Jeopardy! recap for Mon., Mar. 5 – Please welcome today’s contestants:

– Jesse , an editor from Charleston, SC, who was a little too quick to shake hands with Al Gore;
– Shari, a software engineer from Aurora, CO, who can relax and read a book on her tandem bike; and
– Matt, an international development researcher from Brooklyn, NY, who spent a summer in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Matt is a one-day champ with winnings of $14,950.

Very well-matched contest in which Matt overcame a miss on DD2 to regain the lead, then expanded it on DD3 to show the way into FJ with $15,000 vs. $9,800 for Shari and $9,600 for Jesse.

DD1 – SCIENCE – If the half-life of Trebekium-13 is 10 years, in 20 years your 100 gram sample will be down to this many grams (Jesse won $1,400 on a true DD.)

DD2 (video) – AFRICAN CITIES – Seen here are the red walls of this city that gave the country of Morocco its name (Matt lost $4,000)

DD3 – TRANSPORTATION – In the 1940s this airline advertised, “None faster – none finer – to and through the South” (Matt won $3,000 – this was the last clue of DJ and Matt had $12,000 vs. $9,800 and $9,600 for his opponents. He had two preferred choices here: bet less than $2,200 and ensure the lead into FJ, or bet more than $7,600 and put the game away. Matt’s wager of $3,000 would have put him in last place with a miss without really helping his position enough if correct.)

FJ – OSCAR HISTORY – In the 1940s he became the first person to receive nominations as actor, director & writer for the same film

In what might be the easiest Oscar FJ in the show’s history, Matt and Jesse were correct, with Matt adding $4,601 to win with $19,601 and a two-day total of $34,551.

Triple Stumper of the day: Matt was several decades off in guessing that a 1921 newspaper headline was about “slaves” instead of “Sox”.

Ditloid dilemmas: The players didn’t feel confident enough to solve 206 B I T H B (bones in the human body) or the classic one dealing with a Solzhenitsyn novel, 1 D I T L O I D (Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich).

Judging the judges: A clue quoted a 1912 headline as “New Liner _____ On First Journey”. They accepted Jesse’s response of “The Titanic” even though clue wanted a one-word response, and normally quotations have to be exact.

Correct Qs:

DD1 – What is 25 grams?
DD2 – What is Marrakesh?
DD3 – What is Delta?
FJ – Who was Orson Welles?