Let’s meet today’s contestants:

• Dimitri, an 8th grade math teacher, whose mother wore a beautiful yellow dress on a black-and-white 60s game show;
• Ashley, a corporate lawyer, attended a music festival at the Great Wall; and
• Amy, an engineering manager, gets pumped for the game to “Lose Yourself” by Eminem. Amy is a 35-day champ with winnings of $1,164,000.

Jeopardy! round

WORLD LEADERS // ALL EARS // HOW ARE WE EVEN RELATED? // POTENT POTABLES // AN ORANGE CATEGORY // CORRECT THAT NUMBER

DD1 – $600 – WORLD LEADERS – At age 39 in 2017 he became the youngest president in the history of modern France (On the second clue of the game, Dimitri had $200 to wager, and was correct after saying what he always wanted to say: “$200, please.”)

Scores going into DJ: Amy $9,000, Ashley $800, Dimitri $5,400.

Double Jeopardy!

LOCAL NICKNAMES // “BIG” TALK // CEMETERIES // SHORT NOVELS // MEXICO BEFORE 1600 // ALSO A BROADWAY MUSICAL

DD2 – $2,000 – “BIG” TALK – Ironically, it was cosmologist Fred Hoyle, a leading advocate of the steady-state theory, who coined this term (Amy won $3,000 from her total of $17,800 vs. $7,400 for Dimitri.)

DD3 – $1,200 – CEMETERIES – Naturally, Washington Irving rests at this famed cemetery in New York State (Amy won $2,000 from her score of $24,800 vs. $6,800 for Ashley.)

The game was fairly close for a while, then Amy stepped on the gas in DJ, taking down both DDs and rolling over the opposition with $32,800 into FJ vs. $6,800 for Ashley and $6,200 for Dimitri.

Final Jeopardy!

FILMS OF THE 2000s – One of the screenwriters of this 2001 film described it as “‘Clueless’ meets ‘The Paper Chase’”

Only Amy was incorrect, as her puzzling recent problems with FJ continued. Amy dropped $15,000 to win with $17,800 for a 36-day total of $1,181,800.

Odds and Ends

Triple Stumper of the day: No one knew the number in a poem that completes “Then they rode back, but not / Not the” is 600.

Ken’s Korner: He noted that that Amy has been on the show for 4 federal holidays and pondered if she’ll make it to Washington’s Birthday. Also, after DD2 about the Big Bang, Ken said “it’s a shame Mayim wasn’t here for that”, which I believe is the first reference by a host on the show to the other host.

One more thing: It turned out to be very close for second place going into FJ, so Demitri choosing to wager $200 instead of $1,000 on DD1 probably cost him $1,000 in real money.

Correct Qs: DD1 – Who is Macron? DD2 – What is the Big Bang? DD3 – What is Sleepy Hollow? FJ – What is “Legally Blonde”?