Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick. I am a Jeopardy fan. I’ve watched nearly every damn day for decades. I also don’t think it’s fair to compare people playing a quiz game for charity to the average Jeopardy player, who has been doing College Bowl and bar quizzes and other trivia games obsessively for years. Because that’s the only way you’re going to get on the show if you’re not already famous.
All the people on the Power Players tournament have proven their intellectual chops in countless other ways. They are not idiots. Well, except for Chris Matthews. That guy has the IQ of a doorknob.
I can remember that Alaska and Hawaii were added, nearly simultaneously, some time in the '50s, but I couldn’t have told you the exact year, and probably would have guessed that it was before 1958.
For the architecture question, my first thought on reading the clue was the Sydney Opera House-- Was the category “Museums”? Because that would obviously have changed my answer.
The worst Jeopardy fail I’ve ever seen was Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf versus a couple of Boobwatch bimbos. Predictably, he stormed them, but one of the few questions he got wrong was a military history one (I don’t recall the clue, but it was “Who was Douglas MacArthur?”).
Maybe not “intelligence” (depending on how you define it), but being well-read and knowing things about the world around you is still important and a skill people should have. Obviously it’s a bit of YMMV - I doubt most people know what the Spingarn medal is - but when people don’t know what the name of objects in the “belt” between Mars and Jupiter are, I weep a bit inside. (That’s third-grade knowledge right there). Sure, someone could survive and live a full life just fine without knowing about the asteroid belt, but there should be something said for the pursuit of knowledge and all that.
For what it’s worth, the only time I call people on Jeopardy “stupid” is when they screw up their betting before Final Jeopardy, like betting too much if they’re unreachable or not betting enough to win if both get it right, etc.
I don’t see too many people get the betting wrong during Final Jeopardy, but I do see odd bets on late Daily Doubles sometimes. Suppose you’ve got $18,000, second place is $10,000, and you hit the Daily Double on the last clue. I see too many people play it safe there, and make a low wager. Right or wrong, they’ll have the lead before FJ and a good chance to win. I say bet $2,100 on the DD and put the game out of reach if you get it right. Get it wrong and you still have the lead and control your own destiny (to use the sporting term) in Final.
With smart wagering, you can set up a situation where getting the Daily Double OR Final Jeopardy right will win you the game. I don’t remember if I’ve ever seen anybody play it that way, though.
Lateral thinking is a factor of intelligence that’s vital in playing Jeopardy! You have to be able to interpret the clues and reject what’s too obvious or potentially misleading.
Example: In answering the question of how many senators were there in 1958, “100,” the number we have today, is just too damned obvious. It HAS TO BE something else, so you need to recall how many states there were in the Union through most of the 1950s, or maybe how many stars there were on the flag in WWII; something like that.
I once got a Double Jeopardy that I found baffling at first, but when I gave it some thought the answer (question) was clear. The answer was something like “He’s the only West Pointer to be included in the Baseball Hall of Fame.” I thought: Well, baseball became popular around the time of the Civil War … and the troops played it in their spare time … so if this guy was an officer who promoted it in the Army, he must have had something to do with inventing the game … and the only guy I know of who had something to do with inventing baseball is _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ … so it must be him, even though I never knew he’d graduated from West Point." And lo and behold, I was right!
I think that the fandom puts too much emphasis on the game theory of the wagers, and not enough on the odds. Yeah, you do want to consider how much the other contestants are likely to bet and where that would place you, but you should also bet more for a topic you’re more confident on and less on one you’re less confident on.
