I wasn't checking this thread during Austin's regular season run, so apologies of this was already posted - but this video is hugely entertaining: Austin was on Cash Cab in 2005:

The blues --> bluejackets thing was disgraceful. I'm curious what happens in this situation if he says who are the bluejackets....ugh i mean blues.

Is that incorrect?

I gotta say these are probably the three most likeable TOC finalists they've had. I'll be happy with any of them taking it down.

They reaaaaally need to get someone British to check their "Colloquial in Britiain" questions. There's no way one of those should stump me, ever, yet I only get like 80% of them. Yesterday there was a question about beer & skittles that I didn't have a scooby wtf that expression was.

Honestly shocked that none of them got Montpelier.

Congrats to Buzzy, wp.

I thought Final was really tough, if it didn’t come to you right away it’s hard to cycle through capitals that quickly...

Yeah I probably just got lucky that it came to me quickly. It is a pet peeve of mine when people say a final is super easy just because they knew it, so I will avoid following that trend. Even if it wasn’t easy, seems unlikely that none of those three would get it.

I'm generally not good at Jeopardy but got final J question both yesterday and today and none of the ToC champions got either. Pretty happy.
:dance:

iPhone was an educated guess and got lucky with Vermont.

Fairly low scores for the finale.

The "capital since 1805" part of the clue should have helped eliminate a lot of possibilities.

Plus the name of the category was state capitals - so the contestants had way more time than the 30 seconds to think about possible answers. (Always think about possible answers before the question is revealed)! Contestants technically can take as much time as they need to determine their wagers (off camera), and I'm guessing they probably get additional leeway from producers to consider the wagering arithmetic that's relevant at the end of a 2 day final.

So yea that's a FJ clue that should have been an easy-get for any of ntnBO's "1% of contestants who actually understand how to play this game" (from a few posts ago). Gonna guess that {Roger, Arthur, AJ, etc} easily nailed this one.

/rant

Yeah, starting top right and working your way down would have been an easy way to get it. It came to my girlfriend right away before I could think of it. Overall, I thought the ToC was a bit of a letdown. None of the three played that well. Good on Buzzy going TDD. I guess Austin was in an interesting spot to risk $50k to go for $200k.

To me it was easy. Key part of the clue is 1805. Prior to the Louisiana Purchase the US was essentially confined to the East Coast and contiguous areas. Pretty much narrows down the States you cycle through.

Off topic from "idiotic wagers", but I laughed out loud at the start of the match at Trebek not being able to resist getting in a quick Trebek-ian cheap shot at the contestants:

"Now with these scores (all had less than 10K) at the end of the first day, I don't think Buzzy Austin and Alan are going to exceed the minimum guarantees of 50K/100K/250K."

I'm guessing the choreographed intro in both of the finals was Austin's idea , to me it came across as pretty lame and awkward but it showed at least the contestants were friendly and somewhat relaxed.

Honestly 1805 messed me up. While it should have been obvious all the NE states were founded well before that so I just started in the midwest even though they are all after 1805. Turns out Vermont didn't have an official capital till 1805 even though admitted in 1791.

Understanding how to play the game has absolutely nothing to do with trivia knowledge.

My point was clearly that, for that particular question, the intersection of those two areas (trivia + game savvy) should be larger than for the typical FJ clue

Agreed, and you encapsulated it well. From the clue it could be instantly narrowed down to probably less than 10 states. Parsing through those in 30 seconds is the interesting part.

Many Jeopardy clues have a hidden tease out metric in addition to just the basic trivia part. So many Jeopardy fans miss out on many of these.

I still think the 30s was tough. I did take the date into account, but my US history isn't that great, so for me it narrowed it down to East of Mississippi, but not one of original 13 colonies (not even sure if that's correct). Took me about a minute (paused it until I got it).

Overall thought this was a pretty weak field for a TOC.

I guess it helped to know that between the original 13 and the Louisiana Purchase, the next 4 States to enter the Union were Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio.

Ugh what a brutal way for that guy to lose tonight.

Especially since she seemed happy to just be there. I did like her FJ wager. The champ just disappeared in DJ.

That was nonsense. The guy obviously had the right answer.

It sucks for him, but they are required to follow the defined rules. You can argue that it was a bad clue due to how much writing it required, but they had to rule him incorrect.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying to my girlfriend.

They do bring people back in cases where they rule incorrectly. That's not the case here, but it does suck that they have a FJ clue that you have to get instantly to have enough time to write your answer, so maybe they'll cut him a break.