Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

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bpmod
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by bpmod »

pappy97 wrote:My beef, and pretty much my big beef with his play, is that he so flippant and (seemingly) proud about his not knowing anything about americana, pop culture, or sports. Take the hockey question. He fired off his "I don't know" so fast that it, IMHO, appeared flippant and disrespectful. It certainly came off that way. You could argue he just wants to hurry through it, but even with "5 bucks" on the line, most Jeopardy! fans turned contestants want to get every question right. They want to play the game. He didn't even want to throw out a blind guess. Then on his Thursday 1/30 show, in Final Jeopardy, comedic actress cat, clue about lady having bunch of noms in 2013 Emmys and his "guess" is "Mary Tyler Moore"? I suspect he's intelligent and aware enough to know it wasn't MTM. He couldn't have guessed literally anyone else? Again, it appeared to be a flippant answer. Sure it didn't matter because he won, but he did bet $2000 and that is $2000 he simply gave away by not giving a decent guess.
You obviously don't mean a decent guess, but a correct guess. If he had given any other (in your opinion) decent guess, like Tina Fey for instance, that $2000 was not simply given away the way it was with a guess of MTM? I don't get your logic.

Brian
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by tjconn728 »

pappy97 wrote:My beef, and pretty much my big beef with his play, is that he so flippant and (seemingly) proud about his not knowing anything about americana, pop culture, or sports. Take the hockey question. He fired off his "I don't know" so fast that it, IMHO, appeared flippant and disrespectful. It certainly came off that way. You could argue he just wants to hurry through it, but even with "5 bucks" on the line, most Jeopardy! fans turned contestants want to get every question right. They want to play the game. He didn't even want to throw out a blind guess. Then on his Thursday 1/30 show, in Final Jeopardy, comedic actress cat, clue about lady having bunch of noms in 2013 Emmys and his "guess" is "Mary Tyler Moore"? I suspect he's intelligent and aware enough to know it wasn't MTM. He couldn't have guessed literally anyone else? Again, it appeared to be a flippant answer. Sure it didn't matter because he won, but he did bet $2000 and that is $2000 he simply gave away by not giving a decent guess.
I would hardly call the Mary Tyler Moore guess flippant. She is probably one of the top 10 comedic television actresses of all-time. Sure, she hasn't had a show for many years now, but if you don't know much about television, this is exactly the type of guess I would expect.
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by harrumph »

The MTM guess was reasonable.
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by boson »

pappy97 wrote: My beef, and pretty much my big beef with his play, is that he so flippant and (seemingly) proud about his not knowing anything about americana, pop culture, or sports. Take the hockey question. He fired off his "I don't know" so fast that it, IMHO, appeared flippant and disrespectful. It certainly came off that way. You could argue he just wants to hurry through it, but even with "5 bucks" on the line, most Jeopardy! fans turned contestants want to get every question right. They want to play the game. He didn't even want to throw out a blind guess. Then on his Thursday 1/30 show, in Final Jeopardy, comedic actress cat, clue about lady having bunch of noms in 2013 Emmys and his "guess" is "Mary Tyler Moore"? I suspect he's intelligent and aware enough to know it wasn't MTM. He couldn't have guessed literally anyone else? Again, it appeared to be a flippant answer. Sure it didn't matter because he won, but he did bet $2000 and that is $2000 he simply gave away by not giving a decent guess.
Maybe I should let the thread title speak for itself... you certainly are falling in the haters side, and Arthur's got 102,000+ reasons to ignore your hate. But I haven't contributed to this thread, and I like Arthur's gameplay, so I'll defend him.

Arthur has pretty graciously answered the DD question before. The game is tough, and an intellectually gruelling few hours where you play a few games in a row. He skipped thinking about questions that he had no time to study for, and minimized the bet to make them safe. You may disagree, but it is hardly being flippant.

Mary Tyler Moore is a reasonable guess. A wrong one, as we've seen, but hardly one that was thrown out there to get a laugh. It has to be a comedienne with a long career on several shows. With Dick van Dyke, MTM's own show and (hypothetically) some recent guest appearance, she could definitely have been the correct answer. If he didn't know the answer, then MTM is certainly "a decent guess" and not flippant. You dislike his gameplay because he didn't know this answer? A lot of people didn't - 65% of the people on this board.
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by jeff6286 »

Mary Tyler Moore had 11 Emmy nominations as a comedic actress while appearing on the Dick Van Dyke Show and Mary Tyler Moore Show. It is certainly not "flippant" to think that she could have had as many nominations as Lucille Ball. For all Arthur knew, she could have won an Emmy for making a guest appearance on any one of a thousand comedic television programs in 2013. He may have even known, as I'm assuming you do, that she appeared on Hot in Cleveland in 2013 with her former MTM castmate Betty White. She didn't get nominated for that performance, but knowing about that appearance certainly could have made her sound like a reasonable guess.

*EDIT* Oops, didn't turn the page and see that 4 people had already made similar posts. Didn't mean to pile on, pappy, no hard feelings I hope.
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georgespelvin
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by georgespelvin »

pappy97 wrote: My beef, and pretty much my big beef with his play, is that he so flippant and (seemingly) proud about his not knowing anything about americana, pop culture, or sports. Take the hockey question. He fired off his "I don't know" so fast that it, IMHO, appeared flippant and disrespectful. It certainly came off that way. You could argue he just wants to hurry through it, but even with "5 bucks" on the line, most Jeopardy! fans turned contestants want to get every question right. They want to play the game. He didn't even want to throw out a blind guess. Then on his Thursday 1/30 show, in Final Jeopardy, comedic actress cat, clue about lady having bunch of noms in 2013 Emmys and his "guess" is "Mary Tyler Moore"? I suspect he's intelligent and aware enough to know it wasn't MTM. He couldn't have guessed literally anyone else? Again, it appeared to be a flippant answer. Sure it didn't matter because he won, but he did bet $2000 and that is $2000 he simply gave away by not giving a decent guess.
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the Mary Tyler Moore response was a bad guess (it wasn't, but let's say it was). You are arguing that Arthur disrespects the game by not responding to a DD on which he has no clue, but also by writing down some response to FJ despite not knowing the correct response? It seems like "heads I win, tails you lose".
I used to be AWSOP but wanted to be more theatrical.
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by ihavejeoprosy »

pappy97 wrote:
Play to win, fast play, hunt out DD's early, large values first and small values later, bring 2nd place with you to the next game so the next game only has one unknown opponent, all fine under current rules and perfectly fine strategy. But there is no need to disrespect the game, it doesn't help, and as the flippant Mary Tyler Moore response shows, it could hurt your winnings (not saying he knew the answer, but a non-flippant guess would lead to a better chance of getting it correct). I suspect he may come here and say he doesn't mean to be disrespectful and doesn't think he's being flippant, but it certainly comes off that way on TV.

U mad bro?
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by koam »

MTM is a highly reasonable guess for oft-Emmy-nominated TV comic actress who's been on multiple shows. To go off on a rant about the Champ's "flippant" attitude for giving that response is simply ridiculous.
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by lieph82 »

A flippant guess would have been Jerry Seinfeld. Or Bette Davis. Or Lucille Ball, for that matter.
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by koam »

As for the "not knowing sports trivia," I'd say that a lot of Jeopardy! sports trivia is the kind of trivia that many people who don't follow sports would know.....simply by watching Jeopardy! and the random news or talk show. I would have guessed Hockey for that DD, without having a clue other than it's a sport that hadn't been mentioned yet, and I know other sports better and didn't know any of the players named.

I don't know much about Shakespeare or the Bible (and plenty of other specialized topics)...but I often know 80% of the clues in a Shakespeare or Biblical category. Why? I've watched Jeopardy! and kind of get what they're getting at much of the time.
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

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Let's not forget Trevi Fountain was at the bottom now...
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

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ArthurChu wrote:Well for the record in EVERY. SINGLE. INTERVIEW I've given I've basically led off with "You know, all I literally did was Google 'Jeopardy strategy' and start reading what came up...", I've name-checked the Forrest Bounce (and made the same joke every time, that this "new" strategy was invented on Season 2 of Alex Trebek's Jeopardy when I was one year old), I've name-checked Dave Madden, Roger Craig and Watson and pointed out that media coverage of them was hardly lacking...

But whatever. I'm still picking up the phone and still "milking" the publicity train because -- as someone who long, long before any of this wanted to have opportunities to do stuff like voiceover or acting work -- I'd be stupid not to.
Sadly, that's "journalism" for you. A writer/reporter starts out with an idea for a story angle and that will be the story angle no matter what you say to contradict it. It's disgraceful and sad. Basically, you are saying "hey, I didn't make this up, it all happened before!" The reporter looks at that as, "well, I can't very well write that, it's not news." So suddenly you are a "mad genius" and a "villain".

As someone that also is looking to do acting work and voiceover, I certainly can attest that you should take advantage of every opportunity to get yourself noticed above the crowd. Your auditions will undoubtedly spike because of your sudden fame and that gets you into the door to show what you can do. Might even get you jobs as a tiebreaker which builds up the resume and gets you work. Absolutely you are doing the right thing and saying the accurate things even if people ignore it.

The idea about playing "politely" and not "competitively" reminded me of the scenes in "Chariots of Fire" when John Gielgud's character berates Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross) for using coaching to help him run.

Speaking more generally:

I also acknowledge the problem of socially playing a game with less skilled players. I can never get people to play my music trivia board games with me because they assume I will win (I actually don't always). On the other side of the coin, on my Facebook (mostly) weekly music trivia contest, I had to institute special rules for "Superchampions" (i.e., those that win it the most) so that they don't scare away the newbies and casual players. After a wrong guess a "Superchampion" is locked out at least until a clue is given. On the other hand, as Arthur pointed out, it's not fun to play socially with folks whose skill level is so much beneath you (I'm not being smug or snobbish, if I played someone in tennis they would feel the same way). When I was in law school, a woman that I was interested in liked to play Trivial Pursuit and she wanted me to play with her--not as a team mind you. She was a casual player so I deliberately sandbagged to keep her interest but it wasn't fun.

I should know by now that the way people appear on television is not necessarily an indication of how they are in real life. The Jeopardy contestant coordinators are very careful to put only nice personalities on the show ("nice" not being equivalent to non-competitive by any stretch of the imagination). I was one of David Madden's critics when he first appeared on the show and when I finally met the man I found him to be one of the nicest, unassuming guys you'd ever meet. I also was, to say the least, not a Colby fan, but when I actually met him last month at the O'Brien's pub quiz after his Decades' taping, he was super-nice and friendly. Sometimes television makes a character quirk look really bad, particularly if the person with the quirk is mowing other players down.
I used to be AWSOP but wanted to be more theatrical.
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by Golf »

I truly hope that Arthur doesn't give a damn what randoms on the internet think about his play. In the end his opinion is the only one that matters and he is the only one that has to live with the outcome win or lose.

Having been the target of my opponents saying I was too competitive many a time, I can suggest to Arthur to simply say "screw em all".
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

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ArthurChu wrote:To El Jefe:

I have no issue whatsoever with people who don't like it when people play "too competitively" in a social setting and want to put in "ground rules" to make the game "fun for everyone". In a social game the only purpose of playing the game is for people to have a good time, and no one should really dictate to anyone else how they have fun.
You're right, it wasn't an apt analogy. I was really thinking of it in regards to people who carry that same expectations to our tournaments (which are generally for a $500-$2000 top prize)
ArthurChu wrote: purposely "dumbing down" your play is really HARD after you've been playing at a higher level.
Yes! That's really what I was getting at, that experienced gamers can relate to.
ArthurChu wrote:Second issue is that JEOPARDY IS NOT A FRIENDLY SOCIAL LIVING-ROOM GAME. It is a HIGHER-STAKES game than most of us will ever play in our lives. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS AT STAKE.
But it comes into *their* living rooms, so they may not quite understand the concept of it not being All About Them. In their minds, for all I know they know all about high-stakes games from lottery tickets. (*ducks*)

Jeffrey
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

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alietr wrote:This one actually mentions us:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/cel ... e16705627/
We're a chat room? :shock: I wouldn't be caught dead in a chat room.
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by koam »

That Globe And Mail article is a lot higher quality than many of the others.
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El Jefe
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by El Jefe »

pappy97 wrote: My beef, and pretty much my big beef with his play, is that he so flippant and (seemingly) proud about his not knowing anything about americana, pop culture, or sports.
Troll much?
pappy97 wrote:Take the hockey question. He fired off his "I don't know" so fast that it, IMHO, appeared flippant and disrespectful. It certainly came off that way. You could argue he just wants to hurry through it, but even with "5 bucks" on the line, most Jeopardy! fans turned contestants want to get every question right. They want to play the game. He didn't even want to throw out a blind guess.
Given that another 5 seconds of clue-choosing could mean another $1000? Puh-leez. I think you should admit you wanted to see him humbled by the old stand and stare, even if only for a few seconds. You said it yourself- you think he's too proud and he needs to appear weaker before the nation.

Jeffrey
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by Austin Powers »

MTM wasn't a flippant guess but, given that she only does occasional guest work these days, it basically had no chance of being right. But better than doing a TPH.
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Re: Haters gonna hate, I suppose, but...

Post by jeff6286 »

Austin Powers wrote:MTM wasn't a flippant guess but, given that she only does occasional guest work these days, it basically had no chance of being right. But better than doing a TPH.
Well nothing had a chance of being right, except for the right answer.

Actually, there was no right answer, because the clue was flawed, as has been detailed elsewhere.

And while you're right, she only does occasional guest work these days, she did make a guest appearance on a comedy in 2013, and while the writers of the clue may or may not have known that they were excluding guest acting Emmys in speaking of the "record" broken by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, those of us reading the clue had no way of knowing that.
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