Familiar face on Millionaire

[Rex Kramer]

So does that mean Bill MacDonald and Ken Jennings are the only two players to win six-or-more figures on both shows? I know for Bill, the benchmark was $125,000.

I can only state for sure that no one else did it as of 2007. At that point there had been about 85 people who had been on both shows. There may be twice that number or more now, and I don't know that anyone has a list of all of them. If even *I'm* not motivated enough to compile such a list, I don't imagine anyone else has, either.

Rex

[MarkBarrett]

So does that mean Bill MacDonald and Ken Jennings are the only two players to win six-or-more figures on both shows? I know for Bill, the benchmark was $125,000.

I can only state for sure that no one else did it as of 2007. At that point there had been about 85 people who had been on both shows. There may be twice that number or more now, and I don't know that anyone has a list of all of them. If even *I'm* not motivated enough to compile such a list, I don't imagine anyone else has, either.

Rex

I am a loyal viewer of Millionaire and while I may not recognize every former J! player who gets on, I guarantee you a $100K+ winner on J! will not get past me. Your $125K on both shows remains safe. Dodging the Pam Mueller and Michael Rooney shots were nothing compared to getting Ken off the stage with "just" 100K.

[Rex Kramer]

So does that mean Bill MacDonald and Ken Jennings are the only two players to win six-or-more figures on both shows? I know for Bill, the benchmark was $125,000.

I can only state for sure that no one else did it as of 2007. At that point there had been about 85 people who had been on both shows. There may be twice that number or more now, and I don't know that anyone has a list of all of them. If even *I'm* not motivated enough to compile such a list, I don't imagine anyone else has, either.

Rex

I am a loyal viewer of Millionaire and while I may not recognize every former J! player who gets on, I guarantee you a $100K+ winner on J! will not get past me. Your $125K on both shows remains safe. Dodging the Pam Mueller and Michael Rooney shots were nothing compared to getting Ken off the stage with "just" 100K.

Thank you, Mark -- you are a national treasure. At least among the "People Whose Sense of Self-Worth Depends on Highly Contrived Distinctions" crowd.

Rex

[Carpe Diem]

Season 15 player Chris Sedlack ( http://www.j-archive.com/showplayer.php?player_id=1811 ) appeared on Millionaire this week.

[MarkBarrett]

Today's April 13 show had a familiar face for long-time J! viewers:



What happened and spoiler for Q above:

Spoiler

Paul Rouffa guessed Chicago, but Atlanta was the right answer. He left with just the $1000. It was his 4th question, his bank was at $22K and he had the JUMP and +1 lifelines remaining.

[KazooJ!fan]

I was just in Atlanta's airport yesterday. It took an hour and 45 minutes to get to South Bend, Indiana from there. That's just shy of 2 hours.

I was deciding between Atlanta and Chicago-it's just a 45 minute flight across Lake Michigan from here.

[triviawayne]

Considering

Spoiler

Atlanta is closer to Washington, DC, Miami, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York & Boston (wow, I feel like Pitbull)

, I went right for the correct answer.

Maybe this was an easy one for me because where I live is in a day's drive of 33% of the US population, so this type of geography/population question is on my mind anyway.

[legendneverdies]

Today's April 13 show had a familiar face for long-time J! viewers:



What happened and spoiler for Q above:

Spoiler

Paul Rouffa guessed Chicago, but Atlanta was the right answer. He left with just the $1000. It was his 4th question, his bank was at $22K and he had the JUMP and +1 lifelines remaining.

Spoiler

Paul's first game show appearance since Super J! a quarter century ago. He won $30k over five days on Scrabble in December 1987 and played on NOw You See It in June 1989, making it past the first round but losing the second round, and seeing his opponent win $50K in a bonus round not won for two weeks(it started at $5K and went up $5K a day until won)

[MinnesotaMyron]

Getting recognized by Paul last summer at our Chicago audition was, no joke, the thrill of a lifetime. Those Jeopardy contestants from when I was a kid are still like celebrities to me.

Glad he got on, sad it turned out like this.

[Volante]

Considering

Spoiler

Atlanta is closer to Washington, DC, Miami, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York & Boston (wow, I feel like Pitbull)

, I went right for the correct answer.

Maybe this was an easy one for me because where I live is in a day's drive of 33% of the US population, so this type of geography/population question is on my mind anyway.

Spoiler

Flight times from Chicago and Atlanta to NYC, Boston, Philly, W.DC, Baltimore, Dallas are all the same, +/-5m. Both can also reach Kansas City, St Louis and Detroit within that window.

But Atlanta can also reach Florida and Houston within ~2 hours.

I didn't give myself enough latitude and got it wrong...

[legendneverdies]

Other WWTBAM news: Syndie MIllionaire got renewed for season 14 with Chris Harrison replacing Terry Crews as host. Chris Harrison hosts the Bachelor(ette) but hosted two more traditional, albeit short lived, game shows: Mall Masters on GSN in 2001 and You Deserve It on ABC primetime in late 2011.

[PRouf]

Paul's first game show appearance since Super J! a quarter century ago.

Well, not quite. I did appear on network Millionaire in November 1999 and August 2000, playing Fastest Finger but not reaching the Hot Seat. And "quarter century ago" is very funny. I like to think that my first J! appearances were half a lifetime ago.

Flight times from Chicago and Atlanta to NYC, Boston, Philly, W.DC, Baltimore, Dallas are all the same, +/-5m. Both can also reach Kansas City, St Louis and Detroit within that window.

But Atlanta can also reach Florida and Houston within ~2 hours.

I find this oddly comforting.

Getting recognized by Paul last summer at our Chicago audition was, no joke, the thrill of a lifetime.

Myron, you really must get out more.

BTW, Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune wrote a nice article about me in today's paper. http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertain ... tml#page=1

[MarkBarrett]

Frank Tangredi was on J! (in 1991 I think) and won $32K on Millionaire in 2000.

Spoiler

Frank helped quizzing friend Susan Dorsey-Nelson by knowing that Gore was the son of a senator.

[PRouf]

Frank Tangredi was on J! (in 1991 I think) and won $32K on Millionaire in 2000.

...and I lost Fastest Finger to Frank in that 2000 episode.

[alietr]

BTW, Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune wrote a nice article about me in today's paper. http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertain ... tml#page=1

It's behind a paywall.

[BigDaddyMatty]

By sheer coincidence, I just ran across this on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzLsCVX-RtI

[Budphrey]

BTW, Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune wrote a nice article about me in today's paper. http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertain ... tml#page=1

Interestingly, a friend of mine clipped that article and saved it for me, not even knowing we'd encountered each other randomly at another game show tryout. It was great to see you had fun in the hot ... umm, seat? counter? camera mark? Anyway, it was a fun read.

[Bamaman]

A guy being on a game show was worth a mention on the news in Chicago?

I didn't see or don't remember Paul on Jeopordy!, but I bet he was fun to watch. I got both of his bonus words as quickly as he did. I can't believe they threw in. Pat Sajak clue on there.

I think he got a big help the way Chuck pronounced the stopwatch clue.

[seaborgium]

By sheer coincidence, I just ran across this on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzLsCVX-RtI

Paul's got his J! and Scrabble appearances on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/paulrouffa
I got that link from the article about him, which I was able to read by looking at it on a barebones, Javascript-incapable browser that wasn't able to pop up the paywall to block me.

Today's Millionaire didn't have any familiar faces, but it did give away a grand total of $5,750. The first player was doing reasonably well, then he got a question wrong that I paraphrase as follows: "John Alden was in charge of the beer on the Mayflower because he was the ship's what? A. Furrier B. Cooper C. Milliner D. Falconer"

Spoiler

I think the player had some unconscious association between "milliner" and "Miller," because that was his final answer, which he gave quickly and confidently. The correct response was cooper, but Terry didn't explain why it made sense.

Then the next person asked the audience on his first question, they went 57% (or 53%, I can't remember for certain) on an incorrect answer, and he agreed and went bye-bye. The one after him asked the audience on the first question (despite knowing the answer), jumped the next one, answered the third, and got her father down from the audience on the fourth, but was unable to answer the question and walked away with half her $7,500 bank.

[PRouf]

It's behind a paywall.

Google Final answer: There's life after Jeopardy; you should be able to link to the article from there.

A guy being on a game show was worth a mention on the news in Chicago?

Um...no. Rick has written a number of articles mentioning me in the past, often about my Jeopardy appearances and sometimes about my previous acting career. About a year and a half ago, I was in the middle of another career change and checked with him about a reference. At the time, I was also waiting to find out if I would get picked for the Tournament of the Decades, and he offered to write an article with Jeopardy kind of bookending things. Well, that didn't happen, but when my Millionaire appearance came up, he decided to pull the trigger.

Interestingly, a friend of mine clipped that article and saved it for me, not even knowing we'd encountered each other randomly at another game show tryout.

Bud, it was nice meeting you at the Chase audition. Actually, that was quite a group gathered that day.