davey wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 3:33 pm
Anachronism wrote: ↑Wed May 24, 2023 1:40 pm
In the past, the assumption was if whatever the contestant writes down, if sounded out, seems right, a misspelling is considered OK. Generally that's vowel differences. We see spelling errors all the time related to consonants that are doubled, or a C starting a word instead of a K.
It's never had to be exact.
The question, for me, is whether if a person answered "Benedict" to a "regular" question, would that be counted wrong. The sounds are so close that I think they wouldn't do that.
Written out forces a more stringent test. And since Benedict is a much more modern name than Benedick, it's just a bad question. You also have the hazier "fairness" visual (which shouldn't override anything, but it's a bad look) of a very strong champion losing because he was in first place, bet to cover, and was the only one who got the play right, but lost on not properly knowing the archaic spelling.
...a "regular" question...
The rule is pretty clear, reinforced by the FJ ruling last night - if someone clearly articulates the t, they're wrong. It's more likely that someone wanting to say
Benedict would get away with not voicing the t...
So I should feel sorry for Ben, a college professor, because he relied on bum trivia books for his knowledge of one of Shakespeare's major plays?
There's often considerable leeway in pronunciations with verbal answers, though there was the recent Solzhenitsyn festival of equivalency. What is clearly articulating a ct rather than a k? Some people would put more emphasis on the t than others, but there's no way in the world Mayim (or Ken) would then say, "not quite sure you have that right, could you spell that out for me?"
That's why the rule (and it isn't 100% clear to me, not having the rulebook, so if you have a copy and are allowed to post it, that would help) seems to give considerable leeway on vowels with respect to spelling because they're fundamentally similar. Even when the sound is very different and even with names. Same with double-consonants.
Let's go back to Solzhenitsyn. He's been in dozens of clues. And twice, according to the archive, in FJ - once requiring his major novel and not his name and once, back in 1990, his name. The winner (with a 2nd-position bet that would make us all proud) wrote "Solzhenitzin" and Alex made a point of saying spelling doesn't count in FJ. However, I think (and I've checked a few places), the last syllable should be "sin" and not "zin", making this a remarkably similar case to yesterday's show.
(editing to add, this was a college championship semifinal, and if David had been ruled incorrect, he still would have won, so this wouldn't have been controversial at the time)
I'd add that Russian complicates this. But so, apparently, does Shakepeare-era English translated to modern English. Lots of words change in spelling and sometimes even in pronunciation.
Yeah, the more I look at this, the more I don't like the ruling.