Monday, March 31, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[Archivists]

Placeholder for J! Round

[Archivists]

Placeholder for DJ! Round

[jeff6286]

Literature & Opera
An aria in this Shakespeare-based opera says, "Di scozia a te promettono le profetesse il trono...che tardi?"

Spoiler

What is MacBeth? Celeste said Falstaff; Colby said A Midsummer Night's Dream

Colby Burnett: $16,400-$199=$16,201...advances to quarterfinals of Decades Tournament
Celeste DiNucci: $16,200-$1,399=$14,801
Tom Nissley: $7,400+6,000=$13,400

[heelsrule1988]

IT BEGINSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[dhkendall]

Just wanted to say that I love the shoutout to boardie Doug Hicton. Doug's present to Celeste is priceless, and reinforces my belief that I'd take hanging with a Jeopardy! person over a non-Jeopardy! person any day.

[Bamaman]

When Alex said she got a gift from one of her TOC players, did anybody else guess (who had not heard the story before) it was Doug who sent it?

If Celeste had bet a little more on her Ethiopia DD, she has the lead going into FJ. I wonder what she would have bet from the lead on FJ? Gutsy bet by Colby, though a bet of $1,200 would have been better.

No chance for me on FJ, would have helped if I spoke Italian. Guessed The Merchant of Venice just to have something. I wonder if Arthur would have written "the Scottish play" if he had been playing.

[TenPoundHammer]

Accessories for $800 gets two BMSes that result in deer in the headlights. The clue has "camera" and you say "lenses", which gets a BMS for "sunglasses"?! It's like a badly-written word-association test. I wouldn't have gotten "sunglasses" if you'd given me a month.

I'm guilty of joining them on overthinking "Old Testament". Even worse, that was my only miss in the category.

"Burn on re-entry" seems insanely specific.

====

Sandler was my only get in Gender Bender, but in my defense, I haven't actually seen the movie.

"Ratatoskr" was staring me in the face, and I couldn't shake it free in time to just go "What rodent would live in a tree?" Once again, my only miss in the category.

I think I've been in a 7-Eleven all of once in the past 15 years (there aren't any near me and we're such a Speedway family), so Eleven for $800 went right over my head.

"Ketone" (NHOI) was my only miss in "Tone".

====

The only word that looked remotely cognate-ish to me was "trono", which didn't narrow things down any for me. "Scozia" didn't sound like anything to me. I put down nothing.

Well played, Colby.

Fun fact: I have now gone the entire month of March without a correct FJ! response.

[zakharov]

Well that was brutal. No chance at all on FJ, and I got maybe 15 clues all game. "Shakespeare-based Opera" is a category from my nightmares.

Hooray for Colby, the People's Champ! Hope to see him and KJ face off.

[econgator]

No chance for me on FJ, would have helped if I spoke Italian. Guessed The Merchant of Venice just to have something.

That was my guess, too.

I wonder if Arthur would have written "the Scottish play" if he had been playing.

Doubtful. There's no superstition about writing it, only saying it.

I don't knock Colby for his bet one bit. I likely would have bet 0 myself.

[Golf]

Pretty sure there's going to be lots of bitching about Dr. J being neg bait on the top row Moses Malone answer. But Dr. J wasn't a center as the clue implied. Nor is she one to piss off....

The J round was pretty rough, but the contestants played a damn nice round of DJ!

Nice wagers by Celeste and Tom. As far as Colby's wager, the more games of this tournament I see the more I am slowly being swayed to this tactic. Assuming of course Colby had paid attention to prior tourney games. But mind you, this is only for this tournament. Outside of this tournament it's still a puny move.

[zakharov]

Pretty sure there's going to be lots of bitching about Dr. J being neg bait on the top row Moses Malone answer. But Dr. J wasn't a center as the clue implied. Nor is she one to piss off....

Yepppppp. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of my game.

[Milpool]

I'm glad that my Colby t-shirt will get at least another day's worth of use in this decade. Great wager by him. Results oriented? Maybe. But considered the get rate so far in the Battle of the Decades, it seems like a shrewd move.

Each transition from the standard Jeopardy! difficulty level to the Battle of the Decades level has been jarring (and humbling). Watching three excellent competitors struggle for every dollar really reinforces how difficult these boards have been.

It seemed like they gave Celeste the Lemmon and Curtis answer because Alex had essentially already ruled her correct (though not officially), and deeming her late would have given a free response to Colby or Tom.

[esrever]

Picked up Lach trash: "Jo Jo White", "FBI", "sunglasses", "Old Testament", "airplanes", "Aleppo"

I got FJ, but it was just a lucky guess. I couldn't translate the Italian language in the clue.

[Leander]

Without knowing much Italian, but knowing a bit about opera, I was able to come up with the right answer to FJ.

Shakespeare operas in Italian pretty much means Macbeth, Falstaff, or Otello (Othello), all by Verdi. To narrow it down, I thought "le profetesse" sounded like prophet = witches and not likely to be in Falstaff or Otello.

[lieph82]

I was 45 when I first won on Jeopardy and 46 when I won the ToC. When you see me in the BotD "2000s week," I'll be 52 and still being treated for cancer. So I'll let you figure out whether I am past my peak! (And no, I am not giving ANYTHING away--I'm truly going to let you decide!)

Celeste, that was phenomenal. Knowledge, buzzer speed, FJ wager: all there. If you're past your peak, I can't imagine anyone would want to play you at your peak.

If Celeste had bet a little more on her Ethiopia DD, she has the lead going into FJ. I wonder what she would have bet from the lead on FJ? Gutsy bet by Colby, though a bet of $1,200 would have been better.

I'm usually the last one to criticize such DD wagers ("well at least she bet a bunch, at least she didn't just bet a thousand or two thousand, at least she recognizes the value of a daily double"), but here's a clear example of how it can cost you.
Extra bucks she saved in case of incorrect response: not likely to be a factor in the game
Extra bucks she would have made with a TDD wager: a lot more likely to be a factor in the game, if not in taking the lead pre-FJ, maybe in getting to a crucial break-point in scores

To be fair, Celeste also had some costly negs, so there were multiple ways in which she could easily have had the lead pre-FJ. Her FJ wager was great; I also wonder what she would have bet from the lead. I suspect that she would have made the MSB and lost anyway, but she can confirm or deny.

The cagy FJ wagering in this tournament continues. Congrats Colby! I liked Pam Mueller's wager a lot, but I don't like Colby's here (Golf, I'm sure you recognize the differences and won't claim I'm changing my mind). It's a different situation, because Tom's basically out of the game, whereas Dan Melia wasn't. Celeste can bet $1399 without worrying about Tom catching her, and why wouldn't she? This means that by wagering small, Colby is betting on Celeste getting FJ wrong, which is very, very ballsy. I can't get behind a decision to completely take the outcome of a game out of your hands and into a competitor's, unless...

I wonder if Colby had any prior knowledge about Celeste being weak in Literature and Opera that motivated his wager?

Of course, it worked out for Colby, when the MSB would not have, and he had played his usual wonderful game before FJ. So, again, congratulations!

Pretty sure there's going to be lots of bitching about Dr. J being neg bait on the top row Moses Malone answer. But Dr. J wasn't a center as the clue implied. Nor is she one to piss off....

Dr. J also doesn't apply to the promised land TOM.

Nice wagers by Celeste and Tom. As far as Colby's wager, the more games of this tournament I see the more I am slowly being swayed to this tactic. Assuming of course Colby had paid attention to prior tourney games. But mind you, this is only for this tournament. Outside of this tournament it's still a puny move.

With her wager, Pam have won with a miss by Fritz, or a rational small wager by Fritz whether he got FJ right or wrong. This situation is different, and it's why I don't like Colby's wager here. With his wager, Colby can ONLY win if Celeste makes a suicide wager (unlikely in this tournament) or if Celeste misses. He lets the game come down solely to Celeste's response.

As Bamaman said, I would have liked a $1200 wager by Colby a lot more here.

[econgator]

Pretty sure there's going to be lots of bitching about Dr. J being neg bait on the top row Moses Malone answer. But Dr. J wasn't a center as the clue implied. Nor is she one to piss off....

And on the bottom of that row, I had the Jo Jo TOM, nut all I could manage was, "Jo Jo ... ummm..."

[debramc]

Wow it's fun to watch these harder games!
Got FJ just from Scozia->Scotia->Scotland->MacBeth. Was a little disturbed I couldn't really support it with any of the other words (I don't know Italian but do know Spanish pretty well and some French so I can usually figure out a reasonable amount of Italian but not here. At least I got the key word.)

[hscer]

I got FJ thanks to Scozia, but I thought the opera would have been called something else other than Macbeth. Still, that's what I would have written down because I didn't think I knew enough to over-think it (this makes sense, honest!).

What a game, though. Celeste's wager is pretty boilerplate, but I guess on account of the category Colby thought it more likely he and Celeste would both get FJ wrong than both get it right.

[StevenH]

Congrats to Colby on the win!

Honestly, I thought that this board kind of sucked, especially the J! round. I was excited for the "NBA Finals MVP" category, then the clues ended up being vague junk that relied too much on cutesy TOMs. The Mythology and Middle Eastern Geography categories were pretty good, but I didn't feel that much else was.

"Aleppo" was my only Lach trash for the night. That was one more than I thought I'd have!

The only two Shakespeare plays that I could think of that I knew had operas based on them were A Mid Summer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet. I went with the former, for no reason other than the latter seemed too obvious. I really had no idea.

I was surprised by Colby's FJ wager, but it turned out to be a smart move. He was 4/4 on FJs in his ToC and I thought that he would like the FJ category, so I was expecting the cover wager from him.

Tom looked like he had a hard time against two buzzer beasts, but all three contestants played a great game. Congrats to Colby, Tom, and Celeste on their achievements!

[BADuBois]

Fun game to watch, congrats to Colby.

I groaned when I saw the NBA category, knowing I had no chance with any of the clues. My sports knowledge is pretty thin, and my knowledge of basketball is equivalent to clues related to Famous Albanian Curlers.

Stunned that no one got the right answer for Robert Hanssen, the FBI traitor. Really?

FJ was in the Dreaded Opera category, or perhaps the Extrordinarily Dreaded Opera & Shakespeare Category. Guessed "The Tempest" just to have something... or if I was on the show with this question, may have written "What is Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter", for the humor factor.