This is a tough question to get exactly right, but it should not have been tough
to come close.
Few people could give the year of admission of any state.
However, it should not be asking too much for people to be aware of the fact
that Alaska and Hawaii were the last two states admitted, and that admission
was by several decades the most recent. The tough part is knowing they were
admitted the same year and deciding whether to answer 96 or 98.
Possibly. But the period 1912–1959 was, I think, the longest in US history when no new states were admitted to the Union, and the flag had 48 stars thoughout it. (The last two before Alaska and Hawaii, BTW, were New Mexico and Arizona.)
Some more trivia: Alaska and Hawaii were admitted about six months apart (in January and June, as I recall), and during that time 49-star flags were manufactured, with seven rows of seven stars. If you can find one of these today, it’d be a real collector’s item (and still flyable).
While the “Power Players” have been pretty underwhelming (even worse than the Celebrity weeks I feel), in fairness, some of the other Final Jeopardy questions this week seemed difficult.
MONDAY: “This performer is the only person to win an Emmy, the Mark Twain Prize & the Spingarn Medal.”
Bill Cosby
TUESDAY: “Completed in 1959, it’s been variously described as a snail, a concrete tornado, even a giant wedding cake.”
Guggenheim
THURSDAY: “First held in May of 1875, it is the oldest continuously held major sporting event in the United States.”
Kentucky Derby
No one in my household knew what the Springarn or Mark Twain awards were for. No one knew the museum, though it might be because of being on the West Coast. Thursday’s might just be a generational thing - my parents said they knew right away, but I’d be damned if I could tell you what horse race was in which month. Or if horse racing is even a sport. 
I have a feeling I should know this, but what language is yom here? 
Aside from Hebrew (day?), I know of only one meaning for yom (in Italian) and it’s very derogatory!
iirc whitney was a victim of copycats, couldn’t make a dime off his invention, and that’s why he went broke
Uhhh, I don’t think you can get a “Bingo!” with any number higher than 75…
It would have helped to have known the categories, at least for the Guggenheim Museum… 
I got all of the Final Jeopardy questions except Thursday. Like the contestants, I went with the U.S. Open. I just don’t think of horse racing as a sport*, I guess.
*I know, I know…“The Sport of Kings.” I’m not a king, so it doesn’t count.
3 for 3! I’m a white 34 y/o.
For Thursday’s Final Jeopardy, I went with the Yale-Harvard game, which has been held since 1875, the same year as the Kentucky Derby first started. No idea if it’s been “continuously held.”
The answer said “major” sporting event.
Well, it’s pretty major where I come from.
Nothing about this question screams “Eli Whitney.” I gotta side with the celebs on this one.
I recall the same, but I think Whitney went on to make some scratch by pioneering weapons with interchangable parts. (The cotton gin was invented in Georgia, so we learned a lot about old Eli in history classes… but I may be incorrect about his career. Off to Wikipedia, I guess.)
I like to think I’d have answered all of the FJ questions except for Bill Cosby, but performing in my living room is easier than on stage.
“Brought the South prosperity” is kinda a giveaway on that one. The only thing the South was good for was cotton, and cotton is King only if you have a way to process it efficiently.
The celebs were stupid, or slept through 5th grade Social Studies.
well i was fairly confident it was whitney based on the prosperity line, but my sister thought it could have been cyrus mccormick, and when pressed for other possibilities i came up with the aforementioned robert fulton. i don’t think it was the most obvious answer but it was very get-able.
the sporting event one was much much harder. i was debating between baseball opening day (1907) or harvard-yale.
I got the correct answer to this one and was shocked that no one else did.
I didn’t watch this episode, but based on the clue, I’m not sure I’d have gotten this one. I also watched and got the Guggenheim one right.
Jeopardy is a very YMMV kinda show. Some days, I find questions blindingly obvious and no one else gets it, other days I’m stumped and all the contestants know it.
I got the Kentucky Derby one, too. I remember some old TV commercial, probably for Wide World of Sports, about how May begins with the Kentucky Derby and and ends with the Indianapolis 500.
For some reason it was '57 in my head. I thought it was a trick quetion. i.e. “What is 100?”
I missed Monday’s but figured out the others instantly. Felt pretty smug about it, but I know it was just a fluke.