The Final Wager – Thu 29 Jan 2015

previous week					same week					following week
19	20	21	22	23	26	27	28	29	30	16	17	18	19	20

It’s exactly one year after Carolyn Collins accepted Arthur Chu’s tie offer. Will something notable happen tonight?

It doesn’t appear so – but we did see some weirdness toward the end of Double Jeopardy!.

My fellow Brooklynite Karen, whom I met briefly at last week’s Transit Trivia, has this one sewn up, thanks in large part to a big Antepenultimate Wager, which I’ll discuss below.

For some reason, Marissa guessed on the final remaining clue, costing herself 2,000 and eliminating herself from contention.

Marissa Edelman	Amy Schmidt	Karen Ash
9,700	800	21,800

Karen can put up to $2,399 at risk on her knowledge of:

RANKS AND TITLES

Let’s blaze through this to get to the good stuff.

What actually happened

The Antepenultimate Wager

With just that $2,000 clue remaining, Karen found the Daily Double under the $1,600 clue.

Marissa	Amy	Karen
11,700	800	16,800

Karen wagered 5,000 and nailed the clue. Had she missed, she still would have been in the lead, but as it stood, she didn’t yet have the game locked up.

She did, however, leave herself two possibilities to put things away: (1) answer the last clue correctly or (2) let Marissa miss the last clue. That makes it a very good wager, in my view.

The bare minimum to give herself this possibility was 4,601.

A less-confident alternative

Let’s say Karen isn’t feeling great about the category, but wants to give herself a crush – a situation where she’ll only lose if she misses Final and Marissa gets it right.

To fall into that range, Marissa will need to have less than 2/3 of Karen’s total. In other words, Karen will need to have at least 1 1/2 times Marisa’s score – that’s the reciprocal of 2/3.

(As we saw on Tuesday, having exactly 1 1/2 times your opponent’s score puts you in a tricky situation.)

For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume the 2,000 clue will go unplayed or unanswered. What is 1 1/2 times 11,700? It’s not easy to calculate straight away.

Allow me to suggest an alternative approach: doing the math in pieces.

11,700 = 12,000 – 300
(3/2)*(11,700) = (3/2)*(12,000 – 300)

Now, the math is much easier.

(3/2)*(12,000) – (3/2)*(300)
18,000 – 450
17,550

So Karen needs to get to 17,551 – a wager of 751.

Congrats to Karen – I loved her reaction after winning!

The Final Jeopardy! clue

RANKS AND TITLES

IN 1858 RULE OF INDIA WENT FROM THE EAST INDIA CO. TO THE BRITISH CROWN AND LORD CANNING BECAME THE FIRST HOLDER OF THIS TITLE

[spoiler]What is Viceroy?[/spoiler]

 

previous week					same week					following week
19	20	21	22	23	26	27	28	29	30	16	17	18	19	20