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

[thenextofken]

I'm probably one of the few people who got Maine, but completely whiffed on Louisiana. The latter was instaget since my wife is from the northernmost part of Maine, and I visited there with her last summer. Never heard so much French in my life, and my mother-in-law still has a very heavy French accent.

[mxc_takeshi]

34 right.

Lib (3), Movie (4), Table (0), "C" (1), Post (5), Line (4)
Skeleton (1), Govt (3), "E" (3), Charge (2), Def (5), Line (3)

Lach Trash: "Martin Van Buren", "Roy Emerson", "honorary citizens/Americans"

Instaget FJ- I probably read about Acadia National Park in Maine in the past, and recalled it.

[Spaceman Spiff]

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?!?

That was my initial thought (Louisiana was a given); knew it had to be either Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine (which also is adjacent to some of the English-speaking Maritime Provinces). At the 25th second, I decided to switch to Maine and just hoped.

[jeff6286]

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 had Vermont too~ anyone has the said proportions handy?

http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tabl ... Type=table

I got a link from wikipedia to this site, and after some playing around with the tables, I figured out how to get info for a particular state. I didn't calculate exact proportions, but they roughly came out to Maine 4%, Louisiana 3%, Vermont and New Hampshire both around 2%.

[Category 13]

I'm pretty sure that the area of Quebec across from Vermont, has a considerable English speaking community in the Eastern Townships. Vermont's largest city being close to the Quebec border also convinced me that Maine was a better choice (assuming French would be more likely spoken in rural communities, like nothern Maine).

Lewiston, Maine's third largest city, has always had a high demographic of French speaking people. They migrated there to work in the textile mills in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century.

[Category 13]

Any reason first break came after only 13 clues? I suppose this indirectly lead to the LTAM given when there were two full catetgories left in J.
Only thing I can think of is the wordy clues in the Liberty Bell category, but that doesn't seem like it would be enough for four uncovered clues.

No excuse for negging on June 6, 1944 = D-Day, I don't care how bright the lights are.

[alietr]

I didn't even realize it until now, but this is the shirt I was wearing while watching Jeopardy tonight:

MaineShirt.jpg (62.62 KiB) Viewed 3775 times

[opusthepenguin]

I'm curious if grinder, a French speaker, got this FJ. This was just something I knew, but it could be tough.

It wasn't something I knew, but it was my best guess. I knew the Cajuns came from Acadia which either included what's now Maine or was right near it. (Turns out it's the former.) I knew Maine had the longest border with Quebec. So I pulled the trigger for Louisiana and Maine and spent the Think music worrying that Cajun Louisiana had enough spillover into Mississippi to make that state a better choice than Maine. But I stuck with Maine, cringing during the reveal like a child who doesn't know if he's going to get the belt or a candy bar.

[opusthepenguin]

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?!?

"Maine" is likely a French name too, though less obviously so.

[opusthepenguin]

Somehow I convinced myself that LA was negbait in FJ, and went with Maine and Florida, although I was concerned that despite the number of Haitian immigrants, the size of the FL population might be too big for the proportionality to work. I guess I was right about that.

I think Florida Haitians are much more likely to speak Haitian Creole. French-speaking Haitians have it relatively good in their own country. They won't see as much of an up-side in boarding a leaky boat and trying to make it to Miami where they can make a living as a cab driver or a hotel maid and buy the economy pack of turkey necks at the grocery store.

[grindcore]

dhk: i flipped and flopped and wishied and washied and toed and froed but I settled on Vermont instead of Maine. Proximity to Montréal, French-ass name, and I figured with the low population all they needed was a little St-Boniface somewhere and that would be enough to get them in the top 2. J'me couchera moins con à soir.

Ran postal codes and who's in charge (if their name ends in -ian, they're from Armenia. Thanks, System of a Down). Frustratingly, $400 kept me from running "another definition" because I got first-clue-in-the-category-so-not-quite-in-the-groove-of-it-yet-itis and was just thinking "bomb? turkey? what?". Also couldn't pull Ice Age 3 which gave me my other 4/5.

There were seemingly a ton of clues that I wanted to ring in on but thought were too obvious, like "volunteer" and "exports".

It's been nice Dava-Leigh. See ya.

[cosmos]

Anyone notice Alex's gaffe about "yesterday's program?" It was obvious to me because I had a DVR malfunction yesterday, yet I remembered the category and clue he was talking about so it wasn't yesterday.

[Robert K S]

Anyone notice Alex's gaffe about "yesterday's program?" It was obvious to me because I had a DVR malfunction yesterday, yet I remembered the category and clue he was talking about so it wasn't yesterday.

I missed it, what did he say?

[cosmos]

Anyone notice Alex's gaffe about "yesterday's program?" It was obvious to me because I had a DVR malfunction yesterday, yet I remembered the category and clue he was talking about so it wasn't yesterday.

I missed it, what did he say?

Spoiler

On yesterday's program, in a category called 3M, one of the correct responses was the word "momentum," and that's certainly what our current champion, Dava-Leigh, has managed to gather for herself. She won $1,500 in her first game, close to $9,000 in her second game, $20,000 yesterday.

[MarkBarrett]

Any reason first break came after only 13 clues? I suppose this indirectly lead to the LTAM given when there were two full catetgories left in J.
Only thing I can think of is the wordy clues in the Liberty Bell category, but that doesn't seem like it would be enough for four uncovered clues.

No excuse for negging on June 6, 1944 = D-Day, I don't care how bright the lights are.

Alex's opening was a little longer than normal. The DD played, so that always takes up a little more time. There was hesitation in completing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Laura is afflicted with please-itis (fine in everyday life out in public, not so much for every clue call). Added together only 13 clues played before the break. It happens.

At least the players had the sense to have the worst category be the one with only the first clue played.

*********
It's not in the top 100 things to know before going on the show, but it should be in the top 1000 to match Kinderhook to Van Buren.

There is no rule that the FJ! clue has to be solved the right way. Alex wanted Maine from a Quebec border perspective while I did it the Acadian way to pair with the better be right Louisiana other part. Looks like I'll have to have Vermont as a poll choice as well as separating the LA and ME portions of the correct response.

If Laura had not hit the final clue of the DJ! round then Dava-Leigh may have been in a wagering situation to have won on the triple miss.

[This Is Kirk!]

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 dirty trick if the two weren't LA and ME.

[bomtr]

Instaget FJ!; I felt like the same clue had just been on the show recently, but a search of the Archive turns up nada. Maybe somewhere else I saw some question that asked the U.S. state with the second-largest number of French speakers. Or maybe I just remember this Slate article, which was probably posted to JBoard.

I also recall seeing this clue in some venue, and I also thought it was on J! I remember getting it right last time, but it took longer to pull the Cajun-Acadian trigger than it did tonight. At times, the new champ looked like a playuh, but there was some basic stuff that went unanswered--agree with Mark that Kinderhook should be in the ken of trivia folk--and not having Goodluck Jonathan catalogued with Nigeria is a demerit. 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. Guy in the middle really seemed to disappear after his Waiting for Godot miss; I agree that was negbait of a sort. I didn't know the answer, but I did know it wasn't those three words. Come to think of it, including 'three words' in the clue only made the negbait worse.

[TenPoundHammer]

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.

[BigDaddyMatty]

Coryat: $29,200
40 R/3 W; I've been mixing up the Ortega and Noriega countries since the 80s, so no reason to stop now, and I managed to neg two in a row with ilium for coccyx (turrible) and tarsals for metatarsals
DD: 2/3; Racka fracka. Goodluck Jonathan really ought to be Pavlovian by now.
FJ:
LT: Martin Van Buren (Pavlovian for Kinderhook), Armenia (Pavlovian for names ending in -ian), citizen of the United States
C: curry, hyoid
Too Late: sternum

The far-left DJ! category was a nightmare for me for the second night in a row, as I netted a cool $-2400. I've never heard the word "curry" used in the context of animal grooming, but I can see the conceptual connection to the idiom "to curry favor."

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.

This is what clinched it for me as well.

[This Is Kirk!]

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.