The Jeopardy thread [was James Holzhauer][contains spoilers]

Man, I didn’t realize how unnatural that newsreader inflection was until Curic started her run.

A minor complaint: You are allowed to misspell Final Jeopardy, but leave off an ‘s’ and you are wrong. How would ‘Wer of The Warlds’ be any different than ‘War of the World’?

Don’t mind me. I’m just pickin nits. And that host sucks. They need to find a permanent good one, or people are gonna lose interest. I already have. Only watched because … I don’t know.

The title of the book is The War of the Worlds, the two in question being Earth and Mars. “World” is just plain wrong. I would think that omitting the first article would make it wrong too.

As for “wer” and “warld,” they’re not English words anymore than “emanciptation” is. They too are just plain wrong.

There should be a rule that such egregious misspellings are not allowed, regardless of how close the pronunciations might be, and especially where well-known proper names and titles are concerned.

And no, I didn’t care for tonight’s host either. She was far too perky and chatty for my tastes.

Your cromulant argument embiggins us all. :wink:

Unless there is another well-known work just called “War of the Worlds” they don’t penalize for leaving off the first “The” in titles. The only time I have seen that happen is with “Invisible Man” and “The Invisible Man,” since they are both very famous books.

I still have nightmares of Couric’s (thankfully short) term as the anchor of CBS Evening News. On her very first episode, she decided to sit up on the desk and show us a picture of Tom Cruise’s new baby. :roll_eyes:

Huh. I thought she was fine. And I’m also starting to think it doesn’t matter too much who the host is, the show feels about the same regardless.

She’s definitely different, but is she bad? I think it’s too soon to tell. Ken Jennings’ first day was rough, but he improved.

She seems more personable with the meet-and-greet. By far, that was Trebek’s worst part. He came across cold normally, aloof on bad days, and downright nasty on his worst.

I’d still vote for Mike Richards as permanent host. But not Michael Richards.

Right, I’d like them to just settle on someone so I can start getting used to them.

I’d never noticed Katie Couric’s nasal voice. It comes and goes as she reads questions. The nasal goes away when she’s just talking.

I have an aversion to nasal voices. It’s like chalk on a blackboard (to me).

I’ll give Katie a chance. She’s only guesting for a few weeks.I wouldn’t want to hear that voice day after day for several years.

I’d totally be OK with Mike Richards assuming the role, although I think he only did it because no one was available. I doubt he wants the job full-time.

On one clue, the guy’s name ended in “ski” and nobody ventured a guess :roll_eyes:

I think it should be at least what it would have been if it hadn’t been a DD.

What was the category?

Constellation Derivations. “The constellation Scutum, “The Shield” in English, was originally called “Sobieski’s Shield”, after John Sobieski, king of this country”.

Right, I remember that!

Here’s something that really grinds my gears. A player is significantly behind, late in the game, they get a daily double, and the bet substantially… but not everything. Like, I have 5000, leader has 10000, I get the daily double and bet… 3000. That just seems nearly ludicrously flat out wrong to me. The chances of you winning from 2000 are nearly the same as the chances of you winning from 0, but the difference between 8000 and 10000 in this situation is huge.

Am I missing something?

Not if you finish double jeopardy with zero. And take a game where FJ stumps everyone. We’ve all seen the games where the winner advances with less money than second place gets.

As stated, the chances of winning from 0 in FJ are zero, as you cannot even participate.
The chances of winning from 2000 are not great, but if both of the other players are at 10000 (or close) they have to bet against each other and you could sneak in if you are the only one to know the FJ.

not great >> zero
Brian

Sure, but that’s SO MUCH less common than the games where whoever is ahead going into FJ wins. And bear in mind that there’s a third player involved. If there’s someone with 10000 and someone with 9000, whoever’s in a distant third is almost almost zero to win, regardless of whether they’re even playing in FJ. It requires both of them missing AND very specific wagering patterns. Meanwhile, the difference there between being at 8000 vs 10000 is HUGE. My point is, it’s SUPER rare for there to be a meaningful difference between 0 and tiny, but it’s VERY common for there to be a huge difference between ahead-going-into-FJ vs slightly-behind-going-into-FJ. Play to win, don’t play to have the very very slight chance of being a spoiler.