit me. Dragged it out just in time!

[Bamaman]

Got Everest immediately, after all, what else is Nepal known for? Couldn't think of a mountain in Israel, at least one that would "match up" with the highest point on Earth. And that's when it hit me. Dragged it out just in time!

Like a bloop single in the ninth inning, you keep the steak alive.

[jeff6286]

Got Everest immediately, after all, what else is Nepal known for? Couldn't think of a mountain in Israel, at least one that would "match up" with the highest point on Earth. And that's when it hit me. Dragged it out just in time!

Like a bloop single in the ninth inning, you keep the steak alive.

MMMMMM...steak

[Golf]

Again, I don't see the point of hanging around the bottom as it is currently being done. The opponents don't seem to be thrown by it and it seems to offer no advantage with DDs.

Other than 6 dominating wins and 6-figure winnings, I don't see the point either.

Hockey beards.

[StrangerCoug]

Said Everest and Sinai. (That ought to be in the polls.)

I said Islam for Malta since Maltese is a Semitic language (though the only one usually written in Latin). Outside of Israel, I think Jewish people are pretty scattered, so...