Who cares about that? Let's all laugh at the three ignorant contestants trying their best to throw away a victory by hilarious FJ wagering.

Master: yeah, I had no idea, so would have had to go with the correct answer as the only obvious dumb guess!

Ntn: shocking that the third place guy didn’t end up winning there!

This is true. I didn't know it either in that context but I know he's been credited saying the only sure things in life are death and taxes so it made sense.

Just so I'm on the right track, when you're third place in a situation like that, you can only win if the other two contestants both miss, so you want to wager as little as possible, right? Or like just enough to take the lead if one of them decides to get sneaky and bet virtually 0?

Pretty much. He should have bet roughly 2K. Puts him ahead of the current first place in the event of a 0 wager and wins in the case of win/double loss and wins in the case of triple stumper as 1 and 2 both need to bet fairly high.

Yes, when the scores are that close, 3rd has to realize (ldo) that you only win when the other two miss, so why not wager in such a way that you also win when you also miss?

Jeopardy! is full of contestants who are book smart, but game stupid.

In an eerie coincidence, Designer Kate Spade was a clue question in the Jeopardy! round. She would be found dead of a suicide the next day.

Game is a runaway, 2nd has 3600 with 3rd at 2600. How much does 2nd have to hate money to wager 3598 on FJ?

Not sure if that was the bigger WTF moment today or that the new champion apparently thinks Mark Twain is a fictional character.

Or that he lived into the 1970s! Yeah. A whole lot of wtf happening there. My best guess on FJ was Groucho Marx, but I didn't know if that was far enough to be considered a fictional character, or more of a persona.


BTW did anyone else think that was a bad clue where the answer was holy cow? I mean, if you're going to use a baseball announcer as the clue to get holy cow, shouldn't it be Harry Carey?

Both used the phrase. Depends on whether you're Chicago or NY centric with baseball. I grew up in NJ watching NY teams, so this one was obvious to me.

http://popculture.com/celebrity/2018...ore-her-death/

Fair enough, but I would think that nationally speaking, Carey would be more well known, even if only for the Will Ferrell sketches.

(I fully acknowledge by bias btw, I'm from Chicago)

I thought it was Inspector Clouseau, didn’t know Peter Sellers made it til 1980..

Until yesterday, I had no idea Kate Spade grew up in the neighborhood we currently live in and that lots of people around here knew her personally and met her as recently as last winter. When I read the first Facebook post about it I thought it was just that odd way some people react when a celebrity they liked passes away.

Andy, finishing at like -$2,600 was one of the worst contestants I can remember.
7 correct, 7 incorrect along with just simply saying “Purple”

Interesting scenario in tonight's FJ. I am curious what the optimal bet is if you're 2nd or 1st.

3rd: 7600
2nd: 11,600
1st: 17,400.

If you're 2nd, you have to assume 1st will wager $5,801 to cover your double up. So if she misses she is below you by a buck. So I get standing pat. But if 3rd gets it right, he'll overtake both of you. So another option is to bet 3,601 to cover his double up. Standing pat means you win 25% of the time (50% you lose when 1st gets it right. When she gets it wrong, you only win the 50% of the time 3rd also misses). If you bet 3,601 you also win only 25% of the time (50% when you get it right, and 50% of that when 1st misses. 3rd is irrelevant). But you win more money when you win. I suppose this means if you're 2nd you'd might as well bet virtually all of it since you only have 25% equity to win, but if you do get it right then you win more.

So if I'm 1st here, I have to know that 2nd's options are

A. Bet it all
B. Stand pat
C. Wager 3,601 to cover 3rd's double up.

If I'm first here, would it maybe be best here to stand pat? That way I could only lose if 2nd chooses A. AND gets it right. Otherwise, I'm opening myself to probably losing if I wager $5,801 and get it wrong, because I'd now lose to a 2nd standing pat, a 2nd getting it right, or.a 3rd getting it right.

I found it interesting today as well. But I think most of contestants base their bets more on how much they like the category then on game theory.

I wouldn't have wanted to bet much on the category tonight, but then it turned out I got it right, and it must have been easy for them as well as they all did also.

I'd heard the term sackbutt before but couldn't place it. I guessed bagpipe.

I didn't know that word either. Just got it because of a "distance" between notes.

I’ve never hated a human being as much as I hated David. It was like Jeopardy found a West World host and told him to do an insanely happy Patrick Bateman in a musical impression

It's unusual for the leader to miss FJ while 3rd answers correctly. Of all four RW scenarios, RR and WW happens most frequently. Same with all 8 scenarios when allowing for all three players. That should change your thinking a bit.

Also, you never use second level thinking when making a wager because almost none of these contestants wager optimally. So if you're the leader wager the cover amount and be done with it.

In this scenario second has two viable wagers, all or nothing.

Using a 50/50 approach is certainly the wrong way to do it. To properly apply game theory, you have to try to make at least somewhat educated guesses on each contestants chances to get FJ right.

I am not sure how much contestants know about their opposition except for their occupation and what they learned during the show, but if the FJ category is ‘new media’, you have to assume the 21 year old college student has a better shot than the 79 year old retired accountant.

Besides that, I am very sure the numbers show that contestants who have >$20k going into FJ have a significantly higher success rate there than contestants who take <$5k into FJ.

Somewhat surprised by Friday's FJ triple stumper. No Catholics, I guess.

My roommate and I both went to 12 years of catholic school, but still neither of us got it. Oops!

I am no catholic but calculated that 39 days after Easter is a Thursday in late May or June and remembered which federal holiday that day was in Germany.

Loved this Freudian slip yesterday.

Category Get “out”

Clue Adjective used to describe a deeply religious person

Wrong answer zealot
Correct answer devout

Too bad the “out” makes zealot incorrect. Seems appropriate. I move for changing the spelling to zellout (as in sellout).