Friday, October 14, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[jpahk]

congrats katie, and i'm sad to see you go even though i liked joe and i look forward to seeing how well he can do next week. this was a really good, close, well-played game. joe took a smart gamble on the architecture DD and it paid off big-time for him.

i also thought that it was a terrific board. not all in my best categories, mind you, but i thought the clues were very interesting and well-written. M&M's clues were on definitely on the long side, but as bamaman pointed out, that's their schtick, and at least they read the clues quickly.

[Ryan]

Sorry to see you lose, Katie, but nice little run. How did the two of you think that Brazil and Venezuela are landlocked? I know, I know, it's tough up there, but they've got an awful lot of coastline between them.

I got hung up on the first half of the clue for about the first 20 seconds ("This nation lost its direct access to the Pacific") and so was considering Venezuela and other countries that had an Atlantic coastline. I wasn't surprised that the contestants might have done the same thing.

[alietr]

Ah. True. I thought I remembered the wording as more directly implying landlocked. I guess I latched onto the War of the Pacific and didn't think much more about it. Makes a bit more sense now.

[chuck5982]

M&M's clues were on definitely on the long side, but as bamaman pointed out, that's their schtick, and at least they read the clues quickly.

The M&M category was many, many times more enjoyable than Y&R, which was slightly better than an episode of Jersey Shore. 4/5 for me.

[MarkBarrett]

I wonder what Joe's DD wager would have been with no prompting from Alex? To me it seemed like Alex was telegraphing that the clue is easy; bet big. The FJ results made it all not matter as Joe would have won even with a small wager.

Megan's DD solve on Vicuna came in at about 11.5 seconds as I was watching on delay this morning, so able to use the stopwatch on my watch to time it. She bought herself time by spacing out the phrasing and making it look like she had a chance at pulling it out.

The TOMs were flying by me in the game. Clark had me trying to work with Kent instead of Gable. Homer had me thinking sports instead of Ulysses.

I didn't lose score on Scarlet, but having a Hawthorne work pop up first in my mind distracted me from the proper title for the Doyle work.

It wasn't Word Origins, but The Western Hemisphere worked well enough to give me a miss on the FJ clue. Nowhere in reading the clue did I pick up that I needed to guess landlocked. Instead I went with South American lake. Maracaibo? Okay, guess Venezuela. How that works out to Pacific geography makes no sense, but that's what I did. If I would have picked Titicaca then I could have guessed right for a host of wrong reasons.

The game was a good contest and it's one of those where three games could produce three winners with the trio competing.

I'm always happy to pick up an easy 6000 in sports, but the 2-part clues with M&M had me wanting to double to reveal rate of the material.

Katie: On the Gable clue in Architecture it looked like you got in before Alex finished the clue. You must have reacted well to the lights suddenly going on? Or was it just an editing thing with the jump to the contestants?

[jeff6286]

The TOMs were flying by me in the game. Clark had me trying to work with Kent instead of Gable. Homer had me thinking sports instead of Ulysses.

I was, perhaps, even further off than you on the Clark Gable clue, instantly leaping to Griswold from the way Alex said "Cla-ark". It sounded exactly like he was mimicking Beverly D'Angelo from the Vacation movies.

[KellyJ!]

The scores going into Final were:

Katie: 12,200
Megan: 12,600
Joe: 18,200

Megan's wager would depend on how she feels about the category. If she feels confident, she should bet $11,801 to cover Katie doubling her score. (The J! Archive calculator says in that case she should just go all in since she won't win a triple stumper anyway. But that's silly. It's better to come in second than third, and she can still do that on a triple stumper if she bets $11,801. An extra $1,000 in consolation prize may not match the dreams she took with her to Burbank, but it ain't chump change either.)

On the other hand, she'd win more money if she's right by going all-in rather than leaving some behind (and unlike the consolation prize that also has the small chance of making or breaking her for the ToC if she had made it to exactly four wins). Also, the money left behind would affect 2nd/3rd place only if Katie bet big (but not everything, since Megan has the advantage in a tie) in a range that would drop her to that area (it's extremely unlikely that Joe would be a factor here). In general I don't have a problem with players going all-in if the only (likely) difference in leaving money behind if wrong on FJ! would be 2nd vs. 3rd place.

ETA: Another advantage of betting it all from 2nd place when a correct response is necessary is in the small-but-not-unheard-of chance the leader offers a tie.

[katiedidwhat]

Katie: On the Gable clue in Architecture it looked like you got in before Alex finished the clue. You must have reacted well to the lights suddenly going on? Or was it just an editing thing with the jump to the contestants?

It was editing; I'm pretty sure time was just about to expire when the penny dropped for me with Clark and I rang in. To be honest, I paid absolutely no attention to the lights and focused solely on the last word of the clue. That got me into trouble with the video clues, though, since the cadence was different and I couldn't anticipate as well.

An Irish Jew?!!? And it would have been funnier if you guys had the same purses.

Not Jewish, just aware that sometimes Yiddish is the only language that will do. And I generally don't carry a purse, just my wallet. Which has Mickey Mouse on it, of course.

[alietr]

Ah. True. I thought I remembered the wording as more directly implying landlocked. I guess I latched onto the War of the Pacific and didn't think much more about it. Makes a bit more sense now.

I take it back. Reading the text in the weekly poll, it's clearly implying the country is landlocked since it said it "retains a navy that now patrols its rivers and a large lake". The Atlantic was clearly deliberately omitted, and the Pacific was ruled out, so that would have to (unless you're under the bright lights, of course) lead you to the conclusion that the country is landlocked.

[Ryan]

Ah. True. I thought I remembered the wording as more directly implying landlocked. I guess I latched onto the War of the Pacific and didn't think much more about it. Makes a bit more sense now.

I take it back. Reading the text in the weekly poll, it's clearly implying the country is landlocked since it said it "retains a navy that now patrols its rivers and a large lake". The Atlantic was clearly deliberately omitted, and the Pacific was ruled out, so that would have to (unless you're under the bright lights, of course) lead you to the conclusion that the country is landlocked.

I completely agree. The clue was more than fair. For some reason, my brain missed the implication of the last half of the clue for about 20 seconds. Total brain cramp.

[Volante]

How did the contestants keep mangling "A Study in Scarlet"? That is elementary Sherlock Holmes knowledge. Loved Mike & Mike, ran them, Planets and Sherlock Holmes. Went 4/5 in Home from the House, picking up Conyers being from Michigan, but missed Hoyer from Maryland (guessed New York).
FJ was an instaget. Best game of the week for me.

I almost went with The Red Headed League first with that one

Got the FJ as soon as I read the "lost ocean access" part.

[oddsox]

Count me as another one to focus on the first part of FJ to the exclusion of the important stuff. 'Lost access to the Pacific' got me thinking about Panama declaring independence from Colombia, but then I realized Colombia still had access. Next part of the clue... 'large lake? must be Maracaibo' and jumped over to the neighboring country without ever thinking about Titicaca or the implication of being landlocked. Probably would have gotten it with say, two minutes to think about it instead of thirty seconds.

[Turd Ferguson]

I love Greeny and Golic, and I love sports categories, but geez, those clues went on forever.

Agreed, agreed, and agreed. It was actually quite similar to the Young and the Restless category earlier this week, as the first half of each video was completely meaningless, only serving to kill time before the actual clue was given in the second half of the reading.

I amused myself by trying to "precall" what the last few responses were going to be based on the first half of the clue - getting Wooden based on talk about "greatest coaches" like Phil Jackson was pretty easy, though I guess my answer of "Curt Henning!" for the Don Larsen one was a bit off.

[John Boy]

Ah. True. I thought I remembered the wording as more directly implying landlocked. I guess I latched onto the War of the Pacific and didn't think much more about it. Makes a bit more sense now.

I take it back. Reading the text in the weekly poll, it's clearly implying the country is landlocked since it said it "retains a navy that now patrols its rivers and a large lake". The Atlantic was clearly deliberately omitted, and the Pacific was ruled out, so that would have to (unless you're under the bright lights, of course) lead you to the conclusion that the country is landlocked.

...or if, like me, you live under a dim light. I did not add two and two to get four in this case, and never thought about a landlocked nation. If I had, I might have remembered Titicaca and Bolivia. D'oh!