Jeopardy! recap for Thur., Apr. 30

Introducing today's contestants:

- Jesse, a public policy director from New York, finally learned to ride a bike;
- Kevin, an attorney from Illinois, sings with a very special choir;
- Sarah, a writer-mom from Texas, has a possibly haunted nutcracker collection. Sarah is a four-game champ with earnings of $89,300.


Super-competitive affair in which champ Sarah found DD3 on the last clue of DJ but thought of the correct response too late, so she remained in second into FJ at $12,500 vs. $13,000 for Kevin and $11,200 for Jesse.

DD1, $600 - COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY ORIGINS - In 1855 2 faculty members & 10 students began hitting the books at this now-Big Ten school less than 15 miles from Chicago (Jesse won $1,000 from his score of $1,800.)

DD2, $1,200 - WORLD CAPITAL RIVERS - Of the 4 capitals that stand on the Danube, 3 start with a "B": Bratislava, Budapest & this one further south (Jesse doubled up to $11,200, moving from third to first ahead of Sarah at $10,000.)

DD3, $2,000 - TOOT SUITE - There's a bassoon solo in the Rimsky-Korsakov suite named for this woman who told great stories (On the last clue of DJ, Sarah lost $300 from her total of $12,800 vs. $13,000 for Kevin, but still held second place over Jesse at $11,200.)

FJ - ADVERTISING - Copywriter Keith Goldberg wrote this question in 1999 for a financial services company; they're still using it

​Only Jesse was correct on FJ, but he played for the possible Triple Stumper and would have won even if he had missed, as his opponents both lost nearly everything. Jesse added $1,800 to win with $13,000.

Clue selection strategy: In a very close game with one untouched category remaining and DD3 still available, the players still played it top-down instead of shopping in the bottom rows.

Triple Stumper of the day: Fans of the legendary bad film "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny" should know that the Hans Christian Andersen tale of a tiny girl is "Thumbelina".

Historical footnote: One clue made reference to the original name of the animated Fred and Wilma being "Flagstone". From Wikipedia: "When the series went into production, the working title "The Flagstones" was changed, possibly to avoid confusion with the Flagstons, characters in the comic strip Hi and Lois."

Correct Qs:
DD1 - What is Northwestern?
DD2 - What is Belgrade?
DD3 - Who is Scheherazade?
FJ - What is "What's in your wallet?" (Of course, since the correct response is already a question, the standard phrasing is optional.)