Jeopardy! recap for Tue., Mar. 27 – Let’s meet today’s contestants:

– Dimitri, a management and production assistant from Los Angeles, CA, who let a cutout of Princess Leia down gently at his wedding;
– Katy, a communications manager from New York, NY, who has great handwriting thanks to the nuns; and
– Johnny, an instructional technologist from Colchester, VT, whose dad gets kicked off Xbox at Jeopardy! time. Johnny is a one-day champ with winnings of $14,000.

Exciting game in which Katy was a close third with three clues remaining, hit back-to-back DDs and got the last $2,000 clue to take the lead into FJ with $16,300 vs. $12,600 for Dimitri and $11,800 for Johnny,

DD1 – LITERARY CROSSWORD CLUES “M” – Corruption exposers, like Ida Tarbell & Upton Sinclair (Dimitri won $1,000 on a true DD)

DD2 – A LITTLE BIRDIE TOLD ME – In Rossini’s opera “La Gazza Ladra”, a maid is accused of stealing silver, but the real thief turns out to be this title bird (Katy won $1,500)

DD3 – THE HISTORY BOOKSHELF – A shelf essential is Thucydides’ classic on this war (Katy won $2,000)

FJ – 1960s NO. 1 SONGS – Complaints about heavy workloads inspired the titles of 2 songs by this group, no. 1 hits 7 months apart

Third-place Johnny passed up the chance to win on a possible Triple Stumper by betting it all and missing. Leader Katy must have hated the category, as she bet only $3,000, not enough to cover either opponent. Katy was correct but was passed by Dimitri, who got FJ and wagered $11,001 to win with $23,601.

Movie miscues: In a category about film titles that include religious words, no one knew the word that precedes “Joan” in a movie based on a Shaw work is “Saint”, or the 1984 Mickey Rourke NYC-based film “The Pope of Greenwich Village”.

One more thing: This game showed how it’s possible to have a video category and still get to all the clues: don’t make the special category too long-winded and have the rest of the game be on the easier side to keep the pace going.

Correct Qs:

DD1 – What are muckrakers?
DD2 – What is “(The Thieving) Magpie”? (Katy just said “a magpie” which Alex accepted.)
DD3 – What is the Peloponnesian War?
FJ – Who are The Beatles? (The songs were “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Eight Days a Week”. The clue would have been so much more interesting if it had asked for one of the titles instead of the group.)