I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but the fact that someone had the information in a different thread (it did have a spoiler when I checked it) doesn’t justify further spoiling.
I accept that you meant no harm and I mean no offense. But there is no need for rationalizations.
It was a spoiler regardless of where else the information is available.
Not in the friggin’ title.
Sheesh.
I got the feeling he threw the game too.
He didn’t seem too enthused and didn’t seem too disappointed when he lost.
Why would he be disappointed? All things must come to an end, and he walked away 2 and a half million dollars richer…
Given that he has to pay tax on that money he’s smart to keep his day job. A million and a half bucks can go pretty quick if you’re not careful and you buy a big house and three cars. Pay off debt, let it gather interest for ten years, THEN retire.
Any idea why Jennings is on Letterman tonight instead of Leno? I guess he’s not obligated to NBC, but unless he’s going to do all the talk shows, it seems weird that he’d do Letterman first.
I don’t get the disgruntlement over the thread title. Pretty much any title with Jennings or Jeopardy in it is going to indicate something special happened today.
I find myself unreasonably annoyed by suggestions that Ken threw the game. For one thing, I find that dishonorable, and I think a devout Mormon like Ken would find it so too. Secondly, I saw the episode, and it looked to me like he wrote down an answer at the last minute. I can easily see him blanking on the question, especially after being shaken by those two DD misses (which were much more significant than Final Jeopardy this game).
Besides, I do believe they have a mechanism for someone to retire pre-game. I think he would’ve done that first, if only to give someone in the contestant pool an extra chance. He strikes me as the type who’d do that for that reason.
Jeopardy! is a syndicated show, so appears on different networks in different markets. I’m assuming that it’s on NBC in Iowa (hence your expectation of a Leno appearance), but here in the Bay Area it’s on ABC. So there’s not really a “natural” late night show that Ken would appear on. Perhaps CBS has a huge number of affiliates carrying Jeopardy!, or maybe Ken just likes Letterman.
Jennings has said before that he had no interest in breaking records for the sake of breaking records. Considering that and his waning interest in the game, its not inconceivable that he decided to bail before breaking Ian Lygo’s record. And I don’t think there’s anything dishonorable in that.
I agree with you 100%, Leaper. Ken is way too ethical to do that. And sure he was composed when the end came; he’s had 75 games to imagine what losing would feel like, and always knew going in that each game could be the last.
He just had a bad day. He started OK, led the whole gme (IIRC), but flubbed the Daily Doubles and FJ, and even Ken Jennings can’t do that and expect to win against decent opposition. He was a class act, however, and I’ll miss him.
If I were an ad executive for H & R Block, I would be planning a series of humorous commercials starring KJ…
H&R has already capitalized by offering Ken free tax preparation for life.
He better take them up on their offer! Utah has some pretty regressive taxes he’d want to avoid!
I don’t think he threw the game in a calculating sense, but I do think his heart wasn’t in it, and he no longer cared. Once you have a million and a half dollars (I figure government will take $950,000 or so), you might feel like going out and enjoying some of it.
Not quite so fast. According to this, Ken plans on writing a book. If that does well, maybe he can quit his day job.
If Ken is like some other devout Mormons I’ve known, he’s really, really big into fiscal responsibility and not buying stuff he can’t afford. In fact, I’ve known several devout Mormons who waited until they could buy a house for cash rather than even get a mortgage. I can easily see Ken being frighteningly responsible with his money.
But he definitely was a class act beginning to end. Even if the people who were defeated by him refer to themselves collectively as Roadkill, or so a friend of mine who’s a Roadkill victim informs me!
I’m sorry, but I also suspect KJ threw the game.
The way the question was phrased, even if you didn’t know the answer on first reading, it should have been easy enough for a skilled player like KJ to figure out.
First clue: white collar workers. What’s the most common white-collar worker? Accountant leaps to mind.
Second clue: seasonal work. What sort of seasonal work might an accountant do? Tax preparation.
Biggest tax preparation company? You might not get this one right (Jackson-Hewitt was the first thing that sprung to my mind), but H&R Block wasn’t that tough to come up with.
FedEx is way out there, IMO.
Honestly, I think he was just tired of playing. Maybe his opt-out timing was based on the “not wanting to break any records” thing mentioned above, who knows?
She played well but all the players really dropped the ball on that last category. She did make me rethink the strategy of betting for the second place player. Given that the leader can always bet enough to win if he gets the right answer, I believe the optimum strategy is to do like Nancy did and bet enough to pull $1 ahead of the leader. If he gets it right, he wins anyway. If he gets it wrong, he’ll lose. Plus you might force him to bet enough so that if you both get it wrong, you win.
I saw him on Letterman and he said that as soon as the category for Final Jeopardy was shown he thought, “uh oh” because it wasn’t an area he is knowledgable in. He said that when his opponent immediately started writing an answer he thought, “She knows this. I’m in trouble here.”
Thanks – I didn’t know that. 
What I meant was that Nancy didn’t have to bet a single dollar to win this game in the end, since Ken’s bet and wrong answer did him in.
For those that are getting on my case about spoiling the outcome, forget it. I just found out that my local CBS TV news announced it about the time I started the thread. If it’s on TV in a major market, it’s no secret. And if a Mod didn’t object to an SDMB spoiler a friggin’ day previous, I don’t feel in the wrong in the slightest. Besides, I covered up the deep details with spoilers. It’s the best I could do.
Back to Ken – in my mind, I went thru about the same gyrations as Jadis. Seasonal – sports? Nah, most stadium employees wouldn’t be called white collar. Christmas? Fedex, UPS, USPS, how about L.L.Bean or Land’s End? Again, probably not white collar, and I doubt if the increased employment season is as long as 4 months there – probably only 2 or 3.
Then tax time → H&R Block popped into my head and it seemed so right. White collar, and the season would begin pretty abruptly in January or December (especially if you include training time) and end abruptly not long after April 15. That sounds like a good 4-month period. I was surprised when Ken didn’t get it; he thinks so logically, but I still find it hard to believe he threw the game.