Monday, May 13, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

[LucarioSnooperVixey]

Nice work by Sara (Wildcard) to knock off two QF winners and at the same time assure a woman playing in the finals. The 7M/2F gender divide looked unlikely to avoid an all-guys final.

The 2017 Tournament of Champions had the exact same gender ratio, however that tournament wound up being an all male final.

[DBear]

NHO Radziwell. Is a madman's connection with the OED supposed to be well known? 'Cause it's not.
OTOH, Miles Standish was an easy FJ.
Parts of Speech was definitely lulz-worthy.

[seaborgium]

Is a madman's connection with the OED supposed to be well known? 'Cause it's not.

The book was successful, and was adapted into a movie that was just released this past Friday.

[Lefty]

I didn't know the name Lee Radziwill at all, so no judgment here.

Damn, I guess I forgot to introduce you. She was the other girl downstairs, between Liza and Tru.

For some reason I said Crimson for colourful Alabama school. Might be my biggest error in weeks.

You were probably thinking of Clemson which is in South Carolina anyway. Or you were thinking of Harvard and Crimson stuck out.

They call Alabama the Crimson Tide (they call me Deacon Blues, but that's neither here nor there).

[seaborgium]

For some reason I said Crimson for colourful Alabama school. Might be my biggest error in weeks.

You were probably thinking of Clemson which is in South Carolina anyway. Or you were thinking of Harvard and Crimson stuck out.

They call Alabama the Crimson Tide (they call me Deacon Blues, but that's neither here nor there).

Also, auburn and crimson are shades of red.

[CasketRomance]

For some reason I said Crimson for colourful Alabama school. Might be my biggest error in weeks.

You were probably thinking of Clemson which is in South Carolina anyway. Or you were thinking of Harvard and Crimson stuck out.

he was probably thinking of the university of alabama with sports teams name of crimson tide

[opusthepenguin]

I read The Courtship of Miles Standish in an old schoolbook when I was a small boy...don't think I've thought about it since...(Except when it's been a J! clue, of course. Even then, I still can never remember which one ends up with Priscilla...) But that was enough for the FJ...

The most famous line from the poem is probably "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" That helps me remember which one got the girl.

[davey]

Is a madman's connection with the OED supposed to be well known? 'Cause it's not.

The book was successful, and was adapted into a movie that was just released this past Friday.

With Mel Gibson and Sean Penn! Apparently a troubled production and release. Good luck finding it in a theater. In all of NYC, it's playing at one theater in Coney Island, nightly only at 10 PM through Thursday...The New York Times, which reviews everything, has not taken notice of it.
I enjoyed the book when I read it years ago.

[CasketRomance]

NHO Radziwell. Is a madman's connection with the OED supposed to be well known? 'Cause it's not.
OTOH, Miles Standish was an easy FJ.
Parts of Speech was definitely lulz-worthy.

i had no idea...i said "the anarchist cookbook"

[John Boy]

FJ was one of those enigmas that I'm just not gonna decifer.

Sara bet to cover Trevor's possible double-up and fell to the expected 7599.
If Trevor had bet 3001 to cover Joe's possible 13600 then Trevor would have fallen to the same 7599.

Hard to say whose wager was more thoughtless between Joe and Trevor.
Since Trevor was in a dilema of risking a tiebreaker on both sides, Joe needed to bet every dollar to keep him honest. But Trevor forced himself to be correct to win anyway.

If Joe does what I always do going into FJ, he calculates what the other two need to wager to give them their best chance. Usually this is a $1 lockout by the leader and whatever gives #2 a $1 lockout over #3. If Joe does that he sees that 1) his only chance to win is if both Trevor and Sara miss; 2) even if they both miss they'll end up with $7,599, so he must add a few bucks to win; and 2) he must bet enough to cover $7,599.

He did that, so Joe's wager was fine; it was his neg that cost him the game.

It was Trevor's wager that was really awful. If he had wagered $3,001 and answered correctly he would force Joe to answer correctly and he would likely tie Sara. As it turned out his $3,001 bet WOULD have tied Sara, throwing them into a playoff. But he did not, and like so many other players before him, trailing as he goes into FJ, threw his best chance away. So yeah, Trevor's wager was way worse, as it only cost him a chance to advance to the tournament finals.

I also am disappointed that a trio of teachers couldn't identify an adverb or a conjunction when they saw one in a sentence.

My biggest disappointment with this game, though, was the amount of Lach Trash. I get it that many people of their era don't know Lee Radziwell, although I got it just fine. Add in not knowing Wm. Tell is from Switzerland, the two parts-of-speech clues, plus misses on Lake Maracaibo, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Jane Addams (Pavlovian for Hull House if you're "of a certain generation."), and I scooped up $8,200 in Lach Trash. Combined with my sole get on FJ, I won this game from the imaginary fourth podium. IMHO that should never happen, and certainly not in a tournament game. So that was a disappointing start to the second week of the tournament.

I'm not terribly surprised Miles Standish was a TS, as it's one of those things that used to be part of the "canon of cultural literacy" back when the earth was cooling and I was in grade school. But again, I don't often watch a tournament game and see something that I learned in grade school stump three pretty good players.

[John Boy]

I had nothing on the final... so with some Wikipedia research I'll help others who were similarly lost:

"The Courtship of Myles Standish" is a 1858 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and was extremely popular in the 19th century. It tells the story of the Mayflower pilgrims - centering on the love triangle of John Alden, Miles Standish, and Priscilla Mullins. Longfellow was a decendent of Alden/Mullins, and fictionalized the story, fleshing out details of the swashbuckling captain (Standish) and the handsome young Alden. Priscilla is a proto-feminist, speaking her mind at a time when few such female characters would.

There's supposed to be a surprise ending... Read it for yourself here if you want more than this!

To get this final you were supposed to recognize the two character names, or at least guess that a very old American cemetery named for the subject of a poem points to Myles Standish.

I never heard of the cemetery until last night, but thanks for the trip down memory lane with the particulars of the story.

[This Is Kirk!]

It took me about 40 seconds to get Miles Standish. I knew exactly what the clue was referring to, but just couldn't pull the name!

[This Is Kirk!]

Princess Lee Radziwill, also married to Herbert Ross...
Her first name really was Caroline. Player should have received credit.

Agreed. Joe got shafted on this. Odds are he was thinking of Jackie's daughter (who apparently was named for Radziwill), but we can't say that with certainty.

[davey]

Is a madman's connection with the OED supposed to be well known? 'Cause it's not.

The book was successful, and was adapted into a movie that was just released this past Friday.

With Mel Gibson and Sean Penn! Apparently a troubled production and release. Good luck finding it in a theater. In all of NYC, it's playing at one theater in Coney Island, nightly only at 10 PM through Thursday...The New York Times, which reviews everything, has not taken notice of it.
I enjoyed the book when I read it years ago.

In case anyone else is interested in the film's troubles...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-th ... ref=scroll

[Volante]

And even when I picked up the trash, I didn't necessarily blame the players for missing. The Professor and the Madman is a good read. But if you don't know it's about the OED, there's no TOM there to help you out. On a DD I would've guessed "Mountain Dew" for the kind of citrus-y soda "mouth" mentioned in "Hillbilly Elegy". But I probably wouldn't have rung in. I did enjoy Joe's guess of "Squirt mouth".

Mountain Dew was insta for me; the original ad campaign featured the character Willy the Hillbilly


Poem was impenetrable for me; knowledge gap.

[bbird]

In my continuing trend of drawing knowledge from strange places: I know of Lee Radziwill from the documentary/musical/HBO movie Grey Gardens, although I butchered the last name in my response. Had I actually been playing, I'd have just said Lee and hoped that was enough.

And I couldn't recall John Alden, but the only old-timey Priscilla I knew of was Priscilla Mullins, largely thanks to a reference in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving... so Miles Standish it is. I mean, I learned about the poem in elementary school too, but annual watchings of ACBT has solidified it.

I thought that image looked like the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but I second-guessed myself because the map didn't show it feeding into a river. Not even a thin line -- it appeared to just stop at a solid green boundary.

As for where William Tell is a hero, Italy isn't necessarily a bad guess if you're thinking of Rossini. And Britain fits a weird sort of Venn diagram with Robin Hood on one side, William Tell on the other, and "folkloric European archers" in the middle. Myself, my brain said Switzerland but my mouth said Sweden.

[Category 13]

FJ was one of those enigmas that I'm just not gonna decifer.

Sara bet to cover Trevor's possible double-up and fell to the expected 7599.
If Trevor had bet 3001 to cover Joe's possible 13600 then Trevor would have fallen to the same 7599.

Hard to say whose wager was more thoughtless between Joe and Trevor.
Since Trevor was in a dilema of risking a tiebreaker on both sides, Joe needed to bet every dollar to keep him honest. But Trevor forced himself to be correct to win anyway.

If Joe does what I always do going into FJ, he calculates what the other two need to wager to give them their best chance. Usually this is a $1 lockout by the leader and whatever gives #2 a $1 lockout over #3. If Joe does that he sees that 1) his only chance to win is if both Trevor and Sara miss; 2) even if they both miss they'll end up with $7,599, so he must add a few bucks to win; and 2) he must bet enough to cover $7,599.

He did that, so Joe's wager was fine; it was his neg that cost him the game.

I disagree, being that Joe absolutely had to get it correct to have a chance to win anyway, the minimum he should have wagered was $3801 to cover a zero wager from Trevor, granted that's not expected. But why not make sure Trevor doesn't win outright if he gambles on a tie-breaker with a R-R-W in order to to beat Sara by a buck on a triple stumper?