Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

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alietr
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by alietr »

Six letters? Huh?
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by bpmod »

alietr wrote:Six letters? Huh?
Maybe he didn't want to get confused with a "Weird Al" song.

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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by legendneverdies »

India was the correct response to a clue back in the early 90s for FJ! that read "The World's Most POpulous Democracy"
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by alietr »

I meant the shortest and longest clues, not the response!
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by dhkendall »

alietr wrote:I meant the shortest and longest clues, not the response!
It took me a while to get legendneverdies' point too, Alietr. Maybe if he mentioned "the worlds' most populous democracy" has five words, and therefore is the shortest FJ clue mentioned yet, his point would be clearer.
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by RCraig »

alietr wrote:Along similar lines ... does anyone know what the shortest (in number of words) and longest FJ's were?
Please take all this with a grain of salt and remember that I'm dealing with an incomplete dataset.
And of course, this wouldn't be possible without the herculean efforts of the archivists!

For words just in the clue, this one is probably the shortest, clocking in at 3:
NEXT IN LINE "Jacqueline, Claudia, Thelma, …"
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=2726

For words in clue and category, the following is probably shortest:
GEOGRAPHY "It's Europe's second-largest island"
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=564

Although treating 'second-largest' as one word is a bit iffy.... Otherwise, it's ASIA "It's Asia's southernmost national capital" , which clocks in at 6 and is tied with the NEXT IN LINE one from above.
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=1312

For longest clue, it's probably this one with 29 words:
WORDS IN THE BIBLE "In Genesis 2:24 these 2 words are what a man shall do to his parents & then to his wife; add a letter to 1 to get the other"
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=3388

And the above ties the following at 33 words in both category and clue:
IT HAPPENED IN NEW YORK CITY "On August 10, 2004, 2 days after her death at the age of 96, the Empire State Building dimmed its lights for 15 minutes in her memory"
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=1676
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by RCraig »

Ok, this'll probably seem odd to some (many?), but I just had some fun looking at the distributions of FJ length statistics and I got to thinking about the "most average" FJ clue ever in terms of length and other stats. For example, over half of all FJs have a two word category, etc.* A cursory analysis gives this winner of the most average FJ ever:

EUROPEAN RIVERS 20 miles from Frankfurt is the meeting place of these 2 rivers, whose names rhyme despite the spelling
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=2392

Congratulations, EUROPEAN RIVERS!


*Btw, the longest FJ category has been 7 letter words long. Appropriately enough for a set of seven things... (I'll let you click through for the _multiple_ punchlines.)
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=2775
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=3583
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by alietr »

Always helpful, Roger. Thanks!
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by opusthepenguin »

RCraig wrote:Ok, this'll probably seem odd to some (many?), but I just had some fun looking at the distributions of FJ length statistics and I got to thinking about the "most average" FJ clue ever in terms of length and other stats.
Good stuff, Roger. Hey, I don't suppose you have a nice spreadsheet or CSV file grouped by date of contestant scores going into FJ, their wagers, and whether they got it right (or their final score, which amounts to the same thing)?
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by Paucle »

RCraig wrote:NEXT IN LINE "Jacqueline, Claudia, Thelma, …"
Wish this wasn't a triple stumper, because I'm wondering if my answer of "who was Betty Ford?" would have been acceptable.
The phrasing of the clue implies "real" first name was needed, and I didn't know it.Actually, I wonder if the last name was even necessary?
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by Bamaman »

Paucle wrote:
RCraig wrote:NEXT IN LINE "Jacqueline, Claudia, Thelma, …"
Wish this wasn't a triple stumper, because I'm wondering if my answer of "who was Betty Ford?" would have been acceptable.
The phrasing of the clue implies "real" first name was needed, and I didn't know it.Actually, I wonder if the last name was even necessary?
She was Elizabeth, I assume they'd have taken Betty as well as Betty Ford.
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by TreehugginCowgirl »

RCraig wrote: Although treating 'second-largest' as one word is a bit iffy.... Otherwise, it's ASIA "It's Asia's southernmost national capital" , which clocks in at 6 and is tied with the NEXT IN LINE one from above.
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=1312
Here's a FJ that has a different answer these days.
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by dhkendall »

RCraig wrote:*Btw, the longest FJ category has been 7 letter words long. Appropriately enough for a set of seven things... (I'll let you click through for the _multiple_ punchlines.)
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=2775
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=3583
For a minute there, I thought it was going to be this one.)
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by seaborgium »

To my knowledge, Robin Woods and J.J. Todor are the only contestants to have won multiple games from a pre-FJ third place. Both did it twice, and Robin did it in consecutive games. (She could have gotten three in a row, but her opponents may have been wary of repeating history and wagered unusually small on what would be a triple stumper.)

Off the top of my head, I would guess that the highest combined pre-FJ score for first and second place is $57,800, between Daniel Weissman ($33,000) and Mark Wales ($24,800). After writing that sentence, I remembered that scores were pretty high in Myron Meyer's second game; I looked it up and it was Jake Maeroff's $33,800 to Myron's $20,600. Myron hit that first DD too soon. Now to look up the scores in Ken Jennings's $75,000 game... $51,400 to $5,600, whew. It would have felt like a cop-out if the highest combined score just had first place doing most of the work. Finally, the Pat Sajak MDCI game with the late TDD by Elizabeth Perkins: $32,400 to $27,600. So let's add "in a regular game" to this paragraph's first sentence!
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by cheezguyty »

seaborgium wrote:Off the top of my head, I would guess that the highest combined pre-FJ score for first and second place is $57,800, between Daniel Weissman ($33,000) and Mark Wales ($24,800). After writing that sentence, I remembered that scores were pretty high in Myron Meyer's second game; I looked it up and it was Jake Maeroff's $33,800 to Myron's $20,600. Myron hit that first DD too soon. Now to look up the scores in Ken Jennings's $75,000 game... $51,400 to $5,600, whew. It would have felt like a cop-out if the highest combined score just had first place doing most of the work. Finally, the Pat Sajak MDCI game with the late TDD by Elizabeth Perkins: $32,400 to $27,600. So let's add "in a regular game" to this paragraph's first sentence!
Larissa Kelly's first game saw her leading $42,200 to $18,800 over Mary Kay Schmidt heading into Final, for a total of $61,000. That leads me to wonder if Mary Kay's pre-FJ score is the highest ever to be less than half the leader's (i.e. on the losing side of a lock game). Ken had 17 games with a pre-FJ score of more than $37,600 but the most any of his opponents in those games had was Al Arsenault's $11,800.

ETA: Sorry it's three months late, but I've found an even higher 1st + 2nd place pre-FJ total: $50,000 (Zia Choudhury) + $15,800 (Nick Philip) = $65,800 in the first game of the 2008-A TeenT.
Last edited by cheezguyty on Thu Jan 17, 2013 8:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by Paucle »

seaborgium wrote:It would have felt like a cop-out if the highest combined score just had first place doing most of the work
Like combined career home runs by brothers? (Unless it's changed since the late 70s, can't imagine it has.)
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by MarkBarrett »

seaborgium wrote:To my knowledge, Robin Woods and J.J. Todor are the only contestants to have won multiple games from a pre-FJ third place. Both did it twice, and Robin did it in consecutive games. (She could have gotten three in a row, but her opponents may have been wary of repeating history and wagered unusually small on what would be a triple stumper.)

Off the top of my head, I would guess that the highest combined pre-FJ score for first and second place is $57,800, between Daniel Weissman ($33,000) and Mark Wales ($24,800). After writing that sentence, I remembered that scores were pretty high in Myron Meyer's second game; I looked it up and it was Jake Maeroff's $33,800 to Myron's $20,600. Myron hit that first DD too soon. Now to look up the scores in Ken Jennings's $75,000 game... $51,400 to $5,600, whew. It would have felt like a cop-out if the highest combined score just had first place doing most of the work. Finally, the Pat Sajak MDCI game with the late TDD by Elizabeth Perkins: $32,400 to $27,600. So let's add "in a regular game" to this paragraph's first sentence!
Brad Plovan had the 3rd entering FJ bookends to pull off the double Houdini:

#1
Gwen 9300-2901=6399
Brad 3600+3600=7200
Carl 6100-300=5800

#5
Brad 5000+5000=10000
Bill 7800-4000=3800
Sally 5600-5599=1
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by jpahk »

jessamine price also did this just last season, in her first and third games. of her four games, the only one in which she had a lead going into FJ was her fourth (and, of course, final).
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by seaborgium »

Thanks, Mark, Joon, and cheezguyty! And thanks to Paucle too, even if you didn't dig up any J! stuff; that's a perfect analogy.
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Re: Trivia about Trivia: Obscure Record Holders

Post by Paucle »

seaborgium wrote:Thanks, Mark, Joon, and cheezguyty! And thanks to Paucle too, even if you didn't dig up any J! stuff; that's a perfect analogy.
Thanks- and I checked, it still works. For those curious, it's...
Spoiler
Most combined career home runs by brothers in MLB, 768, and... Tommie Aaron hit 13
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