Amy's Run is Over

 Well, Amy Schneider's run on Jeopardy! ended yesterday, after 40 straight wins that put her in second place for all-time streaks, between Ken Jennings and Matt Amodio. I had an inkling she might be at an end when I saw two different on-line pieces about her, both discussing how difficult it is for long-run champions to keep their secret. One of them included the kind of questions I can only imagine she would answer after she had finally lost.

There was also a hint when the contestant who ultimately beat her, Rhone Talsma, a librarian from Chicago, dominated the early play in the first round, hardly letting Schneider get in at all. He also hit two of the three Daily Doubles: he missed the first one, but crucially went all in on the last one, putting him within striking distance of Schneider's total. 

Then, in Final Jeopardy, he was the only one with the correct answer, finishing with a total just $2000 bigger than Schneider's to that point...and Schneider, perhaps over confident, had wagered $8000, putting her about $10,000 behind Talsma.

The Champions tournament later this season should be very interesting, with both the second and third-place all-time winners competing. I expect we'll see them head-to-head in the finals (but not before, if the producers are smart in how they arrange the quarter- and semi-finals).

The Jeopardy "Conspiracy"

 No, Matt Amodio did not win 38 straight matches on Jeopardy! because the producers were deliberately feeding him really easy questions. And, no, he did not finally lose last night because they got tired of him and rigged the game so he would (or, in an even more unlikely scenario, that he agreed to throw last night's game).

I watched every single one of Amodio's appearances and here's what I saw: He is very fast on the buzzer, so fast that it often seemed that he was ringing in before he was sure he knew the correct response. Go back and notice how many times he has to wait a bit--clearly thinking his answer through--after being called on. When a Jeopardy! contestant knows the correct answer, he or she is eager to give it, in my experience, often not even waiting for the host to finish acknowledging them before speaking. They only pause when they are still trying to come up with a response.

That speed allowed Amodio to control the board and hence, usually, pick the clues he wanted to see--avoiding categories in which he wasn't as confident--and find the Daily Doubles far more often than his opponents did. But last night, confronted by two opponents more nearly on his level of knowledge and reflexes, he lost that edge. He never got even one of the Daily Doubles, and his challengers correctly answered all of them. 

In addition, I think Amodio got desperate. He began ringing in even more often when he wasn't sure of the answer, and got far more responses wrong than usual....and that resulted in a double penalty: He lost the value of that clue and his challengers had the opportunity to give the correct answer and thus win that same amount. (It can also be said, by giving an incorrect answer, Amodio made their job easier by thus eliminating one of the possible responses.)

And now,  the reason why the producers would not "rig" the game: it's illegal. After the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, Congress amended the Communications Act, in part, to make it illegal

To engage in any artifice or scheme for the purpose of prearranging or predetermining in whole or in part the outcome of a purportedly bona fide contest of intellectual knowledge, intellectual skill, or chance.

And the penalty?

 Whoever violates subsection (a) shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/509

Not to mention undoubtedly losing their job, never to work in the entertainment industry again.

All it would take for such a scheme to come to light is for one contestant, one production assistant, one stage hand, aware of the conspiracy, to step forward and blow the whistle. Would you risk everything on the chance that no one of the scores of people involved in a production like Jeopardy! would spill the beans?  Look how quickly Mike Richards lost his job for something that was in no way against the law.

I know "conspiracy theory" is the new on-line meme, but this one makes even less sense than all the ones about our last presidential election.

 

Jeopardy! News

Sony has announced the new host for Jeopardy! and, as leaked earlier this week, it is Mike Richards, who will also continue in his position of executive producer of both Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. But there was new information as well; Mayim Bialik will serve as host of a series of prime-time special editions of Jeopardy!, beginning with the National Collegiate Championship in the fall.

Apparently, Joe Buck is the last of the guest hosts and the show will go into hiatus (probably rerunning a couple of the tournaments) until the first episode of the new season on September 13.

 I'm pleased with this announcement, for the most part, though I might have preferred to see Bialik as the main host (however, her sitcom on Fox, Call Me Kat, has been renewed for a second season, so that probably made a full-time gig hosting the game show unlikely).

I'll Take My Specialty for $200

 Time for something a bit light, I think.

If you were a contestant on Jeopardy, what categories would you want to have come up? Here are some of mine:

Comic books

Comic strips

Musical theater

Television

Movies

Science fiction

US geography

US history

Obviously, some of these might come up tangentially, or as categories like "Actors and Their Roles" or "State Capitals".

What would be your hoped-for areas of expertise?

Jeopardy's Future

 Let's get off politics for a while (at least a day). 

Tonight completes Ken Jennings' two-week "try-out" as host of Jeopardy. Overall, I think he's done a good job. He's somewhat chattier than Alex Trebek and he certainly doesn't have the professional polish that Trebek brought to the position, but he keeps the show moving, and he hasn't made any egregious missteps that I've seen. I'd be happy to see him chosen as the permanent host.

Reportedly, for the next two weeks, the show's executive producer, Mike Richards, will step in as the more famous "guest hosts" gear up for their 10-day auditions. Apparently, the first of those will be Katie Couric, followed by former quarterback Aaron Rogers, Bill Whitaker of 60 Minutes, and Mayim Bialik, late of The Big Bang Theory and now starring in Call Me Kat on Fox.

And those four may not be the last of the try-outs. It looks like we might go through the rest of the season--which ends in June, I think, before a permanent new host is announced.

I'll Take Game Show Hosts for $1000

 Alex Trebek used to host The Wizard of Odds, but he couldn't beat the odds on stage-four pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed in March of 2019 and the general prognosis for the disease is one year. As you all know, he died early yesterday, just a bit over that year.

Now, of course, comes the betting and guessing as to who will succeed him as host of Jeopardy! The producers have some time to name someone--they have enough shows completed to last until Christmas and they can always go into reruns (as they did during the height of the pandemic) for a while. The one name on the top of everyone's list is Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, who joined the show's production staff at the beginning of this season. But Jennings has also been announced as part of the team for ABC's revival of The Chase. It's not impossible he could do both--most game shows only record about one week every month (and a weekly like The Chase could probably get its nine-week commitment done in that time frame). 

Who else is a possibility? No names come to my mind; you need someone with some gravitas, but a light touch when required. I definitely do not want to see a stand-up comic take the podium--Jeopardy! is not Family Feud, after all. A newscaster type? Meredith Viera did a good job on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, so that direction is not impossible. Anderson Cooper? Steve Kornacki (who did a good job on the "game show" portion of his show when he hosted Up on MSNBC weekends)?

The real question, in the long run, is will Jeopardy! survive without Trebek? There were those who said The Price is Right was dead without Bob Barker...and they were wrong.