Jeopardy War and Peace

Congrats to Tristan; he's a great player and deserved the win. More than feeling bad about myself, I feel bad for Helen, who played a great game. She had trouble with the buzzer all day but kept at it and had a great DJ round, getting more responses than both Tristan and I. She gave me Martha Bath/ Patti Palmer vibes (from recent Jeopardy seasons) as she's been watching since the Art Fleming days. Helen had great stories about the Little League World Series in her home town of Williamsport, PA; America would have loved her with more appearances.Quick note about second chance: it's cliche to talk about SCC right after losing, but I endorse Helen for SCC. America + Canada would love more of her. She had the highest Coryat in this game (I wish I could donate some of my Coryat points to her to boost her resume) and I would argue her Coryat could have been higher if the 2 other players weren't also getting $11,000+ Coryats. She played a great game in what was pretty much what a SCC game would be: 3 good competitors who each could have been a champion on another day. I only started watching Jeopardy during the pandemic (with my wife) around the time Alex passed away. I've been hooked ever since and watched every single episode, Celebrity, Masters, Pop Culture, etc. But because I started late in life, I am slow to react, slow reading the clues, slow to think of the answers. Memorizing facts wasn't a problem and learning new facts about the world was fun while studying for Jeopardy (a silver lining is I know so much more about the world now), but being slow caught up with me in this game. I'm a "language expert" only in languages of Chinese, Japanese, and my wife is Korean. (If I got the Samsung clue wrong from Wednesday I would not have went home). I studied French in high school and learned a little Spanish just for Jeopardy; I probably should have done more Greek and Latin. March 10 (tape day of this episode) will forever be for me the best day and the worst day of my (Jeopardy) life. So many core memories of arriving at the parking lot, meeting 11 new people, stepping on the Alex Trebek stage for the first time, playing with the buzzer, interacting with the Jeopardy crew (they did hair, makeup, microphone, it felt like a mini-wedding!) And playing the game of course: it's the thrill of a lifetime. As I mentioned before, pretty much everyone on this tape day seemed so prepared and good at Jeopardy (I really think if Jamie didn't lose last week he would have lost to one of us this week), I probably looked the worst in rehearsal because I kept ringing in on everything (I heard Matt Amodio did this in rehearsals, except he probably knew all the answers) even if I didn't know it. Buzzer wise I thought I was OK, but in rehearsal I also played Helen and Tristan and just got walloped by Tristan. Tristan is really good at crosswords, something I never practiced and should have. I loved playing the game, just like I actually like taking tests because it's much more fun than studying. I didn't feel very nervous, I felt loose (maybe too loose on the first Harry Potter clue) What you didn't see on TV was me dancing in an awkward Carlton-like way when we were just getting ready, you saw little of that in my DD "shimmy" (inspired by one of the first champs I saw Morgan Briles). I actually had a second part to my anecdote (on days I really messed up, I put on an Alex Trebek episode where he says, "SORRY") but Ken started walking away, indicating our chat was over. Even after the episode I had an emotional high and adrenaline kept coursing through my body the rest of the day. On the downside, I lost. Losing on Jeopardy is not unexpected, it happens to everyone eventually, but the way Jeopardy is formatted now in the Michael Davies era, every game you play is an audition to get to play more Jeopardy. You win, you play the next game. You win 2 or 3 games, you continue playing, but YOU ALSO KNOW YOU WILL BE BACK FOR THE POSTSEASON. If you lose first game but do noticeably well, you can be on Second Chance. That was my goal, to get some sort of postseason, to have this experience again. It was never about the money for me, just the chance to play more Jeopardy. In this I failed, in the most tantalizingly close way possible. I was scheduled to fly out that night, so I went to the In N Out right outside the LAX and watched planes land and take off, just thinking about life, very sad but safer than Kendall Roy walking the beach at the end of Succession. Highly recommend it for future contestants. Watching planes, not necessarily In N Out. It is hard to win your first game of Jeopardy (Maybe it gets easier later? I couldn't say). You are playing a champ who has experience playing and proven him/herself to be good, knows how the buzzer works with Ken (rehearsal is only with Jimmy, not with Ken so timing is different), PLUS a 3rd contestant who could be just as good. When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. Er, when you play Jeopardy, you're at extreme jeopardy of losing your first game, only 24% of contestants win that first game. Especially hard this season: When Jamie Ding's run ended, in Season 42 (not including postseason) there was a 50% chance you got on stage while Harrison Whittaker, Paolo Pasco, or Jamie Ding was the champion. I know those guys are better than me, not to mention some underrated champs like Tom Devlin (honestly he's as good as Scott Riccardi in my book), Dargan Ware, Allegra Kuney, etc. When you're watching at home, losing is an abstract concept that happens to other people, I imagined myself as the winner/main character (way too overconfident) and Jeopardy does a great job to highlight the winner's path only. "The champion SURVIVES a scare!" right after champion barely won, etc. All of the time I spent in the contestant pool and intermittently in the last 5 years was to avoid losing that first game, but it happened anyway. Top 6 regrets from the game: 6.) The terrible FJ wager, although that didn't cost me the game (see other post) 5.) Not getting in on the buzzer for 4 straight easy clues in the Jeopardy round right before Tristan got the DD and went up by $3,000. He just had a great run on the buzzer even though I rang in every time. My first round in general was just pretty bad. I always thought I'd have more than $3400 going into DJ. 4.) A couple triple stumpers I should have gotten with a little more study. The problem with this board, it wasn't easy but it wasn't abnormally hard, it was that there were clues that weren't Jeopardy Pavlovs, known associated facts that I could react automatically to and get. For example, last week there was a "Luncheon on the Grass" art clue for $1000 I would have eaten up, but the Hopper clue today for $1000 made me think New York and Keith Haring, Basquiat.....if anything about "Nighthawks" or 4 people in a diner came up, I would have been in. Similarly, Lake Tanganyika had so many facts about it, I didn't automatically associate it with the second deepest...I was in between Lake Victoria and Tanganyika and didn't want to risk $1000 on a guess. 3.) The damn Harry Potter clue to start the game. I read Harry Potter as a teen, watched some of the movies, but trailed off after Goblet of Fire, IMO the best book.....I of course know who Umbrage is, but the clue kind of confused me to the point I forgot the category was Literary Baddies, I was thinking Bellatrix, then professor made me think Trelawney, and at the end of 5 seconds I went with my policy of say SOMETHING and said McGonegal knowing it was probably wrong. An audible gasp in the audience by the way, at my miss, and I probably angered many in the Wizarding World. Fun fact: Jamie Ding's first clue ever was also a $800 miss! He did significantly better afterwards though. 2.) Hijinks. I don't even remember buzzing in for this clue, which is why I look surprised to be making a guess, but I must have, and I remember being desperate because I was in 3rd place with one DD left and needing to get it (strategically it was the right play). I didn't know the response before buzzing in, thought of the first word with plural that fit the clue that I thought of......and didn't think of other options. Tristan rang in and got it, then hit the DD. (Huge $6000 swing) At that point I saw the scores and spiraled, thinking it was over. The sensitivity of $1600 and $2000 clues....some say whoever wins those clues usually wins the game). 1.) Myalgia. This term didn't come up in my notes on its own, but I do have fibromyalgia in my notes and just couldn't pull it. Medical is not my category, and the $2000 clue gave me pause to risk too much even though I knew all 4 of the others in the category. (if this was "G"eography or something similar I would have bet a lot more). The last mention of just "myalgia" in jarchive shows it came up in a February 2020 game.....just before I started watching Jeopardy. Of course I see it everywhere I go now (Baader-Meinhoff). I thought this was a hard DD after the tape day, but I'm not so sure now. It was just hard for me. The clue itself was a shorter clue giving slightly less time to think, and I knew Jeopardy gives you 6 seconds right after Ken finishes reading until he prompts you, "Robert?" and then 3, maybe 4 seconds after that you time out (I asked about this on tape day and the contestant crew said it's Ken's discretion when he times you out). I feel like I almost got there (I remembered myo- is the prefix for muscles meaning mice in Greece, but guess just never thought of -algia as pain, probably the easier half of the Greek root. Easy to see it in hindsight, but in the moment I was going through myelitis, myopia, and "card" was just stuck in my brain like myocardial infarction, I just couldn't shake it and said "Mycardia." I will think about these 10 seconds the rest of my life because if I get that DD, I'm at $14,400 and all things being equal (big assumption of course) I win the game outright. This was a very competitive game, just lower scores because of the (IMO hard) DD's in DJ. Tristan easily could have gotten his DD and put the game away, and I thought briny was a pretty good answer, very similar to the hijinks-shenanigans thing for me, briny is a viable option, there was just a better option. I think of the Mighty Ducks scene where Gordon Bombay tells Charlie, "6 inches to the right, and it would have been a goal," and Charlie responds, "6 inches to the left, and you would have missed completely." As close as it was for me, I could have lost much worse, even a run-away, or Helen could have won. All 3 of us could have won if one thing went differently, and the Coryat scores reflect that. I could also have never made it on Jeopardy, so I'm grateful I got picked for something only a portion of lucky folks get to do. I love Jeopardy and will probably love it as long as it's on; I look forward to watching all the great contestants and champs coming up from home and playing along, with new appreciation for every contestant that goes up there, win or lose. Thanks for reading Jeopardy War and Peace, by Robert Yan. I would "like totally" discuss buzzer strategies, tips for future contestants, etc. and can answer any questions. "Please be nice to me!"