I always think it’s odd when someone gives an obscure, but wrong, answer to which Alex says “No, so close, you were thinking of the one in the 12th century, you had to go back just little further to the 10th century.”
I mean, I’m sure after all his years he’s probably picked up a fair bit of knowledge and if he enjoys this kind of stuff he probably get’s sidetracked looking things up on the internet the night before the show since I’m sure he’s given words he has to learn how to pronounce, but some of his smarts seem a bit to random and obscure for him to just happen to know unless he either just happened to be researching it or he has a cheat sheet on his podium. (Maybe he does “For this question, if the contestant says “Solaris” then smile and say 'Ooooh, so close, you had a 50/50 chance but picked the wrong one, the correct answer is Holland Car, but you were in the right country, they’re both made in Ethiopia”)
I know Jason from the competitive Scrabble scene*, although not real well and I’m inactive there now so it’s been a couple of years since I last saw him. I can’t say he reminds me of James Gandolfini, but I’ve never watched the Sopranos and it’s been a while since I’ve seen any movie he’s been in.
This is typical of Jason: the one day on Jeopardy!, he mentioned that he was going to use some of his winnings to replace an orange vuvuzela he had lost**. His trademark is wearing orange clothing at Scrabble events–orange pants, shirt, possibly shoes. He has a small posse that has sometimes done this as well. As far as I know he’s always been scrupulously nice to everyone during tournaments and other related events, during and after hours.
*I’m undefeated lifetime against him. The competitive Scrabble scene in North America is pretty small, less than 2000 core players, but is almost as prolific on a per capita basis at producing Jeopardy contestants as the SDMB – two others that I know of have been on the show in the past 2 years. Also, one of the founders of the J! Archive is a tournament Scrabble player.
**He didn’t have to use any of his winnings, because he just got one as a gift in the past day or two from a Scrabble director who had been watching his run on Jeopardy!
Re. the streak: From the looks of it, 7 wins is on the cusp between “very nice run” and “turning into a juggernaut”. I think 2nd all time would be amazingly extraordinary even if he never sniffed Jennings’ record. There’s so much luck involved and so many things that can go wrong, and unlike the NBA playoffs, one loss, for any reason, and it’s all over. Should be fun to watch.
Re. the NFL FJ question: If this were about Dave Brown or a rushing record or the '83 draft, I can understand how catching the games with the guys every Sunday might be an advantage. But “the same first three letters”? This is just one of those weirdo trivia questions, like which which President served two nonconsecutive terms. I doubt that even Chris Berman ever gave this much thought. The challenge was how quickly they could sift through 32 choices, nothing more.
Re. Alex Trebek: I’ve heard all sorts of accusations about how arrogant or condescending he is. I’ve never seen it (and trust me, I’m very familiar with arrogance and condescension). I honestly think that joshing with the answers is just his way of having fun. This is an extremely straightforward game show with no gimmickry; I think just about any host would be unbearably bored if he wasn’t allowed a bit of showmanship.
If you (or anyone) examine the pictures in a Yahoo! Image search on Gandolfini, you won’t find more than a very few (10 at most) that combine the specific looks that Gandolfini shares with Jason, but perhaps the closest of those ten that I think captures most of the resemblance I see is this one. There’s just something about the eyes and the teeth and the facial hair…
I don’t find him smug or arrogant or condescending. I do think it is funny that the only way he gets any camera time during the actual game is when all the contestants either don’t answer or answer wrong.
Better than 2/3 of all contestants in the regular season seem to be male (non-scientific, but my impression is certainly that all-male batches are more common then having 2 or more women - kids, teen, and college tournaments seem to invert that).
I suspect it’s more who’s applying than any bias in the selection, though.
Nice jinx, GreenElf. Did not notice the Gandolfini resemblance at all. Jason got lucky on Wednesday’s episode and it must have used up the rest of his Jeopardy! karma. Definitely seemed more rattled when he was playing in competitive games the final two days. Felt bad for the lady who misspelled the correct Final Jeopardy answer which cost her the game.
I agree on that spelling boo-boo. She (of the ones I have seen in similar situations) deserves a do-over. How many such things have there been in Jeopardy! history? Not many, right?
In Double Jeopardy, yes, depending on the mispronunciation.
They’ll let it slide if you turn a vowel into a schwa or something like that (sometimes), but if you make an a an o, you’re screwed. Likewise if you add or remove an s. If they’re not quite sure what you said, they’ll ask for clarification. Some contestants realize their mispronunciation at this point and probably thank God for their second chance.
I think I once saw somebody lose because they answered “Who is Sally Fields” instead of “Who is Sally Field” - insult to injury is that, of course, that also gives one of your opponents the answer, so you lose money AND they gain it.
But wasn’t she a librarian, for God’s sake? She also got the title of the “Very Hungry Caterpillar” wrong. Kind of like a physicist answering “E=MC cubed”.
Have they gotten that strict? I could see if getting an answer wrong like that caused it to not fit the category (“five letter last names” or some such) but I’ve never seen a error that minor cause the answer to be wrong otherwise.
The competitive Scrabble scene in North America is pretty small, less than 2000 core players, but is almost as prolific on a per capita basis at producing Jeopardy contestants as the SDMB – two others that I know of have been on the show in the past 2 years. Also, one of the founders of the J! Archive is a tournament Scrabble player.