JEOPARDY! Part 7

Continued from Saturday, July 2

I’m standing at the middle lectern between Tom, the one-day champion with $10,500, and Amy, wishing I could be back in my red sneakers rather than these suddenly uncomfortable shoes. The lights come up on my face.

Alex comes out. I’ve noticed that some of the contestants in the past have applauded him, but none of us did. Too "Wheel of Fortune," maybe. The host, still with his trademark moustache, announces that this is the LARGEST studio audience ever to see JEOPARDY! (Gee, thanks a lot.) Then he notes that the longer he talks, the less time there is for us to win money. (Well, thank you for THAT.)

The categories were Mountains; Songs by the Numbers; Old Testament Women; The Brady Bunch; Beans; and Body Talk. I’m thinking that I’ll be strongest at Songs, OT Women and Mountains, in that order.

Songs for $100 – I know that! But so did Tom- 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
Songs for $200- the song that spent 16 weeks at #1. First thought, One Fine Day, no, wait that’s not it. I OWN this song. It’s by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men. What’s the title? No one got One Sweet Day.
Sidebar: a variation on this question came up a couple years later during the Regismania version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire - The song longest at #1. It was a $250,000 clue. The contestant picked I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston (which was correct at the time, in 1993), and lost all but $32,000. Talk about screaming at one’s TV set!

Songs for $300-Amy beats me to Knock Three Times.
A couple more questions go by that I know but don’t get the opportunity to answer.
Then Brady Bunch for $200- Like lots of JEOPARDY! categories, this one is a bit misleading. It has NOTHING to do with the 1969-1974 TV show, which is good, because I NEVER saw it in first run, and only rarely in syndication. The category was about people named Brady.
"Unlike his horse, his sidekick, Pat Brady isn’t mounted for display." I ring in first: "What is Roy Rogers?" Alex replies, "WHO is Roy Rogers?" and I nod, but the answer is CORRECT. This means that I will not go on JEOPARDY! then answer no questions. Of course, the only reason that the others didn’t get it, I figure, is that they’re both too young to REMEMBER Roy Rogers. Ah an advantage of age.
I get a couple more, as does Tom, but Amy seems to be in control.

At the first commercial, it’s Tom $800, Roger $1100, Amy $1900. However long the commercials are at home is how long there are in the studio. I got some water, but again, couldn’t keep it. Jennifer had to re-powder my forehead because I was "shiny."

While one sees the scores in front of the players when watching on TV, the players here don’t have such luxury. If the scoreboard is at 12 o’clock, and Alex at 1, then the scoreboard is at 10:30. I never saw it except at the daily doubles and the first commercials, and at the end of the rounds.

The interview segment: Alex asks about my music collection,. I note that I had 1200 LPs, 1000 CDs and a couple hundred cassettes. He asked if I had any specialties, and I replied, "I have an extensive Beatles collection." Wasn’t a riveting piece, but it was OK.

During the practice session, we were told they would be using a lot of video clues. There was a $200 clue in the Beans category. The monitor seemed about a light year away. I squinted and said Orson Bean, which was correct. (Later, one of the contestants who had not yet played said that he didn’t want to play me because of THAT answer.)

So we get to Old Testament Women, one of the categories I expect to do well in.
$100- Delilah which Amy got.
$200- for reasons unclear, I said Delilah! I KNEW it was Bathsheba but the brain just picked up Amy’s response.
She asked for OT Women for $300 and I’m still literally shaking my head, beating myself up for this gaffe. "Roger!" I intoned to myself. "Come back to the game!" I never even heard that clue, and I KNEW the answer was Jezebel. But no one else got it, either. The mortification finally passed and I did get the $500 clue, which was Sarah.

Tom hits the Daily Double in Mountains, bets $900, but misses it. However, he comes back. The score after the JEOPARDY! round, Tom $2100, Roger $2000, Amy $2800.

Alex says, "Roger, you’ll go first in Double JEOPARDY!"

Continued on Saturday, July 16