Jeopardy! recap for Wed., Jun. 5 – Let’s meet today’s contestants:

– Erin, an education policy analyst from Washington D.C., whose dog’s name got her unwanted attention from the Treasury Dept.;
– Jonathan, a high school social studies teacher from New Jersey, whose attack cat is under house arrest; and
– Emma, a user experience librarian from Illinois, is visiting “o” cities. Emma is a two-day champ with earnings of $71,401.

Emma ran an art category and dominated before the first commercial break. She slowed down midway through the game, then finished strongly to just miss a runaway at $24,400 vs. $12,800 for Erin. Jonathan ended in the red at -$2,600.

DD1, $1,000 – VANS – A music competition named for him has been called “the most prestigious classical piano contest in the world” (Erin lost $2,000 on a true DD.)

DD2, $1,200 – DICTATORS & TYRANTS – This czar had the nickname “Grozny”, which meant “awesome” as well as “threatening” (Jonathan won the window maximum of $2,000)

DD3, $800 – BUILDINGS – Some of the ornamentation on this NYC building on Lexington Avenue was meant to look like radiator caps (Emma won $3,000 from her score of $19,800.)

FJ – THE NATO PHONETIC ALPHABET – This discovery of November 8, 1895 by a German physicist represents a letter in the NATO phonetic alphabet

Only Emma was correct on FJ, adding $1,201 to win with $25,601 for a three-day total of $97,002.

Triple Stumper of the day: No one knew the word formed by putting four letters in front of “chat” that means the same thing is “chitchat”.

Clue selection strategy: If DD2 is found on the first selection of DJ as it was here, don’t go back to that category until DD3 is found (unless you’re intentionally trying to build up your score before choosing DD3).

Correct Qs:
DD1 – Who was Van Cliburn?
DD2 – Who was Ivan the Terrible?
DD3 – What is the Chrysler Building?
FJ – What is x-ray?