Jeopardy! recap for Mon., Mar. 30

Introducing today's contestants:

- Monya, a health journalist from California, interned in the morgue;
- Kyle, a political recruiter-trainer from Ohio, builds scale models of old fighter planes; and
- Khalilah, an attorney from Virginia, whose 2-year-old prefers the bar to the library. Khalilah entered the game as a one-day champ with winnings of $2,399.


Monya found all three DDs, but a miss on DD2 helped Kyle maintain a runaway into FJ with $15,400 vs. $6,800 for Monya and $4,200 for champ Khalilah.

DD1, $600 - "T" TIME - From the name of a Greek actor & dramatist, it's a more formal name for an actor (Monya won the window maximum of $1,000.)

DD2, $1,600 - VICE PRESIDENTIAL QUOTES - In 1959 he told Khrushchev it was better to discuss the merits of washing machines than the "strength of rockets" (Monya lost $6,000 from her score of $9,400 vs. $15,400 for Kyle.)

DD3, $800 - 20th CENTURY BOOKS - "What is fire? It's a mystery", says this novel; "Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences" (Monya won $3,400 on a true DD vs. $15,400 for Kyle.)

FJ - ADVERTISING CHARACTERS - Jack Keil's team created this animal character rolled out in 1980, the year of the USA's highest recorded murder rate

Only Monya was correct on FJ, with Kyle standing pat at $15,400.

Political problems: The players missed 4 out of 5 in "Vice Presidential Quotes", including the former VP who ran against Reagan in 1984 (Mondale) and Ford's VP (Rockefeller).

Clue selection strategy: With seven clues remaining in DJ and both DDs still on the board, Kyle went to the top of the only untouched category. A better selection would have been the $800 clue in "20th Century Books", that category's highest-value remaining clue where a DD was almost certainly located.

Jeopardy! rule book: For a clue about the Ralph Ellison book, Kyle wisely avoided the trap of adding "The" to "Invisible Man", which would have been incorrect in an exception to the rule allowing unnecessary articles to be added to the beginning of titles.

Correct Qs:
DD1 - What is thespian?
DD2 - Who was Nixon?
DD3 - What is "Fahrenheit 451"?
FJ - Who is McGruff (the Crime Dog)? (Kalilah and Kyle both bet $0 and took flights of fancy with their respective responses of "Scooby Doo" and "Ruff McGruffin".)