Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

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TenPoundHammer

Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by TenPoundHammer »

This Is Kirk! wrote:
TenPoundHammer wrote:Oh yeah, I thought asking for the leader of Nicaragua was waaaaaaaay undervalued at $400. At least ask for something a little more basic like Merkel = Germany in the first box.
Really? Ortega has led Nicaragua for a good part of the last 35 years.
But how often is he, or Nicaragua in general, in the news in comparison?
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This Is Kirk!
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by This Is Kirk! »

TenPoundHammer wrote:
This Is Kirk! wrote:
TenPoundHammer wrote:Oh yeah, I thought asking for the leader of Nicaragua was waaaaaaaay undervalued at $400. At least ask for something a little more basic like Merkel = Germany in the first box.
Really? Ortega has led Nicaragua for a good part of the last 35 years.
But how often is he, or Nicaragua in general, in the news in comparison?
Not as much now, but it was in the news constantly back in the Reagan years.
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BigDaddyMatty
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by BigDaddyMatty »

TenPoundHammer wrote:
This Is Kirk! wrote:
TenPoundHammer wrote:Oh yeah, I thought asking for the leader of Nicaragua was waaaaaaaay undervalued at $400. At least ask for something a little more basic like Merkel = Germany in the first box.
Really? Ortega has led Nicaragua for a good part of the last 35 years.
But how often is he, or Nicaragua in general, in the news in comparison?
Lately, not much. For pretty much the entire 1980s, a bunch. The latter namesake of the Iran-Contra Affair are the Contra rebels who were attempting to seize power in Nicaragua from Ortega's Sandinista military junta government.

EDIT: Kirk is quicker on the signaling device than am I.
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TenPoundHammer

Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by TenPoundHammer »

This Is Kirk! wrote:
TenPoundHammer wrote:
This Is Kirk! wrote:
TenPoundHammer wrote:Oh yeah, I thought asking for the leader of Nicaragua was waaaaaaaay undervalued at $400. At least ask for something a little more basic like Merkel = Germany in the first box.
Really? Ortega has led Nicaragua for a good part of the last 35 years.
But how often is he, or Nicaragua in general, in the news in comparison?
Not as much now, but it was in the news constantly back in the Reagan years.
So it's $400 material only if you're old enough to remember the Reagan years, which I am not.
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by bpmod »

TenPoundHammer wrote:So it's $400 material only if you're old enough to remember the Reagan years, which I am not.
How much is Lincoln and the Civil War in the news of late? I guess, since most Jeopardy! contestants weren't around to witness them first-hand, they should never appear in the top row.

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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by BobF »

ElendilPickle wrote:
alietr wrote:So let's see ... Vermont also borders Quebec and is just a few miles from Montreal, the largest city in Quebec. And the name of the state is in French! How could that not have been the second state?!?
I went back and forth between Maine and Vermont for a good chunk of FJ, then decided to go with Maine because of Acadia National Park.
My thinking also. My mom recently traced our family tree and found we descended from Acadians that settled in Nova Scotia in the 1600s. Since Maine is sandwiched between Quebec and NS, it's the first thing that came to my mind.

Now if Vermont came to my mind first, I would have gotten this one wrong.
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by floridagator »

So far no one has mentioned that awful performance by the doctor on the skeleton category. I got 4/5 and wouldn't ever claim to be excellent at bones. The doctor would have had to take a mastery test.

I knew Louisiana was one of the FJ answers and one of the northern New England states was the other. New Hampshire has road signs in both languages. So that's how I went. My second choice would have been Vermont, and my third choice would have been NH&VT without Louisiana.
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by doihavetoreally »

BigDaddyMatty wrote: I've been mixing up the Ortega and Noriega countries since the 80s, so no reason to stop now,
Ha - only two Matt? I am mixing up a bunch of them - Ortega, Noriega, Torrijos, Duarte, Duvalier etc. Awful, just plain awful. For me, its better if they don't show up, rather than show up and neg :|
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by GoodStrategy »

bomtr wrote:Plus, she had the lead assured with one clue left; she should not have rung in on the last clue. Worked out when she got it right, but the risk was not worth it, in my opinion. Of course, it could have played out differently had she not since they all got FJ wrong.
I think it's certainly worth the risk if you can improve to a crush if you're right, since at that point you force the trailer(s) to be right (and you be wrong) to win (which helped Laura in this game). The only time I recommend abstaining from ringing in on a late-DJ! clue is when you have a guaranteed lock if you don't take the risk (and there are no clues subject to a ruling reversal that would hurt you or help your opponents).
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by skullturf »

I got this FJ, but I agree that it was a tricky one, and I was sweating all the way through the reveals.

I've even looked at the relevant demographics before, but I didn't have the facts or the numbers memorized.

I knew the correct response would almost certainly be Louisiana together with one of the three northernmost New England states.

I was drawn more to Maine, and that's the only one of the three I wrote down after writing down Louisiana.

It was partly psychology. I sort of figured, "If they're asking, maybe it's the one of those three states that's the furthest east and furthest north, and shares the longest border with Canada." Also, it's a bonus fact that Maine is the quickest of the three to write down!

New Hampshire was my runner-up, but I knew that most of their population is in the southeast corner, not too far from Boston.

Perhaps also influencing my decision is that Maine is the one of those three states that I know the least about.

Glad it went my way, but definitely tricky.
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by opusthepenguin »

skullturf wrote:New Hampshire was my runner-up, but I knew that most of their population is in the southeast corner, not too far from Boston.
To me, that made New Hampshire the least attractive of the three. What drew you to it over Vermont (my runner-up from that area)?
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by skullturf »

opusthepenguin wrote:
skullturf wrote:New Hampshire was my runner-up, but I knew that most of their population is in the southeast corner, not too far from Boston.
To me, that made New Hampshire the least attractive of the three. What drew you to it over Vermont (my runner-up from that area)?
Nothing concrete. To be completely honest, my thought process was probably kind of muddled. Part of me was just trying to remember whatever the exact demographics are (because it is a stat I thought I had read before), but to be perfectly honest, I was just rolling a weighted three-sided die between the three northern New England states, and couldn't perfectly articulate my reasons for picking Maine.
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Golf »

People need to stop over thinking these things. Louisiana is a given so that leaves one other. New Hampshire and Vermont are basically the same when it comes to what we're discussing, so since we're only looking for one state we can rule out both of them. That leaves Maine, and since everybody knows of Acadia, it should be a no-brainer.

I hate stating certain questions were cake or how anybody can miss it, it does zero good from a discussion point of view. But I just can't see how knowledgeable people would think (after the fact) that Louisiana and Maine weren't the obvious answers. If those two aren't correct it's going to poll in the single digits.
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by skullturf »

I think on some level, that was part of my inarticulable reasons for going with Maine. Vermont and New Hampshire are "too similar" to each other. They form a common "pair", so why go with one over the other.

It was mostly psychology for me. Maine just seemed like the "most different" of those three states.

But I knew that the underlying facts were that all three of those states were pretty close to each other when it came to proportion of French speakers.
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by alietr »

Golf wrote:New Hampshire and Vermont are basically the same when it comes to what we're discussing, so since we're only looking for one state we can rule out both of them.
That's where I disagree. Vermont has a French name, a longer border with Quebec, and the border has a significant amount of traffic. New Hampshire has an English name and a very short, remote border. For the purposes of this question, the two states are quite different.
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by TenPoundHammer »

I didn't know what Acadia was, and I still got it right just by going for the biggest state of the three bordering Quebec.
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by kristinsausville »

I went with Maine fairly quickly (along with Louisiana, of course) -- it's further north, and on our New England road trip this summer, we saw more Quebec license plates in Maine than anywhere else. Figured some vacationers might have made the move permanent at some point.

Fwiw Justin went with Vermont due to the name.
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by jkbrat »

This Is Kirk! wrote:
ElendilPickle wrote:
alietr wrote:So let's see ... Vermont also borders Quebec and is just a few miles from Montreal, the largest city in Quebec. And the name of the state is in French! How could that not have been the second state?!?
I went back and forth between Maine and Vermont for a good chunk of FJ, then decided to go with Maine because of Acadia National Park.
Ditto on the Acadia bit, but I put it down immediately. I figured it would be an awfully lame dirty trick if the two weren't LA and ME.
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Woof »

alietr wrote:I didn't even realize it until now, but this is the shirt I was wearing while watching Jeopardy tonight:
MaineShirt.jpg
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Re: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by bpmod »

alietr wrote:
Golf wrote:New Hampshire and Vermont are basically the same when it comes to what we're discussing, so since we're only looking for one state we can rule out both of them.
That's where I disagree. Vermont has a French name, a longer border with Quebec, and the border has a significant amount of traffic. New Hampshire has an English name and a very short, remote border. For the purposes of this question, the two states are quite different.
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