Having Alex call Pam, Tom and I "impressive" at the end of the game was a great compliment. And it makes watching a tournament like this so much fun: you know that all the contestants are excellent and so they aren't going to leave too many dollars on the board, even with difficult material.
I think Pam and I felt like we were going to be primarily battling each other on the buzzer in this game, but Tom jumped out to a really quick start and was consistently getting in first. He mowed through those "on the map" clues, got the DD on the Apollo 11 astronauts, and found himself with a big lead at the end of the first round. (What is it with video clues where they show a map and point out one country in GIANT LETTERS and your brain just wants to make an association with those GIANT LETTERS? Clearly the star was located at Caracas, but COLOMBIA was all I could focus on.)
Fortunately I know some TV and was able to build a little bit of cash at the end of the first round. "Major Dad" was a favorite show of mine as a kid and I recalled that Gerald McRaney had also been in "Simon & Simon." I hadn't seen this prior to the show, but my sensai Bill Schantz alerted me to it and it's amazing:
Just like in my preliminary round game, I was keeping in mind that there's a lot more money available on the board in the DJ round, and hoping for some good categories there. And there it comes: "WEATHER." (Flags and music are pretty good for me too.) I actually wasn't all that thrilled to see the weather category pop up: I can only imagine the consequences if I crashed and burned on some clues there! Plus, I'm very prone to overthinking in categories that I have deep knowledge in (see also: CALCULUS in my ToC finals.)
I didn't want to start right in on the weather category, so we went through some music and flags first (hopefully Big Audio Dynamite makes up for missing Devo last time). Pam got the big DD in French Poets (translation: French novelists and philosophers who wrote a poem or two), which is a strong category for her, and she jumped into the lead. Pam held a narrow lead through most of the round despite missing a really tough DD, and then we eventually came to WEATHER. The clues ended up being pretty straightforward, including one on radiosondes/weather balloons! (I spend a fair bit of my time working with data from radiosondes, and was involved in a field experiment last summer where we launched a lot of them.) Fortunately I got in first on the buzzer on that one, or I wouldn't have ever lived it down. I grabbed the lead very briefly but Pam quickly took it back, and went into the final with a $2000 lead.
With three 5-digit scores and the wild-card spots in play, the wagering strategy here wasn't that clear. (Even Keith seemed puzzled as to what to do.) Pam and Tom clearly had the idea that the wild-card cutoff might be in the $20K range, but I didn't anticipate that it would be that high. My $1300 wager was essentially a balance between staying above $14K if I missed (which I thought was a good target) and getting at least a little bit of a boost if I got it. (I was tempted to bet $2001 to go ahead of Pam if she wagered zero and I was correct, but I decided it wasn't worth risking going below $14K.)
It's probably some kind of cliche to say that I listen to quite a bit of NPR, and they've been running all kinds of stories about the rise in the North Dakota economy due to oil and gas exploration and the problems associated with the boom. So that came to mind very quickly...I also considered other smallish oil/gas states like Wyoming but figured North Dakota was the most likely to fit the clue. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was the only one to get it, and even more pleasantly surprised that I won the game as result. I figured that with our scores, if Pam or I didn't win we'd have a good shot at a wild card, but it was certainly nice to be able to relax and watch the rest of the quarterfinal games knowing that I'd advanced. I sat next to Pam for most of the rest of the day, and she was rather nervous about whether her score would hold up. Will it? You'll have to watch the rest of the week to see!
Current wild-card standings:
Leszek $15,000
Pam $14,798
Tom N $2,400
Robin $0 [yes, people have advanced with $0 in the past! It's very unusual though.]
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| Our little man's special quarterfinals onesie (even though I didn't actually find any DDs) |
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| Panoramic of my students launching a weather balloon in May 2013 |
The third quarterfinal game is another powerhouse matchup. There's Brad Rutter, the all-time winningest player in the show's history. And Mark Lowenthal, who wrote the book "Secrets of the Jeopardy! Champions" (along with Chuck Forrest, who will appear Friday). And my 2000s group pal Dan Pawson, 2009 ToC winner, who nicely summarizes the thoughts of the entire field going into today's match:
Today's the day: up against Mark Lowenthal, who literally wrote the book on Jeopardy, and @bradrutter. Can I keep up? pic.twitter.com/MBteKY7LY7
— Dan Pawson (@Daniel_Pawson) May 7, 2014
Enjoy!
