Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

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Bamaman
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Bamaman »

TPH-Notice they did not use the word "walk" in the answer. They used stroll instead. That could be a clue that walk is going to be in the question. Remember the clue a few weeks ago where they held up a small grain of oats and went way around the bend to avoid saying the word "grain"? This is a similar situation.
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jkbrat
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by jkbrat »

[... a little behind after a weekend of travel ...]

OMG! Much bummedness! Now we'll have to wait until the TOC to see the rest of the new wardrobe! :(

Congratulations on a great run, Alex! And, while I'm sure you would have liked for it to continue a little longer (who wouldn't?), the important thing is that you passed the critical five-game threshold which means it's not over for you (by a long shot!) yet. There will always be detractors, but I don't think that anyone with a real understanding and appreciation of the game feels let down by the way you played it. FJ! can often be a crapshoot, which is why the safest strategy (though often appearing the riskiest) is to do whatever it takes to make it irrelevant; you impressively did that over half the time, an enviable record.

FWIW I wrote "Instagram", crossed it out and wrote "Twitter", then crossed "Twitter" out and re-wrote "Instagram". Whether I would have had time (and space) to do that all within the 30 seconds that the pen works is debatable. :roll:
nightreign wrote: I loved Alex's story today. I've been to smart camp six years and running, so I'm glad to know there is hope for me yet.
That was a great story and a funny coincidence for me as well, as one of the things on my to-get-done-before-I-can-watch-Jeopardy list tonight was signing my daughter up for the test. ;)
omgwheelhouse wrote:The photo is real, got the idea for it when the category came up awhile back
I've always liked your avatar as well; I wonder if they would let you show that picture (with a brief backstory) as one of your Awkward-Chat options in the TOC. :D

And, LOL -- the mention of Edina, Minnesota. They were a high-school rival and, given the relative well-to-do-ness of the suburb compared to my own, were routinely referred to as "cake eaters" (although, unlike the Urban Dictionary definition, I thought of it as more of a Marie Antoinette thing) :lol:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... cake+eater
willwoodlen wrote:As others have pointed out, the problem is inconsistency over time.
Absolutely true. And so easily fixable.
willwoodlen wrote:One of the worst BMS miscarriages (perhaps discussed at the time but I wasn't on the J board then) occurred when a contestant who'd been doing quite nicely answered "Who is Tallchief?" and Alex gave a BMS instruction. The contestant couldn't come up with "Maria," and she was negged, with AT providing a feeble justification based on Maria Tallchief's having a sister who, whatever her accomplishments, was ridiculously obscure. The incident seemed to take the wind out of the contestant, who, if I remember correctly, remained silent for the rest of the game. Given this example, insisting on a specific Adams or Roosevelt seems only fair.
It was noted in the original thread, and I commented on it in a later thread when Hepburn (of which there are two, each famous in her own right -- unlike, IMHO, the Tallchief sisters) was not BMS'd. And, like you, I am still bothered by it, lo, these many moons later. (Yeah, "Let It Go" is not exactly the OCD anthem. :lol: )
seaborgium wrote:I came up with the phrase "banned you from gambling" to keep Banjul with Gambia in my mind

Incidentally, I keep Equatorial Guinea connected with Malabo by going Malabo -> "middle of" -> equator,
Since everyone else is sharing theirs: I think of Gambia -- a cute, tiny little country located along the coast -- as just being a "jewel" of a place -> Banjul (leaving the other one for CAR).

And for Malabo, I imagine it as Malibu, with beaches and sunshine. And where would you find sunshine and warm beach weather? Why, at the equator, of course!

(OK, not my best work, but still worth every cent you paid for them!)

Congratulations to Todd for being a giant-slayer, and kudos to Monica for playing to win -- when she had control of the board near the start of DJ (and again a few clues later), she went right for the $1600 clues. Never easy going up against a multi-day champ, but both challengers played well and had some respectable gets.
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opusthepenguin
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by opusthepenguin »

jkbrat wrote:FWIW I wrote "Instagram", crossed it out and wrote "Twitter", then crossed "Twitter" out and re-wrote "Instagram". Whether I would have had time (and space) to do that all within the 30 seconds that the pen works is debatable. :roll:
I wonder what they would do if a contestant had two crossed out answers with "stet" written next to the first one. I think we've had this conversation before. Didn't it culminate in Mark Barrett or maybe Seaborgium writing a hypothetical FJ asking for the proofreader's mark that indicates something shouldn't be changed after all?

I went with Twitter. Instagram never crossed my mind. I don't think of Instagram as a "social media" site. I think of it as a photo sharing site with a junky look and a crap interface that no one I know uses and is not worth even close to a tenth of $1 billion. As a photo sharing site, Instagram has a poorer presentation and is less useable than Pinterest, Flickr, Imgur, and Photobucket. And that's saying something, because every single one of those sucks.

For simple proof of how drastically awful Instagram is, Google Instagram white bars. Here are the first hits when I do so:

How To Not Crop Your Photos On Instagram
What's Up With These White Borders on Instagram?
How to Add a Landscape Photo to Instagram

Simply ludicrous. Instagram auto-crops your photos to a square. There is no in-app method for avoiding this procrustean editing. You have to use a third party app to put borders on the picture, making it square. And, of course, if someone wants to save that picture and show it to others so that it fills a rectangular screen, they'll have to use some reverse workaround magic to un-kluge what Instagram forced you to kluge.

Instagram deserves to go flat out bankrupt and all its investors deserve to lose every penny of that $1 billion. Its creators and dozen employees deserve to lose their jobs and all their money and never find work again, not even as the person who operates the fry machine at McDonald's (where presumably they would just muck things up by cutting a cubical section from each fry and discarding the rest).

Also, I am bitter because Instagram ended my incredible 15-game FJ streak. Dillholes.
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by bpmod »

opusthepenguin wrote:I went with Twitter. Instagram never crossed my mind. I don't think of Instagram as a "social media" site. I think of it as a photo sharing site with a junky look and a crap interface that no one I know uses and is not worth even close to a billionth of $1 billion. As a photo sharing site, Instagram has a poorer presentation and is less useable than Pinterest, Flickr, Imgur, and Photobucket. And that's saying something, because every single one of those sucks.
Fixed your post.
opusthepenguin wrote:Also, I am bitter because Instagram ended my incredible 15-game FJ streak. Dillholes.
You don't seem too bitter. I was trying to figure out what side of the fence you were on. :lol:

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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by zakharov »

Instagram is extremely popular with Kids These Days. I don't use it much but I know a lot of people who do.
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by billiej »

zakharov wrote:Instagram is extremely popular with Kids These Days. I don't use it much but I know a lot of people who do.
Got Instagram. Still don't quite understand what it's about, I just know I want it off my lawn!! :twisted:
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by nightreign »

As a representative of the Kids These Days, I will attempt to explain Instagram:

1. I made an account last year to keep in touch with some smart camp friends. More people have Instagram than Twitter, and while there are more people on Facebook, most people I know who have Facebook don't really use it. Sure, there's not a ton of communicating you do on it, but I think of the photos as like an update on the person's life.
2. The whole site is designed to be an app. You're not supposed to use it when you're not on mobile. That's the main reason for the square pic thing, I think. There's also the fact that it's designed for pictures of people, which are usually pretty easy to crop into squares. (Keep in mind, though, that I like most mobile apps that people think suck, notably Twitter and Reddit, better than their online counterparts.)
3. Some people are pretty amazing photographers.
4. You can learn a lot about someone by the stuff they post on Instagram. Both the pictures and the captions. I know I use the captions to post my favorite song lyrics; you can also often tell someone's mood by their picture or caption.
5. I use it sometimes to bolster my self-esteem (posting selfies), but a lot of times it's more like a life update or a memory. I posted a picture of my mathletes champion trophy on IG, as well as pictures of my college trip last summer. And of course, I never fail to remind the world every so often that I was a contestant on the World's Greatest Game Show.

Tl;dr: Instagram is a socially acceptable way of saying, "look at this awesome stuff I've been doing"/"look at how good I look today"/"look at this amazing sunset"/"look at how cute I was as a little kid." It's better than Facebook or Twitter because more people use it.
Last edited by nightreign on Thu Apr 23, 2015 1:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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This Is Kirk!
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by This Is Kirk! »

I use Instagram and I like it despite its obvious limitations. @seussnelson
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by hbomb1947 »

I'm on instagram. It's very commonly used by travel bloggers -- not just for boring selfies. My instagram handle is the same as my twitter one (@hbomb_worldwide).

I like how the need to crop a photo to a square forces me to be creative in what I'm going to include in that reduced frame (contrary to what a poster above wrote, it doesn't "auto-crop" -- you control which part of your image goes in the square; and it does offer you various filters and borders; you don't need a third-party app to enhance the square with such bells and whistles) -- and sometimes I will take a picture with instagram in mind, taking it from further back than I otherwise would so that there's room to crop it and still get what I want into the frame after it's cropped.
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by This Is Kirk! »

hbomb1947 wrote:(contrary to what a poster above wrote, it doesn't "auto-crop" -- you control which part of your image goes in the square
I'm not sure why this is the case, but for photos I take with my phone I can control the cropping, but it doesn't seem to do this for photos I've transferred over from a dedicated camera. I always have to save them in square format in Photoshop. I have no idea what the difference is. Personally I think the various filters are kind of hokey. Seems like most people are posting unfiltered shots these days, though.
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by willwoodlen »

jkbrat wrote:[... a little behind after a weekend of travel ...]

OMG! Much bummedness! Now we'll have to wait until the TOC to see the rest of the new wardrobe! :(

Congratulations on a great run, Alex! And, while I'm sure you would have liked for it to continue a little longer (who wouldn't?), the important thing is that you passed the critical five-game threshold which means it's not over for you (by a long shot!) yet. There will always be detractors, but I don't think that anyone with a real understanding and appreciation of the game feels let down by the way you played it. FJ! can often be a crapshoot, which is why the safest strategy (though often appearing the riskiest) is to do whatever it takes to make it irrelevant; you impressively did that over half the time, an enviable record.

FWIW I wrote "Instagram", crossed it out and wrote "Twitter", then crossed "Twitter" out and re-wrote "Instagram". Whether I would have had time (and space) to do that all within the 30 seconds that the pen works is debatable. :roll:
nightreign wrote: I loved Alex's story today. I've been to smart camp six years and running, so I'm glad to know there is hope for me yet.
That was a great story and a funny coincidence for me as well, as one of the things on my to-get-done-before-I-can-watch-Jeopardy list tonight was signing my daughter up for the test. ;)
omgwheelhouse wrote:The photo is real, got the idea for it when the category came up awhile back
I've always liked your avatar as well; I wonder if they would let you show that picture (with a brief backstory) as one of your Awkward-Chat options in the TOC. :D

And, LOL -- the mention of Edina, Minnesota. They were a high-school rival and, given the relative well-to-do-ness of the suburb compared to my own, were routinely referred to as "cake eaters" (although, unlike the Urban Dictionary definition, I thought of it as more of a Marie Antoinette thing) :lol:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... cake+eater
willwoodlen wrote:As others have pointed out, the problem is inconsistency over time.
Absolutely true. And so easily fixable.
willwoodlen wrote:One of the worst BMS miscarriages (perhaps discussed at the time but I wasn't on the J board then) occurred when a contestant who'd been doing quite nicely answered "Who is Tallchief?" and Alex gave a BMS instruction. The contestant couldn't come up with "Maria," and she was negged, with AT providing a feeble justification based on Maria Tallchief's having a sister who, whatever her accomplishments, was ridiculously obscure. The incident seemed to take the wind out of the contestant, who, if I remember correctly, remained silent for the rest of the game. Given this example, insisting on a specific Adams or Roosevelt seems only fair.
It was noted in the original thread, and I commented on it in a later thread when Hepburn (of which there are two, each famous in her own right -- unlike, IMHO, the Tallchief sisters) was not BMS'd. And, like you, I am still bothered by it, lo, these many moons later. (Yeah, "Let It Go" is not exactly the OCD anthem. :lol: )
seaborgium wrote:I came up with the phrase "banned you from gambling" to keep Banjul with Gambia in my mind

Incidentally, I keep Equatorial Guinea connected with Malabo by going Malabo -> "middle of" -> equator,
Since everyone else is sharing theirs: I think of Gambia -- a cute, tiny little country located along the coast -- as just being a "jewel" of a place -> Banjul (leaving the other one for CAR).

And for Malabo, I imagine it as Malibu, with beaches and sunshine. And where would you find sunshine and warm beach weather? Why, at the equator, of course!

(OK, not my best work, but still worth every cent you paid for them!)

Congratulations to Todd for being a giant-slayer, and kudos to Monica for playing to win -- when she had control of the board near the start of DJ (and again a few clues later), she went right for the $1600 clues. Never easy going up against a multi-day champ, but both challengers played well and had some respectable gets.

Thanks, jkbrat. I feel better already.
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Richard C »

Not enough room for error as the quality level of contests had increased.
Too many blanks on various categories for Alex, but ... compared with the bulk of contestants prior and subsequent
to his appearance, one can see a dramatic difference in level of knowledge.
I can't wait to see Alex compete again in the ToC.
At least he took his defeat well.

What's up with some contestants waiving the ringer in the air far past the acknowledged time that another contestant
has already rung in and been called on? Shows a real amateurishness.

Ken, Brad, and a few other superstar Jeopardy players in my estimation have a far broader knowledge of more subjects,
than Alex, but his performance and approach showed him to be among the most superior players in the game, in the level
just below the aforementioned superstars, and one of my all-time favorites.
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Re: Monday, April 20, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by seaborgium »

Richard C wrote: What's up with some contestants waiving the ringer in the air far past the acknowledged time that another contestant
has already rung in and been called on? Shows a real amateurishness.
They're all amateurs.
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