“Grab 'em by the pussy.”
I wonder if the judges are getting tired of doing her job for her, instead of serving as backup.
Unless you’ve got some hard evidence to the contrary, I don’t think she looks at the judges and awaits their ruling for every response. Just ones on which she is unsure.
Some people on Jboard.tv thought the same thing I did, and someone posted a clip. If you view it, you can see that Mayim’s “yes” was pretty quick, though there was some uncertainty in her tone of voice, and there was no edit until after that ruling.
There have been plenty of times in the past when a contestant’s response wasn’t enunciated very clearly (for a response in which pronunciation matters,) and they were asked to repeat it. She could have said “say it again?” Alex used to do that.
How old do you have to be for it to have been pervasive, throughout the culture, though? Presumably you don’t mean actually remembering it. The earliest “where were you when” event for me was the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster; I was 9 years old at the time. Someone who was 9 in 1941 is 90 today. There aren’t very many people left who remember it being in the news.
It would be interesting to quiz my Baby Boomer parents and aunts and uncles, next time I see them, on whether they can immediately give the exact date of the Pearl Harbor attack when asked.
Yes, it’s not a great analogy because that’s just a random date, whereas I acknowledge December 7, 1941 is a noteworthy date, even if it’s not one I keep committed to memory.
However, your two examples give the context (or even part of the famous quote itself) in the clue. That would be more analogous to my example of a clue saying “FDR called Pearl Harbor this.” What if a clue went, “In a draft of Ronald Reagan’s speech in Berlin on June 12, 1987, the words ‘vertical barrier’ were changed to this one word.” That requires at least one additional step of reasoning. You might say, not 30 seconds’ worth, and if you recognize the context of Berlin you should still get it easily, but still, it’s more complex and much less direct. And also, you’re relying more on “this makes sense” rather than “I know this for a fact.” Everybody knows “date that will live in infamy;” almost nobody knows that in a previous draft it was “date that will live in world history.”
I’m not sure what you mean. As far as I know, even when Alex Trebek was hosting, he wasn’t the one making the decisions about whether contestant responses were correct. In other words, it’s not Mayim’s job to decide.
It’s not just something Boomers learned in history books. Our parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and next door neighbors all lived through it. They talked about where they were when they heard the news the same way Boomers talked about where they were when they heard Kennedy was shot or Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon; how Gen X recalls where they were when the Challenger blew up and how Millennials remember 9/11. December 7 was the subject of big budget movies (Tora! Tora! Tora!), TV miniseries (Pearl) and even showed up in shows like The Waltons.
This is only the second time–both times being in this thread the past 2 days–I have ever heard someone imply that the host of Jeopardy looks to the judges for a ruling on every response. Do you have any evidence for this?
Understood, but I remember where I was when the Challenger blew up but don’t remember the exact date, and while supposedly the Boomers (my parents’ generation) talked about where they were when they heard Kennedy was shot or Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, I don’t know those exact dates either.
I bet close to 100%. I was born 20 years after 1941, and everyone knew the date of the Pearl Harbor attack. It was like knowing who George Washington was. You didn’t have to learn it in history class.
Agreed - I was born in 1964 so was about 7 on the 30th anniversary - so it was pretty recent history that you didn’t just experience in class, even as a little kid. My dad was 3 and told me about his dim memories of his dad and uncles listening to the radio news and realizing it was a serious, unusual thing.
My 22 year old says she knew about the general event but only knew the date because her accounting teacher (older than me) mentioned it on the morning of Dec. 7 in class, and it was memorably out of context so it stuck.
I bet exactly 100%. Not to know that date would be akin to the lady I used to chat with in my regular bar back in Texas who honestly did not know where Mexico was.
I asked my daughter (37) and my son (33) what date was the attack on Pearl Harbor, and they both instantly said, “December 7, 1941.” The son added, “… a date which will live in infamy.”
My guess is that this knowledge varies widely. I know that’s not very helpful.
I doubt there’ll be anything interesting about that at all, as 100% will know it.
Exactly. I’ve watched J! since the early 90’s and my impression has always been that the judges were backup for Alex (and Ken, more recently), and corrected the host only when necessary, which was seldom.
Maybe you’re just not paying attention. I know all of those dates.
I’m calling bullshit on the “privateering” ruling
How so?
Letters of marque were licenses to privateer: specifically targeting an enemy nation’s ships and ports. Not open piracy on any and all
Again, when in doubt, check the Jeopardy Archive for the actual wording of the clue:
Key word: otherwise. In other words, a letter of marque was a government grant to a private individual to engage in naval operations which, were it not for the letter of marque, would be considered piracy.
My first impression was “privateering” also, based on the Stan Rogers song, “Barrett’s Privateers”:
O the year was Seventeen Seventy-Eight,
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!
A letter of marque came from the king,
To the scummiest vessel I’ve ever seen,
God damn them all!
I was told we’d cruise the seas for American gold,
We’d fire no guns, shed no tears,
Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier,
The last of Barrett’s Privateers.
Bolding added by me. But I can understand “piracy” also, as the song obviously refers to committing acts of piracy on American ships. At any rate, if a letter of marque allowed one to engage in certain naval operations, that could be known as either piracy or privateering, then either answer should be considered correct.
One presumes that the master of the American ship would refer to them as “pirates,” and that should the intended victim capture the privateers and return them to port to stand trial, the charge would be “piracy” and not “privateering.”
Exactly. The whole point of the clue is that letters of marque made it NOT piracy. At least from the point of view of the government issuing the letters.