Thursday, January 25, 2018 Game Recap and Discussion [SPOILERS]

[seaborgium]

If Password Plus or Super Password had had a Password Puzzle to which the first three clues were LETTER, BROTHER, and MADNESS, I might have been able to guess Van Gogh. With the rest of the clue and 19TH CENTURY EUROPEANS, it was a slam dunk.

[CasketRomance]

How the hell is that a triple-stumper?

And why does the website keep logging me out every visit?

i agree...late 19th century crazy euros...shouldn't van gogh be the first to come to mind?

[CasketRomance]

How did anyone know to go to Gogh?

crazy late 19th century euro and a brother...theo had some relevance...couldn't think of any other person that fit that clue

[CasketRomance]

Ran 3 Letter Words, Crayola Colors, and Brothers & Sisters. In fact, I was 15/15 at the first break.

However, I was 0/5 on the Books category. "Cambridge" seemed like a very tough start.

Kidnapped = Robert Louis Stevenson rings no bells whatsoever.

So of course I come off the rails in DJ! and get almost nothing right.

How many more times am I going to blank on Rosa Parks and/or Montgomery? That almost egregiously refuses to stick in my head.

No guess on FJ! Literally every word of this clue was utterly meaningless to me. How my mom managed to figure it out, never mind any one else, I will never know.

Lach Trash: "A man I didn't like".

why? boston and collegy area? what else comes to mind? chestnut hill?

[CasketRomance]

The category was 19th Century Europeans. That told me it probably wasn't going to be someone from Britain.

Why? Last I checked, Britain is still part of Europe.

I knew he lived in the late 1800s and had a brother he was close to. And that he was crazy.

I knew that he sliced his ear off, but not the context. Nor did I know that he had a brother.

It's not hard to figure out that they're looking for someone who knew he was losing his mind

[citation needed]

they generally love to make british clues into a category with it in the name...like usa bullshit usually has its own category...would never see anything about usa history in a category with the north america in it

[CasketRomance]

I guess the ear-slicing thing could have been a shaving accident...

Vincent Van Gogh's relationship with his brother Theo is almost as famous as (2-day-old spoiler)

Spoiler

Sherlock Holmes's with Mycroft!...

Of all the triple stumpers on this show, the inability to go from "collegey Boston-area city" to Cambridge may have been the most confounding...
But I blanked on Louisa May Alcott tonight, so I shouldn't talk...

would say more famous than mycroft...had never heard of that dude prior to the other day

[Cat Hammarskjold]

I didn't know that Van Gogh had a notable brother, and since I had no idea on FJ, I just guessed Rasputin.

[davey]

I guess the ear-slicing thing could have been a shaving accident...

Vincent Van Gogh's relationship with his brother Theo is almost as famous as (2-day-old spoiler)

Spoiler

Sherlock Holmes's with Mycroft!...

Of all the triple stumpers on this show, the inability to go from "collegey Boston-area city" to Cambridge may have been the most confounding...
But I blanked on Louisa May Alcott tonight, so I shouldn't talk...

would say more famous than mycroft...had never heard of that dude prior to the other day

So much for my spoiler...and I wasn't quite serious, anyway...

[opusthepenguin]

I didn't know that Van Gogh had a notable brother, and since I had no idea on FJ, I just guessed Rasputin.

Nice! I'm calling that the best wrong guess for this FJ.

[Elijah Baley]

Alex was ready on the draw when Rachel named the dog and not the city in TIBET SEE as the host just got the neg in before she hit the correction.

I'm slightly bothered by this after something went the other way yesterday (don't want to put spoilers here), but, since the rule is "you can correct yourself until Alex rules you incorrect, and the judges' ruling is final", I suppose that the variability has to be accepted as the equivalent of "ground rules".

That seemed weird to me as well, although even weirder was the fact that Rosie and Jeff apparently did not seem to understand what had just happened. Combined with Jeff's blank expression on missing one of a very famous quote- and again, the others seemed completely flummoxed - made for a strange episode.

[John Boy]

How the hell is that a triple-stumper?

I for one had nothing. If they'd said "artist" as part of the clue I would have stood more of a chance, but without that, "madness" and "brother" led me nowhere.

I can see why not everyone would get this. For me it was an Instaget as year, Europe, madness, brother led me immediately to Vincent.

[John Boy]

Tonight's Lach Trash: James Watt, coupler, Cambridge, (all I know is...) what I read in the paper, (I never met a man...) I didn't like (seriously, people??? No one knew this???); My Blue Heaven, Pearly Gates, Thoreau, Lhasa, 1980 Olympics, Pullman (car and strike). That's 11 TSs for $11,800. Add to that an Instaget FJ and I had my second game in a row won from the 4th podium.

Sorry folks, it's hard to see all three of these guys being the pick of the litter chosen by the CCs. Even when one contestant rashly blurted out "Lhasa Apso" for the capital of Tibet, the other two couldn't figure out they were going for "Lhasa?" That was just sad. This has just got to get better.

[Elijah Baley]

Tonight's Lach Trash: James Watt, coupler, Cambridge, (all I know is...) what I read in the paper, (I never met a man...) I didn't like (seriously, people??? No one knew this???); My Blue Heaven, Pearly Gates, Thoreau, Lhasa, 1980 Olympics, Pullman (car and strike). That's 11 TSs for $11,800. Add to that an Instaget FJ and I had my second game in a row won from the 4th podium.

Sorry folks, it's hard to see all three of these guys being the pick of the litter chosen by the CCs. Even when one contestant rashly blurted out "Lhasa Apso" for the capital of Tibet, the other two couldn't figure out they were going for "Lhasa?" That was just sad. This has just got to get better.

I forgot about the 1980 Olympics; that was a bit of a shocking TS. But, I give the contestants a bit of a break because the Olympics just don't seem like the cultural event that they used to be when TV entertainment was limited to a handful of channels.

[davey]

I didn't know that Van Gogh had a notable brother, and since I had no idea on FJ, I just guessed Rasputin.

Nice! I'm calling that the best wrong guess for this FJ.

I like the players' guesses Nietzsche and Dostoevsky better. Nietzsche did "go insane," and he was a contemporary of Van Gogh. Dostoyevsky may not have been crazy, but he suffered seizures throughout his life. Furthermore they both had the literary self-consciousness that could have written such a revealing letter. I don't know much about Rasputin's consciousness but my guess is he was less self-aware...

[pinkfreud]

FJ was a no-brainer for me. Back in the early 1980s I saw a televised performance of Leonard Nimoy's one-man show "Vincent," which was adapted from Vincent Van Gogh's letters to his brother, Theo. Nimoy was unforgettable, and the letters were fascinating and heartbreaking.

I second Kara's recommendation of the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma. I live near Claremore, and when I was a child my parents often took me to the Memorial. As an adult I have found even more to like. It's a great place for history buffs, and the museum grounds are beautiful and inspiring.

Regarding Will Rogers: several decades ago Oklahoma had a grumpy, corrupt, unpleasant Governor who was described by a political opponent as "The man Will Rogers never met."

[davey]

Anyway, my dear fellow, we must accept it, the illnesses of our time, all in all it’s only fair that having lived for years in relatively good health, sooner or later we have our share of them. As for me, you’ll feel a little that I wouldn’t exactly have chosen madness if there had been a choice, but once one has something like that one can’t catch it any more. However, in addition there will still perhaps be the consolation of being able to continue to work on some painting a little.

Van Gogh was remarkably level-headed about his madness!

http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letter ... etter.html

[seaborgium]

Tonight's Lach Trash: (all I know is...) what I read in the paper

Ooh, sorry.

[cheezguyty]

It might be a lot but I feel like van Gogh is probably the top 100 people they ask about so it's worth knowing more about his life

This will be the twelfth time recorded in the Archive that they have asked for Vincent van Gogh in Final Jeopardy. Only one person who was not a U.S. president has been a correct response to FJ more often than that:

Spoiler

Benjamin Franklin (fourteen times plus twice as a possible answer).

Who is the #1 FJ person if you include presidents? How do you define “possible” answers in your spoilered comments.

Also, who is most popular female FJ response?

Richard Nixon has been the single most common Final Jeopardy subject, person or otherwise. He has been the sole correct response to seventeen clues, half of a two-part response to five more clues, and a possible answer another twelve times (by which I mean a clue such as "2 of the 5 presidents buried west of the Mississippi River", where a correct response could include "Nixon" but doesn't have to).

The most popular female FJ response is (take a guess...)

Spoiler

the Statue of Liberty (nine times; Helen Keller is next with eight).

[morbeedo]

Weird edit after the first or second commercial break with Alex saying "Look at the scores!" then an abrupt cut to "back after these messages" or whatever he said

Jeff looking perplexedly at the buzzer is all of us

Yeah, I always wonder what drugs these players are on when they don't ring in on obvious rebounds - but I guess it's not that obvious if you've never heard of Lhasa..

Of course I negged with Ralph Waldo Emerson when they wanted Henry David Thoreau

And yet another New Yorker on the show who's not me! I don't think anyone from NYC has won since Austin - is that true or just more fake news?

Rachel's put together a nice little run - and a hilarious blooper reel! Mazel Tov!

Van Gogh, obvs

[OrangeSAM]

How the hell is that a triple-stumper?

And why does the website keep logging me out every visit?

i agree...late 19th century crazy euros...shouldn't van gogh be the first to come to mind?

Well, the first to come to my mind was Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, which is what I went with. I'm a little surprised this name hasn't come up here.