https://youtu.be/18H4IiE7Qsg
Sweet! I knew the Robert DeNiro answer! I think that was the only one.
You were great on the show Paul!
After watching the whole thing, I knew quite a few of those. You were so calm and composed when telling your anecdote, I would've crumpled.
I THOUGHT the answer was Robert DeNiro, but I had no idea he was a "Jr." so I didn't buzz in. On the other hand, when I responded to the Ariana Grande clue with "scrunchie," I had forgotten about the "double double letters" category.
I was a little worried about how the story would sound. When I was telling it, I was starting to realize that it was a longer story than I had time for, and a couple times, it felt like Mayim was rushing me to wrap it up, so I was trying to edit it down in my head.
The video is set to private
Hinky. If you search on YT for "jeopardy may 2 2023," you should have no trouble finding it.
Can't believe you held out on a story where you hassled the 'Hoff!!!!
Yeah...it was kinda funny when we knocked on his trailer and he answered. We really weren't expecting him to be there. He asked if we wanted to stay and watch the game and was super nice. We declined the invitation (just because that seemed weird), but he came out and took - and signed - Polaroid pictures with my friend and me. Unfortunately, I don't have mine anymore.
I've always been curious about how much the clicker comes into play. I have to think being fast on the draw is a huge part of the game play. Did you play around with how to hold the device and the fastest way to press the button (use various hand positions, etc) and how much do you get to practice with it?
Aside from getting categories that are in your wheelhouse, the buzzer is the single most critical thing. I think I posted earlier that, before the real games were played, we played rehearsal games. They brought us up in random groups of 3, and we got time to feel the buzzer and decide how we wanted to hold it. Each group would play half the board and then switch out, and everyone got to play 2 rehearsal games. What you don't see on TV is that there are vertical lights on each side of the clue board. Those lights are the cue to buzz in. The lights are activated manually at approximately the time the host finishes reading the clue. However, because it's done manually, it's not precise. The contestant coordinator suggested that, while the clue was being read, we look at the last word of the clue and wait for that, along with the lights. If you buzz in early, you're frozen out for 1/4 second, so they tell you to spam the buzzer. I got on a good roll starting with the 3rd clue after the first commercial, and that allowed me to take the lead after boffing a $1,000 clue and a $2,000 Daily Double. However, I got way off my game after missing the first clue in the second round.
About Final Jeopardy, other than what I posted last night, I've seen a bunch of stuff on social media. A lot of people pointed out that there are multiple triple vaccines: MMR and DTaP - and that pertussis/whooping cough is not the only respiratory illness among them. Therefore, some folks thought it was a bit of a guess (unless you happened to know the year). I have a friend whose wife is a doctor, and he told me that she thought the answer was diphtheria. Obviously, though, TB is wrong because it's not part of a triple vaccine.
The mythology clue is even more interesting. Admittedly, it was a bit of a guess on my part, but I'm of the opinion that guessing is ok with the $200/$400 clues because the obvious answer is almost always the correct answer. When I was ruled incorrect and Amanda got Cupid, I didn't think much of it since I didn't realize they were the same god. The second Daily Double was the 13th clue revealed, so it took them a while to figure it out.
As soon as Kevin called the clue and they revealed the second Daily Double, they stopped the show and asked us to turn away from the board. They explained that, sometimes (rarely, I assume), there will be a malfunction, and if the contestants aren't looking at the board, it would be no harm/no foul. We didn't know what was going on. After about a minute, they said that the "standards and practices" guy needed to talk to us. This was the same guy who had spoken to us all in the staging area about making sure everything was on the up and up. At one point, Kevin said something like, "ok Paul, what'd you do?" The S&P guy then came up to us and told us that they had decided my answer would be deemed correct, so I'd get back the $400 I had lost and an additional $400 for the correct response. That moved me from $4,200 to $5,000, and Kevin based his wager on the corrected scores.
It didn't really occur to me at the time, but once I got the answer wrong and Amanda got it right, the next clue revealed was the first Daily Double of the round (the Midas clue that I absolutely did know). Had I been properly given credit, I might have called that next clue and gotten the Daily Double. Instead, after that happened, I didn't buzz in again until the 16th clue of the round, so I think not getting credit messed me up more than I had thought.
I've seen stuff on social media to the effect that the writers really flubbed this one. They should have anticipated either Cupid or Eros as a correct response - especially since it wasn't clear whether they were talking about Greek or Roman mythology (apparently, Psyche is the same in both Greek and Roman). I've even seen a few folks suggest I should be brought back if they do another "second chance" tournament. No expectations on my part, but that'd be cool!
In the first round, I buzzed in 15 times (almost as many as Kevin and Amanda combined) and got 12 of 15. In the second round, however, Kevin got in 14 times, which was more than Amanda and I combined. I was correct on 100% of my second round responses (after the correction), but Kevin was an impressive 20 for 21 for the whole game
What else...I absolutely should NOT have buzzed in on the "parataxis" clue. I had no idea about it, and I don't think I understood it at the time. I'm also taking some good-natured ribbing for my "koala" response to the Tasmanian devil clue. I saw marsupial and recalled having heard something about them being fierce if provoked, but I completely overlooked the "carnivorous" part of the clue.
After Kevin buzzed in ahead of me on the actual koala clue, he apologized for doing so. As we were walking out of the studio, someone from the audience complimented me on my knowledge of Australian wildlife. The interesting part of that is that, when my son was a baby, my wife dubbed him "the little dingo" (a nickname that has partially stuck with him his whole life). When we were getting close to my daughter being born, we decided that she needed an Australian animal nickname, so we pre-dubbed her "the wombat." When they showed the video clue with the wombat, I thought to myself, "well...you damn well better get this one!" Same when the dingo clue came up a bit later.
Oh...another interesting thing...Johnny Gilbert was not present in the studio. Former Clue Crew member (and now producer) Sarah Witcomb-Fass did all of Johnny's stuff, and he overdubbed it at a later date. I can't remember if I mentioned it previously, but Jimmy McGuire (also a former Clue Crew member and now the show's stage manager) was the host for the rehearsal games.
When I was there the first day, Ken Jennings came out and talked to all of the contestants for a few minutes (nothing terribly profound). During the tapings, he also took questions from the audience. Mayim Bialik didn't do any of that.
Gotta go work now. Thanks again for everyone's well wishes!