Jeopardy! recap for Tue., Feb. 23

 Please welcome today's contestants:

- Frances, an assistant controller, is reading Stephen King;

- Aaron, a business litigation attorney, started a college humor magazine; and

- Sam, a college consultant, helps relieve the stress of the application process. Sam is a two-day champ with winnings of $50,301.

Sam had a chance to build a runaway on DD3 but missed, so everyone remained alive into FJ with Sam at $19,200, Aaron with $11,200 and Frances at $11,000.

DD1 - $800 - AIRLINES IN OTHER WORDS - 225 degrees, on a compass (Frances took the lead by winning $2,000 from her score of $3,600.)

DD2 - $2,000 - AFRICAN COUNTRIES - (Shown is a map of Africa with countries to the southwest of Algeria and east of Zambia highlighted) They're the two countries highlighted here. Insert two letters into the name of one to get the name of the other (Sam added $4,000 to his total of $6,800 vs. $5,800 for Frances.)

DD3 - $1,600 - PHYSICS - Around 1800 William Herschel found that this type of radiation he called "radiant heat" is closely related to visible light  (With just two other clues remaining in DJ, Sam lost $2,000 from his score of $21,200 vs. $11,200 for Sam.)

FJ - MOVIE DIRECTORS - Along with his writing partner, this director is the only person to win screenwriting Oscars for both a film & its sequel

Only Aaron was correct on FJ, adding $10,827 to win with $22,027.

Clue selection strategy: With DD3 still remaining along with one untouched category, Aaron had control with a little over half of Sam's total and chose to play top-down. If Aaron had instead chosen from the bottom of the category, he would have denied Sam the chance to put the game away on DD3 (which fortunately for Aaron, Sam was unable to do).

Guest host corner: Mike thanked the show's staff in his opening remarks and paid tribute to Alex, describing him as an "idol of mine".

Judging the writers: in the GUITAR GODDESSES category, here's a clue I was hoping to see: "This former bass player for The Runaways was a four-time Jeopardy! champion in December of 2018". The correct question, of course: "Who is Jackie Fuchs"?

Correct Qs: DD1 - What is Southwest? DD2 - What are Mali and Malawi? DD3 - What is infared? FJ - Who is Coppola?