Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by squarekara »

Xu Donym wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 2:53 pm
Robert K S wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:30 am Final generally isn't about knowing the arcane pinning fact; it's about being able to suss out the correct response.
Increasingly often, FJ seems to penalize players who happen to know more of the arcane facts than the writers know. Knowing more than the writers opens the door to. . .
As in standardized testing, there's going to be a "best answer" that most likely won't depend on anything too arcane. Don't open that door.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by TenPoundHammer »

xxaaaxx wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 7:38 pm Perhaps it's the part of me that's still annoyed about missing this FJ a couple of years ago
I still see no way to figure that one out.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by hbomb1947 »

xxaaaxx wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 7:38 pm Perhaps it's the part of me that's still annoyed about missing this FJ a couple of years ago, but 'no new cases in 40 years' = instaget for me. Finally a 5/5 week.
There was some atrocious wagering on that FJ from 2017.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by davey »

econgator wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 7:33 pm
TenPoundHammer wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 7:30 pm Any reason I should know Parks had anything to do with streetcars?
No reason, as she had nothing to do with them. I think this was just an oddly-worded clue that was basically saying that Parks is to buses what Truth was to streetcars.
I think the odd part was that the category had nothing to do with the game, even metaphorically, but rather about those 2 individuals from history. It took me too long to get the point. Shouldn't have been so hard to realize that 100 years before Parks a different mode of transport was prevalent, but I made the same mistake as EJ.
I also became confused when the clue on Joyce mentioned a party and someone dead, since that could describe his short story "The Dead." But that's not a long novel! was all I could think... :roll:
I knew I had read the news in FJ, but I couldn't recall the disease...I rejected smallpox, was sure that was truly dead, and knew polio was still around. I ended up with typhoid... :oops:
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by jeopardyfan939 »

Congrats to EJ on winning his third game, and we'll see him again July 1st after the Teen Tournament. Let's see if he'll go on a streak of his own, like 5, 6, or 7 games.

But even if he does go on a winning streak, based on how I saw him play, don't expect him to come close to what James was averaging per game.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by thenextofken »

Would they have taken "End of the world" for Apocalypse? Judges?
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by cthulhu »

Boy, a stinker of a game - to paraphrase Mencken, those who wanted James to go away so the games would be competitive again got what they wanted tonight, good and hard.

That miss on DD 3 is going to haunt Eric for a while given his sole FJ solve.

Regarding FJ: Took me a few seconds to check my date math before writing down smallpox. The TOM for me worked out as: disease gone (presumably worldwide since no “US only” or other qualifier) since 1978 (2018-40); assuming worldwide, smallpox is the only disease to be completely eradicated in humans; last naturally occurring case in 1977, with one fatality in England in 1978 due to poor lab procedures. Ergo, smallpox. I wouldn’t expect most trivia buffs to know the whole story (I got interested in the history of smallpox after reading about the Soviet biowarfare program), but the years of the last two smallpox deaths is not uncommon trivia quiz fodder. And just knowing that smallpox is the only human disease to be eliminated from nature should be common knowledge among trivia buffs, so I was quite surprised at Eric’s sole solve.

TL;DR - I think there was sufficient TOM for a reasonably astute player to suss out “smallpox” for FJ.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Missus K »

thenextofken wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 12:47 am Would they have taken "End of the world" for Apocalypse? Judges?
I would think yes but sadly I had “rapture” and I would bet that wouldn’t fly.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by yclept »

That was one of the roughest games to watch in a very long time. Jeopardy has been blessed with good players lately but this game was brutal..
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Leander »

cthulhu wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 1:15 am
Regarding FJ: Took me a few seconds to check my date math before writing down smallpox. The TOM for me worked out as: disease gone (presumably worldwide since no “US only” or other qualifier) since 1978 (2018-40); assuming worldwide, smallpox is the only disease to be completely eradicated in humans; last naturally occurring case in 1977, with one fatality in England in 1978 due to poor lab procedures. Ergo, smallpox. I wouldn’t expect most trivia buffs to know the whole story (I got interested in the history of smallpox after reading about the Soviet biowarfare program), but the years of the last two smallpox deaths is not uncommon trivia quiz fodder. And just knowing that smallpox is the only human disease to be eliminated from nature should be common knowledge among trivia buffs, so I was quite surprised at Eric’s sole solve.

TL;DR - I think there was sufficient TOM for a reasonably astute player to suss out “smallpox” for FJ.
I'm not sure why the lack of the mention of the US specifically in the clue leads one to assume it was a disease eradicated worldwide. Some reasonably astute players might think the reference to the FDA is the TOM that points one to a disease eradicated in the US, therefore polio. Given that the eradication of each disease in the respective geographies was about the same time frame, solving this (to me) comes down to a 50/50, and going with smallpox relies on either knowing the facts of the drug approval, or guessing that the lack of specificity about the US was there for a reason. I would have been more likely to come up with smallpox if there had been no reference to the FDA in the clue.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Woof »

It’s interesting to read the discussion here. I briefly considered polio as an alternative to smallpox, but discarded it since there are ongoing cases elsewhere in the world. Then again, I work in the area of infectious disease. And, yeah, I hope that those people who complained about James making the game boring enjoyed this neg-fest of a game.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Volante »

I vaguely remember reading about controversy over further smallpox research some time in the last couple years. Some people wanted the last remaining samples destroyed, others want to keep it around for research in case a bad actor with their own samples decides to weaponize it. I figured this was related, so that tipped the balance well in favor of smallpox.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by cthulhu »

Leander wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 6:21 am
cthulhu wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 1:15 am
Regarding FJ: Took me a few seconds to check my date math before writing down smallpox. The TOM for me worked out as: disease gone (presumably worldwide since no “US only” or other qualifier) since 1978 (2018-40); assuming worldwide, smallpox is the only disease to be completely eradicated in humans; last naturally occurring case in 1977, with one fatality in England in 1978 due to poor lab procedures. Ergo, smallpox. I wouldn’t expect most trivia buffs to know the whole story (I got interested in the history of smallpox after reading about the Soviet biowarfare program), but the years of the last two smallpox deaths is not uncommon trivia quiz fodder. And just knowing that smallpox is the only human disease to be eliminated from nature should be common knowledge among trivia buffs, so I was quite surprised at Eric’s sole solve.

TL;DR - I think there was sufficient TOM for a reasonably astute player to suss out “smallpox” for FJ.
I'm not sure why the lack of the mention of the US specifically in the clue leads one to assume it was a disease eradicated worldwide. Some reasonably astute players might think the reference to the FDA is the TOM that points one to a disease eradicated in the US, therefore polio. Given that the eradication of each disease in the respective geographies was about the same time frame, solving this (to me) comes down to a 50/50, and going with smallpox relies on either knowing the facts of the drug approval, or guessing that the lack of specificity about the US was there for a reason. I would have been more likely to come up with smallpox if there had been no reference to the FDA in the clue.
TPTB can be capricious and sly, but going from a mention of the FDA to “this must be talking about the US only” seems too capricious and sly. And the FDA still has an interest in drugs that treat diseases existing solely outside the US. For example, Ebola doesn’t occur naturally in the US, but Merck is seeking FDA approval for its Ebola vaccine. I suspect those who got sidetracked by the FDA reference into “no new cases in the US only” are overthinking it.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by twelvefootboy »

Woof wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 9:39 am It’s interesting to read the discussion here. I briefly considered polio as an alternative to smallpox, but discarded it since there are ongoing cases elsewhere in the world. Then again, I work in the area of infectious disease. And, yeah, I hope that those people who complained about James making the game boring enjoyed this neg-fest of a game.
IMHO, the challengers didn't consider smallpox, and/or are unaware that polio still exists in third world backwaters. It was unambiguous to me, and my first draft guess was polio before DQ'ing it because of India or Bangladesh, or whatever. Our Chicken Little Pentagon powers that be are just paranoid enough to fund this research. From a quick google, that is why this drug was created. There was a lot of kerfuffle about the potential for weaponization at the time.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by LucarioSnooperVixey »

53 R (Missed George, Fathers & Daughters $800, and the Bottom Two in N.Y. TV.)
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FJ: :mrgreen:
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by DBear »

Huh for me FJ was pure WECIB & polio wasn't anywhere on the radar. :geek:
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by earendel »

Missus K wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 2:28 am
thenextofken wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 12:47 am Would they have taken "End of the world" for Apocalypse? Judges?
I would think yes but sadly I had “rapture” and I would bet that wouldn’t fly.
It should - the Millerites expected the end of the world would begin with the return of Christ, which would trigger the Rapture. If the judges didn't accept the answer, I think a case could be made that it should have been.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by alietr »

I assumed they meant the disease had been eradicated worldwide, so I went with smallpox. Are there any other diseases that are considered to have been completely eradicated?

As has been mentioned, polio is still extant in some Third World countries. IIRC, one of the ruses that was used to discover whether Osama bin Laden was in Abbottabad was the pretense of conducting a polio survey. Unfortunately, actions like that have left the local populace suspicious of actual polio vaccination efforts.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by cthulhu »

alietr wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 5:58 pm I assumed they meant the disease had been eradicated worldwide, so I went with smallpox. Are there any other diseases that are considered to have been completely eradicated?

As has been mentioned, polio is still extant in some Third World countries. IIRC, one of the ruses that was used to discover whether Osama bin Laden was in Abbottabad was the pretense of conducting a polio survey. Unfortunately, actions like that have left the local populace suspicious of actual polio vaccination efforts.
Wikipedia (I know... :roll:) says that rinderpest has been eradicated, but that’s not a human disease (cattle get it). So smallpox is the only known human disease to be eradicated in nature.
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Re: Friday, June 14, 2019 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by CasketRomance »

MarkBarrett wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:55 am
badgerfellow wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:38 am
Robert K S wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:21 am
I can't think of why E.J. picked exactly $501 for his wager. His safe martian wager was $1,799. In particular, I can't figure out why his wager ended with -01 instead of with -99.
Any ties to Arkansas, home of the 501 area code?
Maybe E.J. likes darts?

maybe he likes levis
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