Thursday, July 5, 2012 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[Fishercat]

Honolulu's traffic was horrific, but I figured with such a large rural population, with the likely spiked price of everything, would dissuade people from driving. Not so much, though I was surprised NY was so low.

I really enjoyed this game til FJ. Glad they all got it right, but man, the wagers. I can't imagine finally getting on the show and wagering in that kind of way. To recap, I'll spoiler the scores just in case

Spoiler

1st Place: 12,600 (100)
2nd Place: 10,000 (2401)
3rd Place: 6,200 (1000)

To me, it seems like first place must wager to cover 2nd. I THINK I know what she was getting at: bidding 100 kept third place from having any shot at coming back, guaranteeing at least 2k and making it a two horse race. I disagree with the strategy entirely of course, but I see it. She got incredibly lucky that second place's wager was so conservative.

2nd place baffles me. I mean, I get it. A 2,401 bet guarantees him second place, but I see literally no downside to bidding, say, 2601, or up to 3799 (hell, if he wanted to push 10k, I wouldn't blame him, but the ideal range was 2601-3799). Let's face it, if he gets it wrong and 3rd place gets it right, odds were pretty good that a rational bet passes him anyway. I think with that little of a difference, you have to pressure the leader to get it right.

Third, I don't have a huge issue with. The logical bets of 7601 and 2601, if they both got it wrong, put the leader at 4999 and the 2nd place player at 7399. As such, I would have preferred an 1200 bet, but 1000 at least keeps him ahead on a single get without jeopardizing him completely on a triple stumper.

I know that if I ever get on the show, I'll probably bring 2k into Final Jeopardy, but if I can go in with a lead, I can't imagine wagering to give it up to a reasonable bet.

Oh well, what's done is done. I still like the new champ, great personality and solid knowledge base, so no complaints on that front. I even liked the game, even if some of those bowling clues were TSes (Double is a reasonably common bowling term, for the record, but I think you have to bowl enough for it to stick). Those clues in general were a bit odd.

There's virtually no reason for third-place to wager 1200. I think I can count on my thumbs the number of times I've seen leaders wager more than the shut-out wager. So if third-place is going to wager more than 1000, she might as well go all-in. --Bob

And I made a math error. Fantastic, I give back any credibility I gained on this issue.

[bpmod]

*Even without a car of my own, I will have driven over 20,000km this year.
Brian

I've been driving for over 15 years, and I don't think I've ever driven a single kilometer. All my driving has been in miles.

Well, I drive both kilometres and miles, but I've never driven a kilometer.

Brian

[MarkBarrett]

Sure, I can include a Hawaii/Alaska option on the FJ poll this week. I'll be checking it since I only wrote Hawaii on my paper. Even with multiple guess I likely would not have made NY the choice.

Jackboots was a new one to me. Octant I barely guessed in time because at first I thought I had to calculate 1/8 of 360. The "O" as part of the category name got me there.

Yes, tungsten was the yell at home TS of the night. I had too much Hemsworth knowledge and blurted out brother Liam before I could take it back. Curse you Miley/Hunger Games!

Double I got because the drinking portion of the clue meant nothing to me. Two strikes in a row is a double. I've heard that thousands of time. It's the ball taking a dive I can't recall ever hearing. I blurted out baseline too going off baseball without making it match the bowling portion of the clue.

The 3000s across the board to end the first segment must indeed be rare, but I'm not checking the archive to see.

I don't know about Stephanie looking like Lyn Payne, but she does like to sway.

No look-alike game for Chris yet? There's some actor or athlete I can't match him to. It'll come to me.

[mungar]

No look-alike game for Chris yet? There's some actor or athlete I can't match him to. It'll come to me.

Jason Bateman?

[Vanya]

No look-alike game for Chris yet? There's some actor or athlete I can't match him to. It'll come to me.

Mark Harmon?

[Bamaman]

Not a bowler, but I got double. I have heard the phrase "jackbooted thugs" used to describe the army of followers of a political opinion opposite your won, but never knew what jackboots were but still guessed correctly. Good guesses for me all around tonight. Tomorrow I'll have to pay it back.

[seaborgium]

I thought of New York, but figured NYC must be offset by the rest of the state, and instead imagined a bunch of retirees with revoked licenses when I said Florida. Three days in a row I've had the correct response at my fingertips but been wrong.

Stephanie's wager was canny, and it guaranteed her victory. The way I see it, she saw Ron bet to get $1 ahead of third yesterday, figured she just had to finish ahead of $12,401 to win, and made sure it'd happen no matter what. All the guarantee cost her was $7,301.

edit: I think my best gets tonight were augury and octant.

[MarkBarrett]

No look-alike game for Chris yet? There's some actor or athlete I can't match him to. It'll come to me.

Jason Bateman?

Yes. While watching I was thinking not Nathan Fillion, but that other guy. Thanks.

[DWS]

For whatever reason, for FJ I latched onto small states and went with Hawaii. New York made sense on the reveal, though.

[kristinsausville]

Another Hawaii guess here. New York actually came to mind first -- specifically, Pete Campbell from "Mad Men" -- but then I remembered the hours upon hours I have been stuck on the BQE and LIE on our way to visit some of Justin's family on Long Island, and rejected it.

[Johnblue]

BQE? Try anything else.

Double was often a Lou Grant thing: "Bartender, I'll have a double!"

Trainman: Hicksville has a noted train station. Astoria is pretty nice, for an urban neighborhood. I live a bit further east.

[davey]

I wasn't surprised that "tungsten" was a triple stumper, because I couldn't think of it either..."Wolfram" was familiar - I just couldn't place it.

I thought about Hawaii, I like the arguments posters have made for Alaska - but an instinct made me choose New York, with misgivings (it's a big state!) Was a little shocked that it was right...You'd never know it from the DMV office, where I spent a morning recently...but we do have good mass transit...

[TenPoundHammer]

For some reason, I had Tungsten = W = Wolfram in my mind earlier today, so that came to me right away.

Though science class was usually a chore for me, I found the periodic table rather easy for some reason. Only a few elements have symbols whose letters don't appear in their names.

[Sage on the Hudson]

For the Seven Wonders clue, I guessed The Great Pyramid of Giza and I'm sure others did too.

Since the clue mentioned that that particular Ancient Wonder was cast (metal), one must ask whether you think there are many people who believe the Pyramid of Khufu was produced by that method.

I don't see how, didn't they say one guy built this wonder? Unless you think the pyramids were built entirely by Xenu or something, I don't see how that fits.

There is no limit to Xenu's power; after all, he's been sucking large sums of money out of the pockets of hundreds of thousands of people for decades...and none of them can possibly be suckers...

From what I can tell looking online, NY and Texas are basically neck and neck in this statistic; I hope this isn't another one of those National Air and Space Museum questions where it changes every year.

I thought New York was the "obvious" answer, but wasn't sure if that would mean that it was right or wrong.

There are two factors that must lead you to New York State: One is, of course, the aforementioned ubiquity of mass transit, and, Two: the percentage (42%) of the state's total population living in its largest city. No other state boasts that ratio.

[Volante]

I thought New York was the "obvious" answer, but wasn't sure if that would mean that it was right or wrong. I immediately wrote down New York, California, Hawaii, then after a few seconds crossed out California (Everyone in L.A. drives, right?), then wrote down Alaska as well. I thought long and hard about just sticking with NY since I figured I would guess wrong on Alaska/Hawaii, but then thinking about how spread out Alaska is, and that lots of people might travel by plane, boat (?), snowmobile (do you need a license for those?), I decided to cross out NY and Hawaii and stick with Alaska. Turns out I thought about it way too much and should have stuck with the obvious answer. However, based on the lists I've seen, New York is nowhere close to being a runaway leader in this statistic, so just because the most obvious answer turned out to be correct doesn't (to me) mean that it was an easy clue.

Considering residents in CA are spread out all over the damn place (San Francisco/Oakland, Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, Santa Barbara, LA, OC, Riverside, San Bernadino, San Diego) and the absolute LACK of public transport outside of...well...BART...

My guess was Alaska, figuring that, while people would need motorized vehicles, they'd be the sort not necessitating drivers licences to use. Still amazed how high the get rate is on this. Even given NYC and how there's too many cars to drive, there sure seems like a lot of people *should* have their license... Just not happy about this one. Plus I think 'resident' played more into this clue than I'm giving it credit for.

[stevo4212]

Why did I just run a Yahoo finance search for MMI, and not find Motorola?

[Volante]

Why did I just run a Yahoo finance search for MMI, and not find Motorola?

MMI is no longer a valid stock symbol is why. Google bought Motorola back in May. Incidentally, this (hopefully) means this episode was shot before May 22nd.

http://mediacenter.motorola.com/Press-R ... -3aeb.aspx

[dhkendall]

For some reason, I had Tungsten = W = Wolfram in my mind earlier today, so that came to me right away.

Though science class was usually a chore for me, I found the periodic table rather easy for some reason. Only a few elements have symbols whose letters don't appear in their names.

This. I thought this fact was Trivia 101 (part of "element symbols not named after their common English name", "element symbols whose symbol doesn't appear in its English name" and "one letter element symbols") And the periodic table is something I also have down cold, I wonder how many else are periodic table geeks?

[dhkendall]

Why did I just run a Yahoo finance search for MMI, and not find Motorola?

I think the clue would have been more deserving of its bottom row status if they hadn't spotted you "Mobility, Inc." (in other words "name a cell phone maker beginning with "M". Gee, really? ) Should have just left it how it was (or given it a lower dollar value).

[ronk]

Why did I just run a Yahoo finance search for MMI, and not find Motorola?

MMI is no longer a valid stock symbol is why. Google bought Motorola back in May. Incidentally, this (hopefully) means this episode was shot before May 22nd.

February 22nd. BTW, remember, this is about 9 months after 'Thor' came out, and I was thinking "Chrissss....Hemmmm....STREET." I thought I had it. Ever since the taping he's haunted me -- He's had two big movies out, and barely a day passes when I don't see him on TV, in a magazine, etc.