Tuesday, December 12, 2017 Game Recap and Discussion [SPOILERS]

[doihavetoreally]

Ian. Buddy. Ouch. You strike me as a guy who's going to play with the figures afterwards and realize what happened. That one's going to hurt for a while.

This was not my night to try unjumbling state capitals. Really impressed by LaKedra's run.

Ditto

Stumped on FJ. Wonder if boardie Kirk got the FJ?

[Volante]

Yeha, I'm kind of flabbergasted that this was a triple stumper. Church -> kirk -> Dunkirk.

I got it from dune -> dun, nord -> north, 'dun' in the north? Dunkirk
Also, Best Buy emailed me confirmation my Blu-Ray Steelbook -finally- shipped a couple hours ago.

[flemmingfan]

"Never heard of that city". I find that hard to believe.

[LucarioSnooperVixey]

34 R
FJ:
LT: (Braille), Double Sharp, York

Knew Anzio at one time. Negged that clue with Monte Cassino

[StevenH]

No hope for me on FJ. I had no chance from the language angle, and I never would have thought of Dunkirk without a TOM related to the famous evacuation.

[Johnblue]

That was an instaget FJ for me. I was surprised none of the contestants even came close. Well, I guess Dunkirk is located in Normandy so there's that.

[Volante]

That was an instaget FJ for me. I was surprised none of the contestants even came close. Well, I guess Dunkirk is located in Normandy so there's that.

Dunkirk is not in Normandy.

[This Is Kirk!]

Ian. Buddy. Ouch. You strike me as a guy who's going to play with the figures afterwards and realize what happened. That one's going to hurt for a while.

This was not my night to try unjumbling state capitals. Really impressed by LaKedra's run.

Ditto

Stumped on FJ. Wonder if boardie Kirk got the FJ?

I did, but must confess I thought Dunkirk was in Belgium.

[BKavett]

Having seen both “Darkest Hour” and “Dunkirk” very recently, I pre-guessed Dunkirk just from the category name! Not sure if I would have gotten it had I not had those movies so fresh in my mind.

[seaborgium]

"Iran Hostage Crisis" should never have been accepted for what occured on 01-20-81. No BMS was utter bullsh*t.

Luckily Ian didn't say "Iran Hostage Crisis."

[bomtr]

It seemed to me LaKedra was ringing in peremptorily on the anagram category with confidence she could solve the anagram in the allotted time. Admirable stratagem and exactly what I would have done given the opportunity. Not everyone would hazard those immediate rings, and I wonder if the other contestants were waiting to solve before ringing.

Final took about four seconds trying to list northern French cities rather than etymology. That amounted to 'Calais, oh, duh, Dunkirk.'

[alietr]

While it always helps to have gotten it right, I found that FJ to be a really good one. I didn't know the answer right away, but was able to puzzle through it. I wish I had remembered that Kierkegaard one. That would have helped a lot. And FTR, I started out with Rouen, but that wasn't working for me.

[John Boy]

I do anagrams, word jumbles, etc. all the time. I love them and I'm good at them. Still, in the time limits of a J! clue I believe I got 2 of the 5 anagrammed state capitals. I probably would have gotten all five if given ten seconds or so each. (For that matter I would have been dating Raquel Welch in my youth instead of the women I WAS dating, if I had been rich, famous, and gorgeous, instead of, well, me; but that's another story.)

Be that as it may, when Lakedra got...what was it? 4? or all 5 of them?...now that was impressive. A well-deserved victory.

Ian's FJ! wager that used ZERO wagering strategy to pluck defeat from the jaws of a game he should have won? Well, not so impressive. Hope he's proud of the extra $1K he got for blocking out Sarah from passing him for second place. That's a darned poor substitute for taking home $8,000 and returning to play again. But hey, that's just me....

LT on double sharp, wall (really? Robert Frost's most famous poem a TS?), Anzio, albatross, and victim impact for $6,800. Actually won this game from the 4th podium when FJ! was an Instaget. I've actually heard that factoid, Dunkirk being called (literally) Dune Church. Don't know where, but I thought it was interesting and it stuck in the old brain.

I'll be most interested to see how far this champ can go. She looks strong.

[zerobandwidth]

FJ! was an insta-get for me, via the "church" → kirk → Dunkirk path. The "kirk" token made its way into both Celtic/Gaelic and German place names, so it's all over Europe and easy to recognize.

I wonder if Ian very carefully laid out the wagering strategies on his scratch paper and then picked the wrong number when admonished to write his wager on the panel. That is, did he calculate what he needed to be left with, and then what to wager, and then get distracted in the moment and swap them?

LaKedra is super impressive. Even Andy's streak prediction algorithm is objectively impressed.

[CasketRomance]

FJ! was an insta-get for me, via the "church" → kirk → Dunkirk path. The "kirk" token made its way into both Celtic/Gaelic and German place names, so it's all over Europe and easy to recognize.

I wonder if Ian very carefully laid out the wagering strategies on his scratch paper and then picked the wrong number when admonished to write his wager on the panel. That is, did he calculate what he needed to be left with, and then what to wager, and then get distracted in the moment and swap them?

LaKedra is super impressive. Even Andy's streak prediction algorithm is objectively impressed.

he wagered enough not to go below a correct all in by the 3rd place contestant

[seaborgium]

wall (really? Robert Frost's most famous poem a TS?)

"Mending Wall" is at best #3 among Frost poems.

[opusthepenguin]

wall (really? Robert Frost's most famous poem a TS?)

"Mending Wall" is at best #3 among Frost poems.

Agreed. We can quibble over whether "The Road Not Taken" or "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"[1] should be in the number 1 slot. (The answer is obviously "The Road Not Taken.") But those are the top 2 without any near competitors. Unless I forgot one. But if I forgot it, that kind of proves my point anyway.

"Mending Wall" seems a good choice for #3. What are the other contenders? "The Gift Outright"? "Fire and Ice"? "Nothing Gold Can Stay"? "Acquainted with the Night"? I'm comfortable saying "Mending Wall" is more famous than those.


[1] Note that title, future contestants. Don't screw it up by adding a "the" or you'll be ooooohhh... sorry.

[seaborgium]

[1] Note that title, future contestants. Don't screw it up by adding a "the" or you'll be ooooohhh... sorry.

"The Road Not Taken" also has a dangerously attractive incorrect title, from (but not quite directly quoting) a phrase actually used in the poem.

[Bamaman]

I had Lourdes for my FJ guess.

If you are good at that sort of thing, ringing in early on the anagrams (especially if there is just the anagram in the clue and it isn’t hidden in a sentence) is a good strategy.

I said in Monday’s thread I expected her to make the MSB from the lead and once again she failed to dissappoint. If the opportunity presents itself, I hope she displays good strategy when betting from behind. She got lucky today Ian did not.

[AFRET CMS]

No chance for me on the FJ! clue. I did high school French translation of “church” to get église. Never heard of that city.

Fortunately, I went straight to the Flemish/Dutch "Kirk" almost immediately.

However, the French village of Sainte-Mère-Église also figured prominently in WWII history. It's in Normandy and was the landing target for part of the paratroop drop right before the D-Day invasion. Very dramatically portrayed with Red Buttons and John Wayne invading in "The Longest Day." I think it also may have been mentioned "Saving Private Ryan," but my memory is not very certain.

Trivially, Sainte-Mère-Église doesn't appear at all in the J-archive, and the word "Église" only comes up twice. Dunkirk pops up 18 times during game play in the archive, but this one evidently the only time it came up in FJ.