Thursday, October 18, 2012 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[TenPoundHammer]

So how embarrassing would it be to admit that I answered Edmund Hilary instead of Martin Luther King Jr. for the Capricorn clue about someone who had "been to the mountaintop"? Apparently at that moment my brain was thinking literally, rather than figuratively, about the mountaintop.

I thought that clue was literal too.

[CrunchyTaco]

Ok, so the Detroit affiliate totally screwed the pooch; when they came back from commercial before FJ, they had cut to a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME!! (According to J-Archive, it was the game from a year ago!) So...what happened in the game?! I take it that Glenn won (Congrats!), but how did it go down?! I'm dying over here!! (And what's up with the Detroit affiliate??)

The Detroit affiliate (WDIV) has really ticked me off this season. Why have they decided to edit down FJ to a few seconds?

[econgator]

I don't seem to recall exactly what Slam's Rule is. It isn't in the Archive glossary, so could someone explain?

Slam's Rule -- if I remember rightly -- states that if someone shows up on the board between the tape date and the air date then they likely did well/won.

Now, on the Great Escape clue if I had gotten the rebound, I would have turned to the person next to me who just missed it, said, "Three days in the cooler!" in a horrible German accent and then responded.

Zero chance on FJ. I guessed Bismarck just to guess someone.

[Leander]

I thought it was pretty obvious in FJ that the name was going to have a communist connection. I thought a bit about a Russian or East German leader, and then remembered there had been a Karl Marx Stat in E Germany and went with it.

[Bamaman]

I also had Hillary.

[Fishercat]

Horrible game for me, by far my lowest Coryat of the year with that FJ to top it off. I immediately went to Stalin (East German city, Communist link, with Stalin dying in 1953) and wouldn't have looked for Marx at that point. I wouldn't have connected to Marx even if you gave me several minutes. Maybe if I was told I was on the right track. Good get by Glenn.

Hope Glenn has a good run, though he was definitely saved by an unfortunate DD wager. I'd say you either wager nothing, or wager enough to make sure your opponent can't beat you even if he gets the 2k clue right (if possible). Oh well.

[susanp]

So how embarrassing would it be to admit that I answered Edmund Hilary instead of Martin Luther King Jr. for the Capricorn clue about someone who had "been to the mountaintop"? Apparently at that moment my brain was thinking literally, rather than figuratively, about the mountaintop.

I guessed the same thing.

[bpmod]

And I felt really foolish when my wife Mona --- who knows my love of WWII and Cold War history --- looked at me and archly said, "You *really* think a German city would be named after Stalin, after what the Russians did to them during the war?" Oops!

Well, yes, but...

What was her response?

Brian

[bpmod]

So how embarrassing would it be to admit that I answered Edmund Hilary instead of Martin Luther King Jr. for the Capricorn clue about someone who had "been to the mountaintop"? Apparently at that moment my brain was thinking literally, rather than figuratively, about the mountaintop.

I guessed the same thing.

That makes at least five of us. I don't feel so bad now.

Brian

[opusthepenguin]

Ok, so the Detroit affiliate totally screwed the pooch; when they came back from commercial before FJ, they had cut to a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME!! (According to J-Archive, it was the game from a year ago!) So...what happened in the game?! I take it that Glenn won (Congrats!), but how did it go down?! I'm dying over here!! (And what's up with the Detroit affiliate??)

Watch it and weep. (Definitely, congratulations to Glenn. But just a heartbreaker for poor Erin.) This is the DD (which you saw), then the FJ.

[seaborgium]

I barely pulled that FJ out. I was stuck thinking of Lenin and Stalin, and I knew the cities once named for them are not German. Then I suddenly took a jump back to Marx. Here's where a weird association comes in: on another board I frequent, there's a thread for posting and discussing daily comic strips, and there's a Finnish poster who posts a strip called Fingerpori with translations,* and the strip started out called Carl-Barks-Stadt, simultaneously named after the city and the Donald Duck comic book artist. So I knew there had been a Karl-Marx-Stadt. I said Karl Marx with seconds to spare; I might have been able to scribble out "Marx" in time.

Tough break for Erin. After she only wagered her lead on the first DD, I thought maybe she'd go $100 on the last. Too bad. And congrats, Glenn!


*edit: The comic frequently uses puns, which are untranslatable; the poster is kind enough to explain them. One of the best examples is this one, in which the main character looks at milk (maito) and calls the kyytön maito (milk from the kyyttö, a rare Finnish breed of cattle) too expensive. But also, "kyy" means "viper" and the suffix "-tön" is the same as "-less." So he had passed up the viperless milk, hence the snake popping out of his carton of regular milk at the end.

[Bamaman]

Horrible game for me, by far my lowest Coryat of the year with that FJ to top it off. I immediately went to Stalin (East German city, Communist link, with Stalin dying in 1953) and wouldn't have looked for Marx at that point. I wouldn't have connected to Marx even if you gave me several minutes. Maybe if I was told I was on the right track. Good get by Glenn.

Hope Glenn has a good run, though he was definitely saved by an unfortunate DD wager. I'd say you either wager nothing, or wager enough to make sure your opponent can't beat you even if he gets the 2k clue right (if possible). Oh well.

A bet of $3,801 would have assured her of a lock game if she got it right, even if Glenn got the last clue. And if she got it wrong, she'd still have the lead even if Glenn gets the last clue.

I thought the clue itself was a bit unfair, throwing in a science question in a category that is supposed to be related to American history of perhaps architecture.

[julycoaron]

Wasn't MLK's "been to the mountaintop" quote from 1963? IIRC, the clue said 1968. Did that throw anyone else off?

[julycoaron]

How the hell were 1953 and 1990 supposed to be TOMs for Karl Marx? He was active in the mid-late 1800s.

Also, what was the TOM for shrimp on Celebrity Cookbooks for $600? I had no idea what that clue was talking about.

"It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp" was an Oscar-winning song from a few years ago. The clue was a play on that title. "It's Hard Out Here For" ... this seafood.

[julycoaron]

Was anyone else screaming at Erin to bet $100 when she hit that last DD?

[bpmod]

Wasn't MLK's "been to the mountaintop" quote from 1963? IIRC, the clue said 1968. Did that throw anyone else off?

You might be thinking of "I have a dream". This one was April 3, 1968.

Brian

[Bamaman]

Wasn't MLK's "been to the mountaintop" quote from 1963? IIRC, the clue said 1968. Did that throw anyone else off?

He gave that speech the night before he was killed.

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't really matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live - a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ve_Bee ... ountaintop

[Turd Ferguson]

Yeah, right. So congrats to Glenn for getting Karl Marx. *Great* answer, and I had to feel sorry for your two competitors... Oppenheimer? Wagner? I got the feeling they both saw time slipping away and felt pressed to write something, anything down on the board. And I felt really foolish when my wife Mona --- who knows my love of WWII and Cold War history --- looked at me and archly said, "You *really* think a German city would be named after Stalin, after what the Russians did to them during the war?" Oops!

If there is an "I said Stalin for Thursday's FJ!", I'm sure there will be a good number of people checking it, me included. I thought this was another FJ! with a "We Didn't Start The Fire" reference - in the song, 1953 -> Stalin's death.

I know there's a rather prominent street in (old East) Berlin named after Karl Marx (I remember finding that a bit odd when I was there), so it seems that the Germans certainly weren't in a rush to change the names of everything named after him. Also, according to wikipedia, the street was originally named Stalinallee, so I don't think the idea of a place in (East) Germany having been named for Stalin is completely preposterous, either

[Woof]

First off, gutty win, Glenn. You did seem to dodge a major bullet when Erin let you back into the game with that late DD miss (she seemed to have Stephanie-esque buzzer dominance if not quite the same level of knowledge). My FJ train of reasoning mirrored AP's: dates => communism + Germany => Marx and, oh yeah, wasn't there a Karl-Marx-Stadt? Wagner wasn't all that bad a guess given the Nazi's use of Wagner in their propaganda, but of course the dates argue against it.

p.s. MLK without question for the "been to the mountaintop" quote. I can't listen to or read that speech without being moved to tears, as it takes me back to that terrible day and I hear again his nearly prophetic words that so deftly reference Moses.

[dhkendall]

"This Great Lakes state" was a HUGE negbait for Michigan IMO

Well, you *are* a Michigander (love that word!) and therefore biased. It led me there too, but realizing there are other Great Lakes states (Ohio was my second guess), and usually associating arrowheads with the southwest (particularly New Mexico), I wisely clammed.

Contrary to Alex's suggestion, the dates hurt rather than helped me on FJ. The period 1953-1990 made me think of the Cold War, East Germany, and the Soviets, so I ended up going with Stalin (who died in 1953, so it actually could have made sense to rename a city after him). I would've needed more TOM to get to Marx.

Here's a free tip for you, and many other boardies who figured that things like towns would be renamed for Stalin after his death. There was about as much of a chance of that happening as there was a German city named after a Russian post WWII (love the story, Brendan!). After Stalin's death the Soviet Union went through a process of de-Stalinization, perhaps it was to secure the new leader's (or in this case leaders', as there doesn't seem to be one clear leader during the few years immediately after Stalin) hold on the nation by erasing the old one, or it was maybe even the Soviets were ashamed of his brutality that he was known for. (Many cities in the USSR were renamed *from* Stalin names after his death, like Volgograd, Russia and Dushanbe, Tajikistan). I am aware of this because most anthems of former Soviet Republics were written in the late 1940s and early 1950s. All of them mentioned Stalin, and all of them got new lyrics in the years following his death. (An exception was Belarus', it was written in the early 50s with Stalinist lyrics, but it wasn't officially adopted until 1955 (the last Soviet republic to get an anthem, save Russia, who never had one), by then with non-Stalin lyrics.)

Ok, so the Detroit affiliate totally screwed the pooch; when they came back from commercial before FJ, they had cut to a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME!! (According to J-Archive, it was the game from a year ago!) So...what happened in the game?! I take it that Glenn won (Congrats!), but how did it go down?! I'm dying over here!! (And what's up with the Detroit affiliate??)

The Detroit affiliate (WDIV) has really ticked me off this season. Why have they decided to edit down FJ to a few seconds?

"Ever since the Phoenicians invented money, there has been only one answer to that question." - Clarence Darrow. Editing gives them an additional 25 seconds for commercials. Perhaps you are not buying enough of their fine products for them to necessitate getting more cash ...