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What are the rules for disputes? Do you just raise your hand and say “I’d like to dispute that”? Do you then get to plead your case to the judges? Also, can you narc on other players - like, if one of them did a goof that maybe passed by Alex?
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OK, in some of the Tournaments, the first week produces 9 players for the second week: the five daily winners, and four “wild card” spots given to non-winners who had the most money. What I want to know is, are the contestants on Tuesday-Friday’s shows privy to the results of the earlier games? By my logic, later contestants - Friday’s especially - have a major advantage over earlier contestants. By knowing how much the previous contestants have finished with, they can bet more precisely in Final Jeopardy, thus assuring their spot in a wild-card (assuming they have the money in the first place). [Side Note: I think this came into play on today’s episode.] By keeping the later contestants in the dark, every day’s contestants are forced to basically wager and hope for the best, like Monday’s contestants. [Another Side Note: am I making sense here? Because I’m not convinced I’m making sense to myself
Never been on Jeopardy, but I pretty sure that contestants are sequestered during taping of earlier shows and do not know results of the earlier games.
Can I pose a strategy question about tournaments.
Suppose you are in game in Phase I of the tournament and have 12K (2nd place) going into Final Jeopardy. The Game is a runaway, the leader has 25K.
IMO, at 12K, you should either wager either nothing or wager everything.
If you don’t think 12K is enough, anything but 12K? If you get FJ wrong, you are going to have something less than 12K which you don’t think is enough.
If you think 12K is enough to get into the semis, then why you risk anything to put your self below that number.
I’m with you here. If I were even remotely confident in the category, I’d wager everything. 12K isn’t getting you a wild card. BUT if it were a category you were sure you’d bomb (like if it was me and French Literature, or some shit), you’d do well to wager 0 and hope for the best.
The leader going into Final Jeopardy on today’s episode that was broadcast ended up betting nothing, and his total was enough to make it into the semi-finals. Was he just confident that his score was good enough? Did he not have enough faith in his ability to get the correct response in the category? I assumed he just knew what was needed and didn’t bother betting. I was listening to it out of eyesight and don’t know if he had decided to stop playing at any particular point, and at one point he also bet a strange amount of money on a Daily Double, but the person that was actively watching it indicated that he continued to buzz in after winning that strange amount.
Knowing the score needed to advance on a wildcard would give an obvious advantage to Thursday and Friday players, so sequestering them is an obvious step to help keep it fair. If you wanted to be really sneaky, you could have friends in the audience flash you a signal to tell you how much you needed; not sure how the show would prevent that.
You may not know the exact score you need, but you can look up past tournaments online and get a ballpark idea of what score will advance you to the semis. The guy tonight had ~$23,000, which is pretty damn good. That would probably advance you in just about every tournament they’ve had. I assume he knew that, and so bet nothing.
He was from the U.S. Naval Academy. His bet was $1845, which is the year the Academy was founded, according to Wikipedia.
When Alex was naming the semi-finalists, there were some seriously good schools listed. I remember M.I.T, Stanford, and Cal Tech were among them.
There are people standing in front of the audience watching for such things. You may have occasionally noticed a little blurb at the end of a show stating something like “This show has been edited in a way that does not affect the outcome.” – the most common cause of that is somebody in the audience blurted out an answer or appeared to wave some sort of signal to a contestant.
Game shows are low budget affairs and the producers hate having to do this because it costs several thousand dollars a minute to have to redo part of the show.
Ever since the $64,000 Dollar Question fiasco game show producers have been extremely careful about keeping things on the up and up. Don’t know if they still do it but when I was in the business in the 1960s the FCC had a representative at every taping who prowled the entire studio looking for any sign of trouble.
Interesting. I still think a canny contestant could do it. Have a confederate in the audience; he takes out his pocket square to clean his glasses and when he puts it back in his pocket the number of corners showing is the signal. The player wouldn’t know the exact dollar amount to advance, but could know if it’s more or less than what’s been needed in previous tournaments. You wouldn’t even have to wait until Final Jeopardy to prep the signal. The shill knows the needed score after the fourth game; he could get the signal ready before his partner even comes on stage.
And if anybody from Jeopardy! is reading this, I’d never actually do it.
When I appeared, we really couldn’t see any individuals in the audience. We could hear them, but if I’d been looking for one of them to give me signals, well, I probably couldn’t have spotted him.
I have never been on Jeopardy but I have seen it taped live when they were doing a series of travelling shows in the Wang theater in Boston.
The Tuesday versus Friday terminology is a misconception. The shows are played and recorded back to back with a brief intermission for the winner to change clothes. The “days” aren’t real days at all. It just refers to when they will be shown on TV. I saw five of them filmed in just a few hours and not shown on TV until months later. Most game shows are filmed in blocks. The hosts only have to do on-stage work a day or two a week.
At least for the shows that I saw, there was no chance for cheating via an audience member. The audience seating was dark and the stage was brightly lit. I doubt the contestants could see anyone off the stage at all. There was also a strict silence rule for the audience or you would get thrown out.
When I worked on The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game there were two or three people standing in front of the audience watching for any sort of signals. They also kind of “controlled” or “guided” the audience through exaggerated pantomimes of laughing, applause, groans, etc. at appropriate times. One of their moves was a big Shhhhhh motion with index finger vertical over their lips whenever a contestant was about to make a decision or give an answer.
A bit more detail: Game shows are low budget; they are not taped in different takes and edited together – once the tape begins to roll, it rolls for 30 minutes, being left blank for the times commercials will be inserted during broadcast. The stage crew and cast are all union; they are paid for the 30 minute job – if they work beyond that 30 minutes it is as overtime, with minimum pay requirements. At the time I worked there (1969 -1970) producer Chuck Barris often mentioned at staff meetings that it cost over $2,400 per minute to redo a segment and edit the tape; no doubt the cost is much higher these days.
I’m pretty sure that, in all of the tournaments, the first round competitors are unaware of the earlier results. I know this has been mentioned at least once; in the final Seniors tournament, one of the early rounds had a triple-zero, and at the end of the later first round shows, Alex would say something like, “You don’t know this, but in an earlier game, all three players got zero, so there are only four winners and five wild cards.”
I just saw a Tic Tac Dough closing from 1979 on YouTube in which the wording was, “This program has been edited for broadcast without affecting the outcome of the games contained therein.” Is that basically what you’re talking about?
Yep. Wording can vary some … could be caused by a technical glitch in the electronic game board or other causes, but a common one is somebody in the audience blurting something out.
Don’t forget question 1 from the OP. I’m interested in that one as well. Can you interject right away if you disagree with their answer?
And on another one from 1983, IADT (in addition to that), “Some audience and contestant shots were post-recorded.”