Birdscribe on Jeopardy - SPOILERS, SPOILERS

Birdscribe - 'tis an honor to be on the board with you. I was so excited, although explaining to my parents, who I'm visiting, how I "know" you was interesting: yeah, I'm on this sports journalists' board, even though I'm not a journalist, and this guy, who I've not only never met, but whose name I didn't know 'til right now is on it, too. His name, as far as I knew, is Birdscribe.". Cue confused look from my mom.

Anyway, great showing. I'm glad that smug guy didn't win, but sorry you are not returning champion for another day.

 

Nice run, Bird.

 

Can't argue with the Sports Illustrated category ... noticed you got most of those ...

 

Plus, you looked too respectable for someone posting on here ...

 

True enough...

 

Did anyone else find the tone of the returning champ on Bird's first day weird? Doc and I have been imitating her all night.

 

Wow. Very cool, Birdscribe. As someone who got to the tryout stage, passed the test and then never got "The Call," I'm deeply jealous. Still, you must have had the time of your life up there...Congrats on getting a victory and a little money out of it, too. And you can call yourself a Jeopardy champion for the rest of your life. That ain't bad...

 

Anyone got this on YouTube yet?

 

Thank you for this, DH. Well said and a sentiment that sums things up rather nicely... I did have the time of my life; it was one of the most fun hours I've spent in my 42 years on this planet -- an absolute blast that lasted way, waaaaay too short.

Well, I'm back from Vegas (and didn't liberate any of OTD's $$$, unfortunately) and had a chance to catch up with all of this and I'm thankful for the kind words, sentiments and time spent watching me try to hang with some pretty damn smart folks.

A few more peeks behind the curtain on Episode II...

The buzzer rhythm is an elusive mistress. I started off Game 2 picking up right where I left off. On the third question on "Around the USA," we were greeted by a video clue of Lambeau Field. The tape broke right in the middle of Sarah reading it and the kid -- Chris Possinger (a mechanical engineering grad from MIT) -- nailed the answer before I could get in.

We stopped tape for 15 minutes while they worked on it. When we went back, my timing was gone. That's why you see the frustration start to build, as first, the kid, then the woman, are beating me in on almost every clue.

Then, we go to Double Jeopardy and Rita has a Cliff Clavinesque smorgasboard of categories to her liking. "Andorra" "The 1600s" and "Darwin" pretty much keep me from getting completely boatraced -- especially finding the Daily Double in "The 1600s"

One thing I vowed to myself was not to play stupid. If I didn't know a $1600 or $2000 clue, I wasn't going to ring in, miss it and have someone else nail it, thus creating a $3600 or $4000 swing. I had been a good boy and not deviated from this plan... until I looked up on the board, noticed I was $7000 out of second place and saw one clue left on "Andorra."

I rang in on the question about the language of all official Andorran documents being from this northwestern Spanish province, guessed "Basque," had Alex go "Nooo," then watched Rita pick up my mess and say "Catalan."

Final Jeopardy was the story I've told more than any other this week. The category was "Hollywood Scandals" -- something I have a pretty good working knowledge on. During the commercial and after I penned in my bet, I started going through my mental Rolodex of scandals: Thelma Todd, Fatty Arbuckle, William Desmond Taylor, Lana Turner, Ince, etc.

Naturally, it was none of those. But unlike the previous day, I didn't get nervous. I thought and thought and about halfway through, it dawned on me that Jean Harlow died in 1937. I had no idea she was married to Paul Bunn, but there was no other member of Hollywood royalty who died in that year.

No biggie. I knew as sure as I was standing there that the kid would miss it. There's no way a 23-year-old MIT geek knows old-school Hollywood scandals. None. Sure enough, he guessed Bette Davis (which Alex tweaked him about during the end-of-show chat as they roll the credits).

That brought us to Rita and I knew I was in trouble. To prevent someone from forgetting to phrase Final Jeopardy in the form of a question, they tell you after you make your wager to write in either "Who" or "What." Before I could write the word "is," she had her answer written and was mentally counting her money.

So after all that scrambling, I got boatraced and would have been in a temporary state of depression had I not been sent to get my stuff from the green room, had three forms put in front of me to sign, had all the remaining contestants compliment me on my play, had two contestant coordinators congratulate me, ask me if I wanted to come back and sit in the audience and other questions that escaped me at the moment and had two of my best friends tell me as we're walking to lunch that "You're a Jeopardy Champion and nearly 11 grand richer than you were an hour ago..."

Couldn't argue with any of that logic, especially after going back in the J archive and noting that even screwing the pooch on the Jerusalem/Ben Gurion Airport question that everyone was tweaking me about, I got 39 questions right and only 5 wrong in the two shows, including going 22-2 in the first game. I had a chance to win the game I lost and never panicked.

And I got some serious SportsJournalists.com love.

Can't argue with any of it

 

You still should have told them about that lengthy period when the buzzer wasn't working, though. Maybe they could have fixed it.

 

Maybe they'll invite you back because of your malfunctioning buzzer. It's happened before