Jeopardy! recap for Mon., May 7 – The 2018 Teachers Tournament kicked off with these contestants:

– Larry, second grade from Kansas City, MO, whose students get a caricature;
– Lee, middle school English and technology from Bayside, NY, who got a power point about his troublesome area of art; and
– Claire, high school Latin from Lexington, KY, who tweets Latin she sees in public.

Larry could only break even on the two DDs he found in DJ, but finished very strongly to lead into FJ with $20,600 vs. $14,400 for Claire and $5,200 for Lee.

This put Larry in great shape to advance without needing to improve, while Claire was also in very good position, so didn’t need to take a major risk on FJ. However, Lee’s only realistic option was to bet everything, double up and hope for a wild card.

DD1 – STOCK MARKET INDEXES – The Sofix tracks the 15 biggest stocks on this Eastern European country’s exchange (Claire won $2,000)

DD2 (video) – EMPIRES – France’s 1852 to 1870 Second Empire was ruled by the third of this name, known as “the Sphinx” for his enigmatic nature (Larry won $3,000)

DD3 – COLLEGES OF OXFORD – This author attended Lincoln college & based spy George Smiley in part on Rector Vivian Green (Larry lost $3,000)

FJ – U.S. CITIES – This city, also the title of a film that won 2 Oscars, was named for a businessman known for 19th century transportation

Everyone missed FJ, which was bad news for Lee as he bet it all and dropped to $0. Claire made a wise move by wagering only $600 to start the wild card chase at $13,800, while Larry made a small bet as expected, dropping $2,500 to advance with $18,100.

Triple Stumper of the day: No one knew that In Japanese, hai means yes, not “hi”.

Correct Qs:

DD1 – What is Bulgaria?
DD2 – Who was Napoleon?
DD3 – Who is John le Carré?
FJ – What is Fargo?