Tuesday, June 18, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[Archivists]

Placeholder for J! Round

[Archivists]

Placeholder for DJ! Round

[jeff6286]

Food & Drink
A sign of a trend, in 2010 this product passed Pepsi to move into the No. 2 spot in U.S. soft drink popularity.

Spoiler

What is Diet Coke? Eugene said Dr. Pepper; Robin said Snapple.

Andrew Moore: $17,700+$7,901=$25,601...now a 2-day champion with $56,802
Robin Raffer: $12,800-$8,000=$4,800
Eugene Chuang: $6,600-$3,000=$3,6001

[Golf]

Yet another contestant mistaking Mir for Skylab when given the year? Where do they find these people?

I don't mind the Rubin Bounce, but not sure how effective it is when he follows a pattern when doing so, especially after all the DD's have been found.

Dave found the 2nd row DD in "K"apital leading by a smidge extremely late in the game, a good player, a really good prepared player would bet everything and have a really good chance to lock up the game. A player should know all the capital cities to begin with, and it's a 2nd row clue, should be a complete gimme. However he wagered a useless amount on a clue nobody had to think about.

Thought FJ was a good solve by the champ, it's the type of answer you tend to rule out because Coke is an obvious #1.

[whammy007]

The board was a lot kinder to me today after the big funk I've been in the last couple weeks. Now that I'm seeing Andrew for the second time, I was ready for his tactic, which wasn't a 100% Forrest Bounce - it was more like he took out the 6-8-10 clues in each category and then moved on, leaving the 2-4 level answers for later in the round. That works well enough for DD hunting, but I still wouldn't encourage it for wordplay categories. Also, in THE GILDED PAGE, I gave myself credit for just "Little House" as the series - I'm guessing it would either be ruled correct or as a BMS - I've heard the series referred to both ways.

I backslid from where I was hoping to be during DJ, mainly due to two big weak points of mine - geography (DAS "K"APITAL) and MUSICAL THEATER (though I did get one there and clammed on another I had correct). More than either of those though is that in the last couple weeks I've picked up the bad habit of reaching with poor answers, particularly on the top-value clues. If not for that, my score would be right up in the range where I'd like it to be.

As for Final, I had the correct response right away, but then I ended up second-guessing against Coke Zero for a few moments.

[Bamaman]

I've always heard the books called the "Little House" books when describing the series.

On the DD, there were three clues left worth a total of $1,600. He had a $900 lead. so he really only had to bet $800 to be assured of having the lead going into FJ. But it didn't matter as he had a sole solve on DJ anyway.

I had Diet Coke right away, but was worried it was Coke Zero or some other more recent creation.

I was surprised Renee didn't get E.F. Hutton, she's old enough to remember those ads.

Andrew seems to like the MSB bet from the lead.

[Austin Powers]

This guy has less charisma than me! "Why. So. Serious?" My suggestion is that he does an armpit fart noise on tomorrow's show.

But the Forrest Bounce worked better today. I guess. He hit the DD way too early. But it's not really a Forrest Bounce. It's just starting midway down the board, so you're going to hit DDs like that. It means your opponents don't get them, but you also get less money. Overall, I am ok with this, since it means we get to see all the tough clues.

I generally liked the board, but I thought hostler for $2000 and "eye bank" for $2000 were both dumb and overvalued.

It seems mildly a shame that the game basically game down to a fairly easy world capitals question. I say that, but both of the challengers missed what struck me as a "what else could it be?" type of FJ.

[Austin Powers]

Yet another contestant mistaking Mir for Skylab when given the year? Where do they find these people?

I expected the other contestant to buzz in with "Hubble" after that neg.

[TenPoundHammer]

Couldn't think offhand of any words ending in "the" offhand, but I went 3/5. No idea on "absinthe", and I hate the sound of the word "soothe".

0/5 in Gilded Page. Anyone else follow Robin in going for Goldilocks instead of Rapunzel? I did.

Listerine was my only miss in Drugstore. I knew it wasn't Scope, but my mind was just going "Scopescopescopescopescopescope". Even though Listerine is the only freaking brand I buy! What the hell.

====

Impressed myself with "Kuala Lumpur" and "regalia" as my only gets in "K"apital and Good Definition, respectively. I wonder if the unplayed "K"apital was Kabul, which I guessed on the DD?

====

I say that, but both of the challengers missed what struck me as a "what else could it be?" type of FJ.

I felt it was more "It could be literally ANYthing". I consume soft drinks all the time and couldn't think of any "trends" regarding them. Even if you'd have said "diet", I never would've thought of Diet Coke as being listed separately from regular Coke. With Coke at #1, I assumed that meant all variants.

[DWS]

FJ was an instaget. It's one of the facts about Coca-Cola that I came to know as a shareholder.

[Austin Powers]

I felt it was more "It could be literally ANYthing". I consume soft drinks all the time and couldn't think of any "trends" regarding them. Even if you'd have said "diet", I never would've thought of Diet Coke as being listed separately from regular Coke. With Coke at #1, I assumed that meant all variants.

Yeah but they said "product," not "company." I wouldn't be surprised, though, if "Dr. Pepper" guy thought like you. OTOH, "Snapple" is just a terrible answer; I think only a loose definition of "soft drink" would suggest that it would even work as an answer. (Same company makes Dr. Pepper, so file that away).

[TenPoundHammer]

I felt it was more "It could be literally ANYthing". I consume soft drinks all the time and couldn't think of any "trends" regarding them. Even if you'd have said "diet", I never would've thought of Diet Coke as being listed separately from regular Coke. With Coke at #1, I assumed that meant all variants.

Yeah but they said "product," not "company." I wouldn't be surprised, though, if "Dr. Pepper" guy thought like you. OTOH, "Snapple" is just a terrible answer; I think only a loose definition of "soft drink" would suggest that it would even work as an answer. (Same company makes Dr. Pepper, so file that away).

Even so, I think of Coke, Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, etc. etc. as being types of the same product, not entirely different products. After all, they all have "Coke" in the name and they're all cola-flavored to some degree. It's not like they're totally different types of pop under Coke's ownership, such as Sprite, Barq's, or Mello Yello.

[ACW]

Malaysian Trebek, not Malayan.

[skullturf]

The get I was most proud of during this game: The Star Warts one.

I'm actually not familiar with "treatment W" or whatever it was called, I don't even remember. But I just remember thinking, "OK, the movie is obviously Star Wars, so how can I add one letter to get something plausible?"

I made the same mistake as the champ in guessing Sir Walter Raleigh instead of Sir Henry Morgan. I didn't know Captain Morgan was a Sir. (After I had some time to think about it, I realized the date they gave was probably too late to be Raleigh.)

Robin did a great job catching up in the latter part of the DJ round.

I missed this FJ, and was annoyed with myself for doing so. The answer was incredibly obvious when revealed.

Here's where I went wrong: I read a little too much significance into the words "2010" and "trend", which made me think of energy drinks. I tend to think of energy drinks as "what the kids are drinking these days", so that's where my mind went with the topic of recent trends, whereas diet sodas have been around as long as I can remember.

So I wrote down "What is Red Bull?", while being a little worried that perhaps either Monster or Rock Star is more popular. (Now that I look it up, I see Red Bull is the most popular energy drink in the world, so in that sense I at least picked the "right" energy drink.)

I obviously knew Coke was #1, but then what happened is my mind said, "Okay, so ignore Coke and Pepsi. What else is out there?" So I then stopped thinking about the words Coke and Pepsi, instead of just stopping thinking about the substances Coke and Pepsi.

Contemplating all of this afterward, the following thought occurred to me. The word "Coke" didn't appear in the clue at all, and ended up being part of the correct response. Maybe a good thing to try with Jeopardy clues in general, if you're stuck, is: Try to think of the most obvious word which feels "associated" with the clue but which doesn't appear in the clue.

[skullturf]

By the way, on the subject of "soft drinks", there was a recent Jeopardy clue where (I suppose technically I should hide this in a spoiler)

Spoiler

Kool-Aid was referred to as a "soft drink"

which isn't how I normally use the term. Personally, I only say "soft drink" when I'm talking about one of the carbonated sweet drinks you can get out of the machine at a fast food restaurant.

So, I had recent reason to think "The Jeopardy writers use the term 'soft drink' more generally than I do; I suppose they probably use it to refer to any non-alcoholic beverage." I wonder if that's part of what led me on the fruitless energy drink path.

[StevenH]

I thought this board was a little sloppy. As funny as the TOM was, I thought that the "Joseph Hooker" clue at $2000 was awful. Why not have a clue about a battle that he fought in instead of some random trivia that allows you to have a cute TOM? I also fell into the Ulysses Grant trap.

Andrew did go back to the Philosophy category after he had found the DD and there was one still in play. He also negged a lot. He needs to get those things under control.

The key for FJ was not to over think it. The things that kind of threw me were that I associate drinking more diet soda as a trend that began well before 2010, and I was afraid that the writers definition of "soft drink" may include something that I don't think of as a soft drink. I settled on the correct response because I didn't see anything else that it could be, and I vaguely remembered hearing about that fact before.

[econgator]

I say that, but both of the challengers missed what struck me as a "what else could it be?" type of FJ.

I went with Monster Energy Drink. oops.

[TenPoundHammer]

So. Anyone wanna tell me why Diet Coke is NOT bundled up with the other forms of Coke?

And am I a total derp for thinking that they would be?

[Bamaman]

The Star Wars stuff is Compound W, which is a treatment for warts.

I use "Coke" as a generic term for soft drinks, so maybe I had an advantage there. But I can see how someone would go for an energy drink, since they are trendy these days more than diet sodas, which I don't think of as trendy. I can also think how someone might think all Coke products are grouped together in compiling stats. An instaget for me, but I can see how it was tough for some.

[Leander]

I'm another who thinks of Coke and Pepsi as the mega brand and not the individual products under the brand, especially when they simply said "Pepsi" in the clue. I took a guess at Gatorade with no confidence.