Are final jeopardy's supposed to be the hardest clues each game? Like harder than any $2000 clue? And what about daily doubles? Are their difficulty random? Because sometimes I see them where a $400 clue would be and other times where a $2000 clue is.
FJs aren't necessarily the hardest. Sometimes they simply seem like clever bits of trivia a writer liked and shoehorned into a clue (and, in order to make the clue remotely possible, they had to slip in a very obvious hint). Other times it's leiderkranz.
As far as the board goes, in general they get harder as you increase in value. BUT there's a wide margin of error because what the writing staff thinks is hard might not match up with the general consensus...and on a personal level you might know the $2000 instant, but the $400's a gap in the knowledge base. They do a pretty good job overall, though, like a baseball umpire (and I mean that in a positive way, not sarcastically as a comment on how umps have been making calls this season...). When you're right 99 times out of 100, that one miss riles up the peanut gallery like crazy frog going off at a recital.
DDs aren't anything special difficulty wise, it's just where they show up on the board...and all other above caveats apply.
We're in the heart of Hardee's-land here. Still remember Speedy McGreedy from my youth (the Hardee's version of the Hamburglar). Knew of the Carl's Jr. connection because of some overlapping ad campaigns that get some YouTube time (usually involving some hottie eating a Thickburger to Foghat music).
Monday's FJ I already discussed; Thursday's was a total misread on my part -- missed the operative words "six official," so I kept wondering if there was such a thing as Zimbabwee-ese. Picked Zambesi. Neither are actual languages, as it turns out.
Couldn't pull out Ballanchine out of my old brain in time; knew it wasn't Nureyev, he came over in the 1960s.
Last edited by Spaceman Spiff on Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
With these high get percentages for all the FJs, I have to ask - for the weekly polls, what's the highest "low" percentage? (i.e. the current low percentage FJ in this week's poll is 75%)
harrumph wrote:With these high get percentages for all the FJs, I have to ask - for the weekly polls, what's the highest "low" percentage? (i.e. the current low percentage FJ in this week's poll is 75%)
another related question would be what's the highest % ever who have checked all five? we're currently at 42%.
dhkendall wrote:And, yes, there are some New Englanders on the site. Joon comes immediately to mind, as well as a few Maine-iacs.
i'm glad to be remembered first; it helps with my branding. becoming a global icon isn't as easy as it looks.
seriously, though, i checked neither box. i grew up in virginia and have lived in california, so i'm familiar with (and have eaten at) both, but i left both boxes unchecked here.
creedofhubris wrote:I think question #1 is ambiguous, since "it" could also refer to "the control center of cells".
I think it would only be ambiguous if "nucleus" (or whatever other response you had in mind) was adopted as the term for "the control center of cells" some time after he did his experiments. Otherwise, "today we know it as this" is meaningless.
I must too do the 1/5 walk of shame. DNA and Jobs were headslappers, UN languages is a trivia chestnut that I just didn't know (see: Henry VIII, wives of), and I would not have gotten poet laureate in a billion years. I thought "versificator" might be related to "veritas" and thought it might be a lawyer of some kind - is it obvious that I didn't take Latin?
I know absolutely nothing about Jeeves and Wooster, but Wooster tipped me off to the answer. Might have gotten Balanchine with enough time to think about it, but probably not.
creedofhubris wrote:I think question #1 is ambiguous, since "it" could also refer to "the control center of cells".
I think it would only be ambiguous if "nucleus" (or whatever other response you had in mind) was adopted as the term for "the control center of cells" some time after he did his experiments. Otherwise, "today we know it as this" is meaningless.
Well, the only antiquated/bizarre term they used in the question was the "control center of cells".
jpahk wrote: i'm familiar with (and have eaten at) both, but i left both boxes unchecked here.
That's what I should have gone with since although we now have Carls's Jr., we had Hardee's for a long time (and I grew up with Hardee's in NW Florida). We actually could still have one around, but I don't frequent the area of town where that one was.
"It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing." -- Seneca
Ay, Caramba! I 50-50'd between Arabic and Spanish as the sixth UN language, decided incorrectly that it was Arabic, which left me with Russian as the alphabetically last language.
Two weeks in a row of 4-for-5 FJ. Maybe one of these weeks I'll score the elusive perfecto.
John Boy wrote: I 50-50'd between Arabic and Spanish as the sixth UN language, decided incorrectly that it was Arabic, which left me with Russian as the alphabetically last language..
What are your 6? Because Arabic is one of them.Spoiler
English, French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic
John Boy wrote: I 50-50'd between Arabic and Spanish as the sixth UN language, decided incorrectly that it was Arabic, which left me with Russian as the alphabetically last language..
What are your 6? Because Arabic is one of them.Spoiler
English, French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic
Unfortunately I convinced myself that the six were Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, and Russian.
John Boy wrote:Unfortunately I convinced myself that the six were Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, and Russian.
ah- I can certainly see how German might be considered as one.
I would disagree there, both remembering that Germany was excluded from the UN originally (being a league of nations that won the war, essentially, the Germanies didn't join until 1973), and that German isn't a very widely spoken language, and an official language in less than half a dozen UN states.
"Jeopardy! is two parts luck and one part luck" - Me
"The way to win on Jeopardy is to be a rabidly curious, information-omnivorous person your entire life." - Ken Jennings
For the season:
FJ: 123-92
First third:46-29
Second third: 40-35
Extras: 64-65
TOC: 5-5
College: 4-6
Teachers: 5-5
Teen: 6-4
Power Players: 4-1
Longest FJ winning streak: 8 (active 3)
Longest FJ losing streak: 5
5/5:2
4/5:7
3/5:20
2/5:12
1/5:1
0/5: 1
I went with nucleus, DNA came to me at the 31st second. I went the wrong way on Tuesday with Sam Walton. I could easily do the math to Lincoln, nothing else possible after Spanish and Poet Laureate seemed more likely than Archbishop. I had Bolshoi for the ballet and while I'm not a big fan of theirs,' we have Hardee's here.