A personal interlude before we begin in
earnest.
I moved into my own apartment in May of
2021 when Jeopardy was in a period of transition. Since then every week I go to
visit my parents. One of the rituals that has always taken place has been
before dinner my father and I watch the show together.
My father is an intelligent man and knows
about my love for the show. One of the questions he’s asked every so often has
been one I’ve never been able to give a good answer to: “Have the questions on Jeopardy
gone tougher over the years?”
The last two weeks, for reasons I will not
go into here, my mother has joined us to watch Jeopardy. She asked a
variation on that same question: “Have the clues on Jeopardy always been
that hard?”
The reason I’ve never been able to give a
direct answer has been based on the theory of relativity that I’m pretty sure
most long term viewers have asked themselves. If you’ve watched the show for a
long time, you become familiar with how the writers frame their clues, you can
figure out variations of the same response and you can pick up certain elements
of the rhythm of the show. If you know that you might be able to figure out
from the ways the clues are being framed certain answers that someone who is an
outsider would have more difficulty with. And once you’ve been in those waters
long enough (in my case nearly thirty-three years) at home you can do as well
as some of the better Jeopardy champions in recent years. (Maybe not the
Masters but you know what I mean.)
But none of this is an answer to the
question my parents asked: have the clues always been that hard? I actually
framed this idea in an article I wrote last December about how difficult they
were this season as opposed to others. And as Season 41 enters in final
stretch, I can say one thing with confidence: particularly when it comes to
Final Jeopardy, the writers have been finding new ways to give both the
contestants and those of us at home mental meltdowns.
Over the past two weeks, Final Jeopardy has
stumped all three contestants six times in ten games. At home I haven’t been
doing much better; I’ve gotten two out of those ten Final Jeopardys correct and
on the second – last night- it was a blind guess that turned out to be correct.
(It stumped all three players and I don’t blame them. I think the best way to
demonstrate this would be to give the two Final Jeopardy clues the night I
watched the show with my parents: both of which completely stumped me.
Last Thursday the Final Jeopardy category
was MOVIE DIRECTORS. This is one that is usually a strength for me. “As of 2025
this director has made just 4 feature films; 3 were Oscar nominated for Best
Picture.” The two players who wrote down responses wrote down: Damien Chazelle
and Chloe Zhao. I’m honestly not sure I could think of one. I certainly had no
idea it was Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, Little Women, Barbie.)
This past Thursday (after struggling quite
a bit in the Double Jeopardy round) the Final Jeopardy category was WOMEN OF
HISTORY: “Regarding the idea of ‘women first’ she queried, “Women demand equal
rights on land – why not on sea?” My guess was Phyllis Schlafly, which one contestant
wrote down and it was incorrect. The other responses were Amelia Earhart and
Eleanor Roosevelt. I misread the question:
Ken: This was someone thinking about women
and children first because she had been involved in that situation. The
Unsinkable Molly Brown, from the Titanic, before she went into women’s
suffrage.”
I had heard of Molly Brown; it would never
have occurred to me to think she would use this phrase. I haven’t been doing
well in Final Jeopardy. I must give credit to all of the players who’ve been
doing so well on Jeopardy ever since we resumed regular play in March. I have
been struggling a lot in Final Jeopardy. What does it say that I was
doing better in the Jeopardy Invitational Tournament against the best of the
best and can’t seem to do so well with the current group? Perhaps its means
that this cluster of champions, while not quite able to rank the level of the
super-champions viewers have become used to during the last few years, may be quite
formidable when the time for the next Tournament of Champions begins.
Said cluster, I should say seems to have
come to an end with Ben Ganger’s defeat last Tuesday. No one has been able to
win more than two games since. All of them may end up in the Champions Wild
Card Tournament down the road but for now, let’s deal with the ones who have
struggled forth ever since March 17TH:
Alex DeFrank: 4 wins, $102,400
Josh Weikert: 6 wins, 100,202
Bryce Wargin: 2 wins, $70,199
Andrew Hayes: 6 wins, $137,804
Liam Starnes: 6 wins, $123,584
Ben Ganger: 5 wins, $105,915
Prior to the Jeopardy postseason two other
players have qualified:
Ashley Chan: 4 wins, $67,400
Laura Faddah: 8 wins, $92,599
We also have two strong possibilities for
three game winners
Mike Dawson with $57,000 (his run came between
Bryce’s and Andrew’s)
Bill McKinney with $46,800 (Ashley Chan
defeated him)
And though it’s not yet clear if he will be
available to compete in the Tournament of Champions W. Kamau Bell has qualified
having won the 2025 Celebrity Jeopardy. Honestly I believe if he participates
Bell will be quite formidable. Considering that he has been involved both as a
political pundit as much as he has been a comedian, Bell already has much of
the knowledge that would make him more likely to be a problem to Jeopardy
champions then I presumed Ike Barinholtz might be going into the 2024 Tournament
of Champions.
While this field may not, at least so far,
have any of the super-champions the typical viewer is used too, it is already a
far more balanced field that last year. Four players have won six or more games
at this point, more than the entire field of the 2025 Tournament of
Champions roster. At this point we have five players who had won $100,000 or
more; last year’s field had only seven. And many of them are doing better with
the material they have faced in Season 41 the many of the ones who qualified
for the 2025 Tournament of Champions in the first few months of it: no one was
able to win more than five games during the last three months of eligibility and
only Greg Jolin and Mark Fitzpatrick were able to crack the $100,000 threshold.
The questions may very well be getting tougher but so far many of the champions
during the last few months have been more than able to deal with it.
I’ll be back next week to deal with the
quarterfinals in the Masters.
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