POLL: Most heartbreaking losses?

[Steve Gavazzi]

[quote name=\'Frank15\' date=\'Jul 7 2004, 10:21 PM\'] What exactly is the system for accepting answers not in question form, anyway?  It seems sometimes they count such answers as correct, and other times not.  Is it just decided on a whim, or what, exactly? [/quote]
 Off the top of my head, I think Alex allows contestants to fix their responses during the Jeopardy! round, but not in Double Jeopardy!.

Of course, someone will probably contradict me within five minutes. :-)

[WilliamPorygon]

[quote name=\'Frank15\' date=\'Jul 7 2004, 10:21 PM\'] What exactly is the system for accepting answers not in question form, anyway?  It seems sometimes they count such answers as correct, and other times not.  Is it just decided on a whim, or what, exactly? [/quote]
 Alex will accept the response and remind the contestant about their phrasing if the contestant forgets in the first Jeopardy! round, except on the Daily Double.  Once DJ! rolls around, the responses will always be called wrong if not phrased as a question .

[rmfromfla]

Before they got strict about the phrasing rule in DJ, one of the most famous
 examples about Alex reminding contestants happened on 1/13/86:

     Nancy Smith hits a Daily Double late in the round.  She has $4,600 and is
 in third place.  The category was Classical Music and the clue was an audio.
 She responds "The Wedding March?",  and then Alex says "Phrase It....",
 to which she said "What is the Wedding March?".   Nancy gets it correct,
 the signal to end the round goes off, and she is in the lead going into FJ.
     Oddly enough in FJ,  she wagers $6,000 on a clue about which country
 did the U.S. have the most overseas military bases in (Germany) which
 gives her $12,600 and a co-champion with the day's other challenger,
 Gardner Stern, who wagered all of his $6,300.
     But on the next show, both co-champs were defeated....
     And as we all know, the rule was changed in S3 - the most famous
 incident being Lionel Goldbart's gaffe in the 86' TOC...

[Kevin Prather]

I still like Al Franken's response from the Power Players week. He forgot to give his response in form of a question, but right away followed it up with "What is it?". lol

[OntarioQuizzer]

[quote name=\'rmfromfla\' date=\'Jul 8 2004, 10:04 AM\'] Oddly enough in FJ,  she wagers $6,000 on a clue about which country
 did the U.S. have the most overseas military bases in (Germany) which
 gives her $12,600 and a co-champion with the day's other challenger,
 Gardner Stern, who wagered all of his $6,300.
     But on the next show, both co-champs were defeated....

 [/quote]
 Interesting story, but why is it odd that Nancy bet for the tie?

[rmfromfla]

Quizzer,

     The scores coming into FJ were:

          Steve Willis (3x,  $31K)    5,800   +    5,700    =    11,500
         Nancy Smith                     6,600   +    6,000    =    12,600
         Gardner Stern                  6,300    +   6,300    =     12,600


       Hypothetically,  in most situations, you play for the win instead of
       taking a risk that when you come back on the next show, you could
       be beaten by the player that you allowed to tie  (or in this case,
       both were beaten by the new player on the next show).

[Kevin Prather]

Actually, in some cases, it's better to play for the tie, because then you know what to expect from at least one of your opponents, and you can adjust your gameplan accordingly.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'rmfromfla\' date=\'Jul 8 2004, 06:24 PM\'] Hypothetically,  in most situations, you play for the win instead of taking a risk that when you come back on the next show, you could be beaten by the player that you allowed to tie (or in this case, both were beaten by the new player on the next show). [/quote]
 That appears to be the majority opinion, especially since you'd be allowing someone back who now has experience with the buzzer.

However, another perfectly valid theory is that you allow someone back that you beat in this game because you think you have a good chance of beating them in the next game, and you have no idea about the new challengers.  There's also the possibility that you've made a friend who'll do the same for you in the next game if your situations are reversed.

There are issues with both theories, and yours does seem to be the most popular.  Still, there is validity in playing for a tie, if that's the choice you've made.

[bandit_bobby]

A real heartbreaker was for the person who came THIS CLOSE to beating Ken Jennings. I'm talking about Michael (I think that's his name) who took him to the limit a few weeks ago.

[adamjk]

That was our own Matt Ottinger I do believe.

[OntarioQuizzer]

Bobby was referring to Michael Cudahy...but I feel Ottinger did a better job than Cudahy did, mostly due to Cudahy's wagering blunder in Final Jeopardy.

Andy

[mbclev]

[quote name=\'WilliamPorygon\' date=\'Jul 7 2004, 09:46 PM\'] [quote name=\'Frank15\' date=\'Jul 7 2004, 10:21 PM\'] What exactly is the system for accepting answers not in question form, anyway?  It seems sometimes they count such answers as correct, and other times not.  Is it just decided on a whim, or what, exactly? [/quote]
Alex will accept the response and remind the contestant about their phrasing if the contestant forgets in the first Jeopardy! round, except on the Daily Double.  Once DJ! rolls around, the responses will always be called wrong if not phrased as a question . [/quote]
That is what essentially did in David Siegel during the 1995 Tournament of Champions.  He forgot to phrase a Daily Double response in game one of that tournament's finals, which was ultimately costly, because he wagered $800 on that Daily Double, and he lost to Ryan Holznagel by $1301. (Mark Dawson might have joined Siegel in misery in the last Tournament of Champions had Brian Weikle not miscalculated his Final Jeopardy wager in game 2 of the finals.)  More recent examples, as I said in an earlier thread, include those mistakes of Anthony Trufilio and Heather Mock (Trufilio forgot to put a "What is" in front of "99% perspiration" in Thomas Edison's famous saying, and Heather forgot to do the same in front of 1999, the year the New York Yankees won the World Series before 2000), as well as a contestant who didn't say "What is" before "Old English" the first day the clue values were raised to their present levels in 2001 (not only did that mistake cost the contestant the game, it also cost him the chance to win the game after Double Jeopardy).  I wonder if these players (including the ones mentioned earlier) still get needled about their mistakes to this very day, either in jest or maliciously, like Bill Buckner continues to get needled about his infamous 1986 World Series error.

[Kevin Prather]

I think I read somewhere that in the early seasons, you were counted wrong if your phrasing was wrong, even if it was in form of a question, like if you said "What is Thomas Jefferson?". Is this true?

[Steve McClellan]

[quote name=\'whoserman\' date=\'Jul 8 2004, 09:02 PM\']Is this true?[/quote]
No. In the early days of the Fleming version, people had trouble with their phrasings, and Art kept asking them to rephrase the question until they got the phrasing right. After they felt it became tedious, they allowed it as long as the meat of the response was correct and it was in question form. This has always been the policy on the current version.

[BrentW]

That guy who kept sticking out his tongue on a recent repeat of WOF.  His bonus puzzle (phrase):

PROOF
POS-T--E

And then the poor people who solved SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR AND FREDDIE PRINZE JR, and kept saying "prince" (like the media says) instead of "prinze".  

Brent