Thursday, November 19, 2015 – ToC2015 Finals #1

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Two games for $250,000. How will Matt Jackson, Alex Jacob, and Kerry Greene position themselves for tomorrow’s finale?

After maybe six or seven clues in Double Jeopardy!, Alex had over $30,000 courtesy of two True Daily Doubles. That would have spelled total defeat to two lesser players, but Matt and Kerry fought back.

Matt Jackson	Alex Jacob	Kerry Greene
14,600	29,600	8,200

Now, remember: the first game of a two-day total-point affair is a warm-up of sorts. Tonight’s Final Jeopardy! is basically a Daily Double that all three of them get to play.

You guys like my really old videos, right?

In any event, tonight’s Final Jeopardy! category is:

FRENCH NOVEL TITLE HEROES

My hunch here was that Matt would go for broke, seeing as this is an academic category and thus plays to his quiz-bowl strengths. I figured Alex would try to pad his lead and Kerry would also go big.

What actually happened

Matt		Alex		Kerry
14,600		29,600		8,200
11,600		0		4,800
3,000		29,600		3,400

And, as has always been the case, I was wrong about Alex. He stepped back and let his opponents hurt themselves.

Alex’s response brought back a lot of memories of when I played online poker in college and some guy was about to knock you out of a tournament and right before the river card came you saw the message of death:

gg

[good game]

The good news for Kerry and Matt is that Alex’s lead is effectively halved heading into tomorrow’s game, because Alex can’t wager any of today’s total. Still, though, that’s a huge mountain to overcome against someone who eats buzzers for breakfast.

We shall see… “let’s do it again tomorrow.”

The Final Jeopardy! clue

FRENCH NOVEL TITLE HEROES

HE “LOOKED AS IF HE HAD BEEN SHUT UP FOR A LONG TIME IN A TOMB AND…BEEN UNABLE TO RECOVER THE…COMPLEXION OF THE LIVING”

[spoiler]Who is the Count of Monte Cristo?[/spoiler]

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