Friday, January 07, 2011

Oz in Jeopardy!

2010 was a good year for Oz and Jeopardy! The very first clue of the year was about Oz, and we came within a few games of the very last clue also being about Oz. (Yes, I'm finally catching up with some of the Jeopardy! episodes I missed while I was out of town for my winter holidays.) On the December 29 episode, Alex revealed the category for Final Jeopardy to be:



I didn't think much of it — let's face it, that's an extremely broad category — but I perked up again when the clue was revealed:



As the famed, iconic "think music" played, I pondered this. I was pretty sure this was about The Wizard of Oz, of course, but the 1995 date threw me a bit, as I couldn't remember if a particular book that I was thinking of had come out that year. But I decided to go with and made my guess. Good thing, too, because the first response to be revealed, from Marissa, the defending champion, was:



That was correct (and so was I). She had bet only $3500, and ended up with a total of $13,700. Next came Ellen, at the righthand lectern, whose response was:



So she, too, was correct. She had bet a whopping $12,000, giving her a final total of $25,600. Finally, we saw the response from Raghuveer, in the middle, and he said:



Whoops! He bet, and lost, $10,601, which put him in third place, and Ellen became the new Jeopardy! champion. Once again, it pays to know your Oz when you play Jeopardy!

2011 also got off to a slightly Ozzy start, as the January 4 game had I'm Melting as its first category, but it was all about other things that melted; no Wicked Witches were harmed in the playing of that category.

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