Jeopardy! recap for Thur., Dec. 7 – In a game that was remarkably similar to Kyle’s previous three victories, he had the lead going into FJ but not quite enough for a runaway at $14,400 vs. $9,600 for Katia and $4,000 for Joe.

Note that Katia had exactly two-thirds of Kyle score and more than double of Joe’s total. This means that with a $0 wager, Katia almost certainly would do no worse than a tiebreaker if Kyle missed and would win outright if Kyle bet enough to cover more than double of her score and missed.

DD1 (video) – THE 19TH CENTURY – In 1859, he became the only U.S. state governor who had previously been a foreign head of state (Kyle won $2,000)

DD2 – DESERTS – The Southern portion of the Namib Desert merges with this much larger desert to the Northeast (Katia won $1,400)

DD3 – THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY Joseph Lash won for a dual biography of this presidential couple (Joe won $1,000)

FJ – TIME MAGAZINE’S PERSON OF THE YEAR – Since “Man of the Year” became “Person of the Year” in 1999, only 1 individual woman has won: this European for 2015

Everyone was correct on FJ and instead of betting $0, Katia went for nearly everything, while Kyle went for the clear victory with a bet of $5,801 to win with $20,201 and a four-day total of $63,802. Given that in a similar situation on the previous show Kyle chose to go for a $1 margin of victory, have to wonder if he made a math error here when he bet $1,000 extra.

Triple Stumper of the day: I prefer not to believe that three Jeopardy! contestants never heard of “Bartleby, the Scrivener”.

This day in Trebekistan: BAWCK! Alex does a “pretty good” impression of a parrot if he says so himself. Also, he mistakenly said Kyle won by $2 instead of $1,002 while complimenting the four-day champ for finally getting “the hang of this game”.

Correct Qs:
DD1 – Who was Sam Houston?
DD2 – What is the Kalahari?
DD3 – Who were Franklin and Eleanore Roosevelt?
FJ – Who is Merkel?