There’s never been a buzzer for regular questions. There are lights on the podium that count down the time remaining. If necessary, the judges rule whether the response was given in time. (The visible countdown lights were present at least by 1991, when I played.)
There’s a buzzer for DJ clues, operated manually by the host, not on a timer.
I wondered if I was imagining the existence of a buzzer. I guess I was giving the guest host the benefit of the doubt; he was clumsy enough handling the timing that it felt like something was missing.
This feature of Burton’s performance isn’t working for me, either. To me it comes across as not only inauthentic, but rather insulting, too.
I’m torn between that and Amodio’s “WHAT’S” responses as to which is more irritating.
I’d also love to see a statistical analysis of Amodio’s success in getting Daily Doubles, as compared with other strong players. In today’s show there was nothing unusual to note, but on many of his other winning days he’s found them more quickly than I’ve ever seen anyone find them (even accounting for his dominance of the board).
No, I’m not theorizing that there’s been cheating, but I DO suspect his results are statistically unlikely in comparison with the performance of other strong players.
But he came from the same pool…
He’s hunting for DDs, as many other players do. As shown here, the distribution of DDs is not random. They are much more likely to appear on the fourth row, and almost never show up in the first row. He obviously knows this, but so do most other savvy players these days.
I think this plus his dominance of the board explains it sufficiently. But if you’d like to do the analysis, all the data are at j-archive.com.
He’s also a statistical anomaly. In any large pool of candidates, there has to be an outlier (i.e., one who’s better than the others).
Jeez, tell us how you really feel.
I’ve gotten used to his “what’s” phrasing, actually. My feeling is that Matt is on the spectrum in some way. Possibly while preparing for the show, phrasing as a question was giving him trouble, so he developed the habit of simply saying “what’s” before answering, allowing him to focus on his response and not the phrasing of it. Pretty clever, actually.
If the producers don’t like it (though I doubt they have a problem in this case) they should drop the whole “answer in the form of a question” gimmick altogether.
Just curious, did you watch Holzhauer’s run? IIRC, he found the Daily Doubles way more often than his opponents. That will happen when one player correctly answers the majority of questions.
There’s no conspiracy here. If you answer many more questions than other contestants and start with the higher values clues, you’ll likely find most of the Daily Doubles. It’s as simple as that. James would also usually find most of them as well, that’s how he got such high totals.
In 1215, this document was signed at Runnymeade by King John.
Is it the Magna Carta?
Wonder how that would fly…
I think that sort of phrasing has worked in the past.
Sometimes contestants get by with just inflecting their response: “Magna Carta?” No interrogative, no verb. I’m always surprised when that happens.
I always find it interesting when the correct response is already a question, but the contestants still preface their response with “what is…”
“This 1966 film earned Academy Awards for Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis.”
So if a contestant answers this with
“Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
You think that would be accepted as a correct answer?
Yes I think it would.
I’ve seen that sort of thing happen, although I can’t remember any specific examples. Alex would sometimes mention that it was phrased as a question.
Hypothetical scenario:
CLUE: “This band recorded the rock opera Tommy”
CONTESTANT: “Who?”
Acceptable?
Very funny! Building on your concept (if it’s the first round)
HOST: Who what?
CONTESTANT: Who’s Who?
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this happen, but I will certainly be watching for it in the future!
I didn’t say Amodio is finding the Daily Doubles “way more often.” I said it appeared to me that he is finding them more quickly.
Obviously a dominating player is going to have more opportunities to find DDs and thus will find them more often. But that’s an entirely separate thing from how quickly that player hits on a DD —especially as compared with other dominating players (which is what I was discussing).