DC or Washington DC, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of Jeopardy’s fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of questions,
And by opposing, end them. To lose, to quit;
No more; and by quitting to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To lose, to quit;
To quit, and win the lottery. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that tedium of daily work what wins may come,
When we have shuffled off this TV game,
Must give us pause.
The format has loosened up since the earliest incarnation of the show. I remember reading that in Art Fleming’s early years of hosting, he had to regretfully inform a contestant that her response of “Who is Macbeth?” to the clue “This Shakespearean tragedy is referred to as ‘The Scottish play’ by superstitious actors” was unacceptable. Since the clue referred to the work, as opposed to the character, the response had to be “What is Macbeth?”*
The judges soon became more lenient, however. I remember watching an episode in which a contestant rang in, apparently blanked for a second, and then blurted out “How about Robert Kennedy?” (or whomever). Fleming said “Question please”, then quickly added “I guess it was!”
Not necessarily the actual exchange, but the article did refer to a literary work whose title was also the name of the protagonist.
I thought I’d bump this thread to point out that this issue was lampshaded on Wednesday’s show. One of the categories was “Perfect responses for Jeopardy! because they are already questions”. The contestants were encouraged to provide their responses without a leading “What is…?”, but much to Alex’s chagrin, nobody seemed to understand, even after Alex gave both an explanation and an example:
I saw that episode, and frankly I understood why Allison couldn’t shake herself of the “What is…” habit, even though Alex told her she should. When you’re in game-playing mode, you’re very conscious that you have to say “What is X?” It’s hard to break yourself of that impulse. And to be honest, it’s probably not a good idea to try. You don’t want to get out of the habit of appending “What is…” before your response, lest you forget to do so later.
It’s one thing to ring in and give an educated, but incorrect, guess phrased in the form of a question. That’s bad, but it happens to everyone. It’s quite another thing to ring in, give the correct response, but forget to phrase it as a question. Then Alex says you’re wrong, one of your opponents rings in and says exactly what you just said, but puts “What is…” in front of it. Boom. You just lost $2000, and your opponent got $2000 based on your knowledge. That’s the thing that’s really cringe-worthy, and I can understand contestants doing everything possible to make sure it doesn’t happen.
The thing that I find amusing is that the “what is…” response has become so culturally ingrained that people do it on other quiz shows! IIRC, Jimmy Kimmel used to make contestants wear a dunce cap on “Win Ben Stein’s Money” if they responded like they were on Jeopardy. I also hear it frequently on NPR’s “Ask Me Another”.
Because it was just a novelty with no real fun value. And, all the contestants have it so ingrained to phrase the answer in the form of a question that they simply couldn’t omit the question. I’m not sure more than one answer was questioned per the category’s “omit the question phrasing” format, so what would be the point of trying again?
I prefer “stupid answers” if they’re going for funny.
I run the Geopardy! game at the national mapmakers conference every year. One year a quick-witted player gave the response “Toronto, eh?” Since he was Canadian, I accepted it.
