A contestant correctly wrote “tree-hugger” to the final question (and would have won) but scratched it out and wrote “ Carl Sagan” instead claiming to have misread the question. Umm, WTF?
“This slang term for an environmentalist is literally true of groups that used passive resistance vs. deforestation, as in India in 1973”
How does CS make any sense?
Yeah, I saw that too. Misread seems like a massive understatement.
Thrown off by thinking about the BILLION people living in India.
How could he over think that into Carl Sagan? He must be bat-shit.
The only way this makes any sense to me is if he was deliberately losing. And maybe taking the opportunity to give a shout-out to Carl Sagan, of whom he was a fan?
Maybe he mis-read it to think it referred to a specific individual, rather than a term for environmentalists in general. If you’re trying to think of a scientist with a global, forward-thinking, environmental perspective, and would have been active in the mid-'70s, Sagan is in the ballpark.
Turns out there was a typo on the screen the contestants were looking at. It was supposed to say “This slang term…” but instead it said “His slang term…” so he thought they were looking for a person.
Because of the error, they’re going to let him come back.
Huh! That’s odd. If there was a typo, I certainly didn’t notice it. Nor did it stop me from immediately coming up with the correct response.
They may have corrected the text for the broadcast.
Wouldn’t you consider that unethical and dishonest? The public won’t see what the contestants saw.
Not really. During the commercial breaks, Alex frequently re-records clues if he stumbled over the wording, and then they just dub that in over the vocal of his original reading. The public never hears Alex’s original clue-reading, but there’s nothing unethical about that. It just makes the show run more smoothly.
When I was a contestant, one of the things they told us in the pre-show briefing was, “If there’s a discrepancy between the text of the clue as it appears on the monitor, and the way that Alex reads it, go with what Alex says. There may have been a last minute change in the wording.” In such cases, they re-edit the onscreen text when the show is finally broadcast. That’s what I imagine happened here.
In those cases, like this one, where such errors actually affect the outcome of the game, they usually attempt to remedy this by inviting the contestant back.
And indeed they did… tonight!
Where he got the right answer in Final Jeopardy Pygmalion but still lost.
I wonder what would have happened if someone had written “My Fair Lady” instead of “Pygmalion.” I assume the quote was very specific to the latter in order to avoid ambiguity, but it still would have been an easy mistake to make.
The category was “20th Century Plays,” and the answer was:
“From its preface: ‘It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate…him’”
So, while “My Fair Lady” is technically a musical, not a play, I do wonder, too.
Source: Final Jeopardy: 20th Century Plays (9-25-18) – Fikkle Fame
I believe Alex said the typo was just on that one contestant’s screen.
A Broadway musical isn’t a play? :dubious:
Anyway, the line from “Why Can’t the English?” is
An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him.
The moment he talks, he makes some other Englishman despise him!
Thanks for that link, BTW.
FWIW, I thought all three DJ questions tonight were easy. I was surprised Vincent got two of them wrong.
Musicals are, admittedly, a subset of plays.
OTOH, the Tony Awards are specifically delineated as for “Plays”, or for “Musicals.”
“My Fair Lady” is a play, but the quote in the clue is from the preface to “Pygmalion”, so “My Fair Lady” would have been wrong.