Who watches Jeopardy?

[David Lockmiller]

(05-23-2019 10:03 AM)Anita Wrote:  Thomas thanks for the YouTube link. Send it to my grandson. He tried out for college Jeopardy and wasn't selected. He related to Weird Al's experience.

I made the following post on May 7 (#15 on this thread):

James Holzhauer had been taking the online tryout for “Jeopardy!” for about six years before he was finally asked to audition in person.

Determined to reach the “Jeopardy!” stage, Holzhauer solicited tips in an online poker forum: What could he do to get a spot on the show?

“The number one piece of advice he got was just, ‘Smile, look like you’re having a good time,’” said Ben Yu, a longtime friend and fellow professional gambler.

James Holzhauer story - NYTimes May 7, 2019



Anita, I would suggest that you send a copy of that post to your grandson. It shows the difficulty of anyone, even someone so amazingly and obviously talented as James Holzhauer, has of appearing on Jeopardy. That story should boost your grandson's spirits and self esteem.

[Thomas Kearney]

(05-23-2019 10:03 AM)Anita Wrote:  Thomas thanks for the YouTube link. Send it to my grandson. He tried out for college Jeopardy and wasn't selected. He related to Weird Al's experience.

I took the adult online test last month and I'm still waiting for the call to face off against James. If I don't get the call, I'm working on becoming famous so I can take part in Celebrity Jeopardy without having to go through the audition process.

[Anita]

(05-23-2019 11:10 AM)Thomas Kearney Wrote:  

(05-23-2019 10:03 AM)Anita Wrote:  Thomas thanks for the YouTube link. Send it to my grandson. He tried out for college Jeopardy and wasn't selected. He related to Weird Al's experience.

I took the adult online test last month and I'm still waiting for the call to face off against James. If I don't get the call, I'm working on becoming famous so I can take part in Celebrity Jeopardy without having to go through the audition process.

Good luck! I like your fallback strategy. Don't forget to wave at the camera as you say hi to forum members.

[David Lockmiller]

Final Jeopardy! Round question for Wednesday, May 22, 2019 with Lincoln-related answer:

In 1832, by a narrow margin, this state's legislature rejected considering abolition; a split was completed in 1863.

Answer: What is Virginia?



On December 23, 1862, President Lincoln addressed to his Cabinet members the following letter.

Gentlemen of the Cabinet: A bill for an act entitled 'An Act for the admission of the State of West-Virginia into the Union, and for other purposes,' has passed the House of Representatives, and the Senate, and has been duly presented to me for my action.

I respectfully ask of each [of] you, an opinion in writing, on the following questions, to wit:

1st. Is the said Act constitutional?
2d. Is the said Act expedient?

Your Obt. Servt.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

To this request Secretaries Seward, Chase and Stanton replied affirmatively on both queries. Welles, Blair, and Bates responded negatively to both. Thus the closest advisers to the President were evenly divided. Meantime, Governor Pierpont telegraphed Lincoln on the [December]18, [1862] that a presidential veto would ". . . be death to our cause"; again, two days later, Pierpont telegraphed that ". . . great feeling exists . . . in reference to your delay in signing the bill for the new state." Another ten days passed. Then, on the last day of 1862, Lincoln signed the bill for West Virginia statehood. That he had reflected long and hard on the constitutional question is indicated by portions of a memorandum issued at the time of his signing the bill (West Virginia History, “Lincoln and West Virginia Statehood,” by J. Duane Squires, Volume 24, Number 4 (July 1963)):

The consent of the Legislature of Virginia is constitutionally necessary to the bill for the admission of West-Virginia becoming a law. A body claiming to be such Legislature has given its consent. . . . I do not think the plural form of the words 'Legislatures' and 'States' in the phrase of the constitution 'without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned &c' has any reference to the new State concerned. That plural form sprang from the contemplation of two or more old States contributing to form a new one. The idea that the new state was in danger of being admitted without its own consent, was not provided against, because it was not thought of, as I conceive. It is said, the devil takes care of his own. Much more should a good spirit - the spirit of the Constitution and the Union - take care of its own. I think it can not do less, and live.

But is the admission into the Union, of West-Virginia, expedient? This, in my general view, is more a question for Congress, than for the Executive. Still I do not evade it. More than on anything else, it depends on whether the admission or rejection of the new state would under all the circumstances tend the more strongly to the restoration of the national authority throughout the Union. That which helps most in this direction is the most expedient at this time. Doubtless those in remaining Virginia would return to the Union, so to speak, less reluctantly without the division of the old state than with it; but I think we could not save as much in this quarter by rejecting the new state, as we should lose by it in West-Virginia. We can scarcely dispense with the aid of West-Virginia in this struggle; much less can we afford to have her against us, in congress and in the field. Her brave and good men regard her admission into the Union as a matter of life and death. They have been true to the Union under very severe trials. We have so acted as to justify their hopes; and we can not fully retain their confidence, and co-operation, if we seem to break faith with them. In fact, they could not do so much for us, if they would.
Again, the admission of the new state, turns that much slave soil to free; and thus, is a certain, and irrevocable encroachment upon the cause of the rebellion.

The division of a State is dreaded as a precedent. But a measure made expedient by a war, is no precedent for times of peace. It is said that the admission of West-Virginia, is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the constitution, and secession in favor of the constitution.

I believe the admission of West-Virginia into the Union is expedient.

[David Lockmiller]

I believe that it was on the Friday, May 31 episode of Jeopardy that there was a question on meteor showers in the 1830's. I was hoping that the answer somehow might relate to Lincoln, but it did not. It turns out that Walt Whitman published a story on Lincoln and the 1833 Leonid meteor shower.

Lincoln's Meteor Shower post by Karen Stevens, astronomer

https://www.slooh.com/community/post/3661

Did Abraham Lincoln witness the dramatic 1833 Leonid meteor shower? Yes, says Donald Olson of Southwest Texas State University. Deep on a November night in 1833, people all over North America were awoken by a spectacular meteor shower. Many witnesses interpreted it as an omen of catastrophe, but not – according to poet Walt Whitman -Abraham Lincoln. Whitman lived in Washington D.C. during the Civil War and was a contemporary of Lincoln, publishing an anecdote about Lincoln’s interpretation of the meteor shower in 1882 in Specimen Days & Collect. Although Whitman’s account doesn’t name a year for the meteor shower, Donald Olson ferreted out clues based on the period when he boarded with a Presbyterian deacon in New Salem, Illinois. In Whitman’s account, Lincoln employed the meteor shower as a metaphor for state of the country, illustrating his faith in the Union and revealing his sage leadership during dark and chaotic times:


“As is well known, story-telling was often with President Lincoln a weapon which he employ’d with great skill. Very often he could not give a point-blank reply or comment — and these indirections, (sometimes funny, but not always so,) were probably the best responses possible. In the gloomiest period of the war, he had a call from a large delegation of bank presidents. In the talk after business was settled, one of the big Dons asked Mr. Lincoln if his confidence in the permanency of the Union was not beginning to be shaken — whereupon the homely President told a little story. “When I was a young man in Illinois,” said he, “I boarded for a time with a Deacon of the Presbyterian church. One night I was roused from my sleep by a rap at the door, & I heard the Deacon’s voice exclaiming ‘Arise, Abraham, the day of judgment has come!’ I sprang from my bed & rushed to the window, and saw the stars falling in great showers! But looking back of them in the heavens I saw all the grand old constellations with which I was so well acquainted, fixed and true in their places. Gentlemen, the world did not come to an end then, nor will the Union now.”

[Steve]

(05-23-2019 10:27 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Final Jeopardy! Round question for Wednesday, May 22, 2019 with Lincoln-related answer:

In 1832, by a narrow margin, this state's legislature rejected considering abolition; a split was completed in 1863.

Answer: What is Virginia?

Here are two articles that might be of interest for anybody interested about what happened in Virginia's legislature in 1832:

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Vir...1-1832_The

and

https://kbjournal.org/kuypers_1832_debate_on_slavery

[David Lockmiller]

(06-03-2019 12:19 AM)Steve Wrote:  

(05-23-2019 10:27 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Final Jeopardy! Round question for Wednesday, May 22, 2019 with Lincoln-related answer:

In 1832, by a narrow margin, this state's legislature rejected considering abolition; a split was completed in 1863.

Answer: What is Virginia?

Here are two articles that might be of interest for anybody interested about what happened in Virginia's legislature in 1832:

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Vir...1-1832_The

and

https://kbjournal.org/kuypers_1832_debate_on_slavery

I read some of the text of the second hyperlink. Then, I skipped to the end and read the following paragraph. It really makes one appreciate how well President Lincoln was able to express himself.

A clash occurred throughout the debate between the scenes embraced between the activists and the traditionalists. Both groups seemed to embrace a notion of action based on human free will that could mitigate the dangers of these scenes; unfortunately, the natures of the scenes were so different as to prevent a consubstantial moment where joint action would act for both groups in a society-wide redemptive moment. The best hope for this redemption was in the area of moral concerns, where both groups shared in the substance of an immoral present scene mired in the degrading spectacle of slavery. It is in this area perhaps, where worldviews coalesced, that both activists and traditionalists were able to jointly operate from a realist grammar. In discussing what act to take to remove the present scene, true persuasion operated and the delegates were able to ensconce their arguments in notions of human free will necessary for true moral action. The activists began the debate heavily outnumbered, and in the end, fell only eight votes shy of achieving their goals. Ultimately their idea of a moral act of free will to step out of the moral quagmire of slavery was overshadowed by a compelling vision of the moral quagmire of slavery replaced by, in the eyes of the traditionalists, a deeper moral quagmire of a future Virginia desolate and ruined by emancipation.

[Thomas Kearney]

(05-23-2019 10:27 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Final Jeopardy! Round question for Wednesday, May 22, 2019 with Lincoln-related answer:

In 1832, by a narrow margin, this state's legislature rejected considering abolition; a split was completed in 1863.

Answer: What is Virginia?



On December 23, 1862, President Lincoln addressed to his Cabinet members the following letter.

Gentlemen of the Cabinet: A bill for an act entitled 'An Act for the admission of the State of West-Virginia into the Union, and for other purposes,' has passed the House of Representatives, and the Senate, and has been duly presented to me for my action.

I respectfully ask of each [of] you, an opinion in writing, on the following questions, to wit:

1st. Is the said Act constitutional?
2d. Is the said Act expedient?

Your Obt. Servt.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

To this request Secretaries Seward, Chase and Stanton replied affirmatively on both queries. Welles, Blair, and Bates responded negatively to both. Thus the closest advisers to the President were evenly divided. Meantime, Governor Pierpont telegraphed Lincoln on the [December]18, [1862] that a presidential veto would ". . . be death to our cause"; again, two days later, Pierpont telegraphed that ". . . great feeling exists . . . in reference to your delay in signing the bill for the new state." Another ten days passed. Then, on the last day of 1862, Lincoln signed the bill for West Virginia statehood. That he had reflected long and hard on the constitutional question is indicated by portions of a memorandum issued at the time of his signing the bill (West Virginia History, “Lincoln and West Virginia Statehood,” by J. Duane Squires, Volume 24, Number 4 (July 1963)):

The consent of the Legislature of Virginia is constitutionally necessary to the bill for the admission of West-Virginia becoming a law. A body claiming to be such Legislature has given its consent. . . . I do not think the plural form of the words 'Legislatures' and 'States' in the phrase of the constitution 'without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned &c' has any reference to the new State concerned. That plural form sprang from the contemplation of two or more old States contributing to form a new one. The idea that the new state was in danger of being admitted without its own consent, was not provided against, because it was not thought of, as I conceive. It is said, the devil takes care of his own. Much more should a good spirit - the spirit of the Constitution and the Union - take care of its own. I think it can not do less, and live.

But is the admission into the Union, of West-Virginia, expedient? This, in my general view, is more a question for Congress, than for the Executive. Still I do not evade it. More than on anything else, it depends on whether the admission or rejection of the new state would under all the circumstances tend the more strongly to the restoration of the national authority throughout the Union. That which helps most in this direction is the most expedient at this time. Doubtless those in remaining Virginia would return to the Union, so to speak, less reluctantly without the division of the old state than with it; but I think we could not save as much in this quarter by rejecting the new state, as we should lose by it in West-Virginia. We can scarcely dispense with the aid of West-Virginia in this struggle; much less can we afford to have her against us, in congress and in the field. Her brave and good men regard her admission into the Union as a matter of life and death. They have been true to the Union under very severe trials. We have so acted as to justify their hopes; and we can not fully retain their confidence, and co-operation, if we seem to break faith with them. In fact, they could not do so much for us, if they would.
Again, the admission of the new state, turns that much slave soil to free; and thus, is a certain, and irrevocable encroachment upon the cause of the rebellion.

The division of a State is dreaded as a precedent. But a measure made expedient by a war, is no precedent for times of peace. It is said that the admission of West-Virginia, is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the constitution, and secession in favor of the constitution.

I believe the admission of West-Virginia into the Union is expedient.

That was the same meteor shower that occurred when Edwin Booth was born. James is $60,000 away from passing Ken in money earnings. There's a very good chance it will happen tonight.

[RJNorton]

(06-03-2019 03:07 PM)Thomas Kearney Wrote:  There's a very good chance it will happen tonight.

Best for you not to bet on this, Thomas.

[L Verge]

My sympathies to David and to Thomas as defeat finally comes for the remarkable James Holzhauer.

[David Lockmiller]

(06-03-2019 03:48 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(06-03-2019 03:07 PM)Thomas Kearney Wrote:  There's a very good chance it will happen tonight.

Best for you not to bet on this, Thomas.

The New York Times posted this story early today.

James Holzhauer’s ‘Jeopardy!’ Streak Ends . . .



At the end of the show tonight (which I watched), I posted the following comment to the story:

I hope that everyone noticed how the deck was stacked against James Holzhauer by the show's selection of TWO top opponents at the same time.

James Holzhauer's advantage in all of the previous contests was to get on a roll of correct answers and then build up an insurmountable lead that could not be overcome by an "all in" bet by his nearest opponent if only he correctly answered the Final Jeopardy question.

The disruption in this strategy was two very high-quality opponents who split winning answers with him. In the entire show, there was only one incorrect answer: sales tax instead of cigarette tax. And, in the Final Jeopardy Round, all three contestants correctly answered the question and it was the eventual winner that had an insurmountable lead.

At this point, James Holzhauer recognized this to be true situation and made only a small bet, knowing that the young woman in the lead would bet enough to win if both James Holzhauer and she submitted the correct answer to the Final Jeopardy question.

James Holzhauer had to hope that the Final Jeopardy question was so difficult that all three would answer incorrectly. And, I believe, being the professional gambler that he is, he bet only enough so that if the third place finisher bet everything he had and answered the question correctly and the leader at the time and he were wrong in the answer to the Final Jeopardy question, then he (James Holzhauer) would be the winner.

This was the only possible winning scenario.

[Steve]

(06-03-2019 10:35 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  I hope that everyone noticed how the deck was stacked against James Holzhauer by the show's selection of TWO top opponents at the same time.

James Holzhauer's advantage in all of the previous contests was to get on a roll of correct answers and then build up an insurmountable lead that could not be overcome by an "all in" bet by his nearest opponent if only he correctly answered the Final Jeopardy question.

The disruption in this strategy was two very high-quality opponents who split winning answers with him. In the entire show, there was only one incorrect answer: sales tax instead of cigarette tax. And, in the Final Jeopardy Round, all three contestants correctly answered the question and it was the eventual winner that had an insurmountable lead.

Oh come on... really?

The show tapes an entire week's episodes in one day. The two contestants who face off against the returning champion are, supposedly, chosen at random.

https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/20...ecord-game

If what your positing is really true and the producers salted the pool of 10 new contestants with all "top contestants" this week to beat Holzhauer, than there should be an extremely few number of missed questions this entire week.

I do agree with you about Holzhauer's Final Jeopardy strategy to get the extra $1000 by making sure he came in 2nd and not 3rd, though.

[Gene C]

I also noticed that there were very few missed answers.
Felt I was watching a scene from the movie Ground Hog Day.

[David Lockmiller]

(06-04-2019 01:30 AM)Steve Wrote:  

(06-03-2019 10:35 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  I hope that everyone noticed how the deck was stacked against James Holzhauer by the show's selection of TWO top opponents at the same time.

James Holzhauer's advantage in all of the previous contests was to get on a roll of correct answers and then build up an insurmountable lead that could not be overcome by an "all in" bet by his nearest opponent if only he correctly answered the Final Jeopardy question.

The disruption in this strategy was two very high-quality opponents who split winning answers with him. In the entire show, there was only one incorrect answer: sales tax instead of cigarette tax. And, in the Final Jeopardy Round, all three contestants correctly answered the question and it was the eventual winner that had an insurmountable lead.

Oh come on... really?

The show tapes an entire week's episodes in one day. The two contestants who face off against the returning champion are, supposedly, chosen at random.

https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/20...ecord-game

If what your positing is really true and the producers salted the pool of 10 new contestants with all "top contestants" this week to beat Holzhauer, than there should be an extremely few number of missed questions this entire week.

I do agree with you about Holzhauer's Final Jeopardy strategy to get the extra $1000 by making sure he came in 2nd and not 3rd, though.

The following is the one reply to my post:


ERT
New York7h ago
You’re correct: if both he and his opponent were wrong and the third contestant was right (and the third contestant bet his entire $11,000 winnings), Mr. Holzhauer would have had $22,001, one dollar more than the third contestant.

Reply 5 Recommend

See also:

John Jolley
San Diego, California June 3
New York Times Pick

I was in the live audience for this episode several months ago - this was the first episode filmed after Alex Trebek revealed his cancer diagnosis (which I suspect may have thrown James off his game). So glad I no longer have to keep this secret to myself!

Reply 202 Recommend

[RJNorton]

Also, there was a video of James' loss leaked to the Internet before the actual show aired last night. The leaked video kept getting taken down but would then briefly show up on another site before being taken down again.