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The Man Who Knew Too Much
theodp writes "For thrilling competition, Slate says the Tour de France pales next to the 25-game reign of Jeopardy! supercontestant Ken Jennings. The 30-year-old software engineer has won a total of $788,960, beating the previous record-holder by a margin of over $600,000. Watching KenJen play is like witnessing any great athlete in top form: He's the Michael Jordan of trivia, the Seabiscuit of geekdom, and his antics have once again made Jeopardy! required viewing. (Update: 26 wins and $828,960: 'When Jennings ran the Marvel comics category during the second round, host Alex Trebek asked: Have you done anything besides read comics? It pays to be a nerd, Jennings responded.')"
(BTW, the bastards never called me so I wasn't ever actually on the show. But I was ready, dammit!)
Was it recently? For a while that kept the max pretty low (since, well, the best anyone could do was be on less than a fifth the shows Jennings has been on. Also might explain why his winnings are about five times as high).
On a related note: I liked Tony Kornheiser on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption talking about auditioning for Jeopardy where he got some pretty high marks but chose a less skilled contestant because Mr Tony wasn't "telegenic enough" (ironic since he cohosts PTI, is a guest on another weekly DC sports show and the Sports Reporters). I guess criteron might be out the window too.
What is music when you despise all sound?
No, there's no coaching whatsoever. After the great gameshow debacle in the 50's (there's a movie by -- not starring -- Robert Redford about this, which I can't remember the name of), this stuff was clamped down on BIG time. A friend of mine -- super-duper smart -- was on Jeopardy!, and wrote up an article about it at the time. For one, they do it in batches; IIRC, they knock off three shows in one day, and show them MUCH later. (Lots of NDA signage re: the results occurs when you get selected.) While they foster the illusion that it's live, it's not. In addition, while they're friendly with Alex during the game, there's essentially NO mingling at any other time -- no sense of impropriety is wanted or allowed. Etc. Honestly, from his article, it sounded a lot less chummy to be a Jeopardy! participant than it looks like from watching the show.
The terms used in psychology are 'fluid intelligence' and 'crystallized intelligence'
Fluid Intelligence is "a natural ability which is not dependant on acquired knowledge" Crystallized Intelligence is "ability dependent on acquired knowledge"
Brings to mind the recent GSN (Game Show Network) airing on the Michael Larson "Press Your Luck" scandal. This guy learned their random board sequence was actually sets of predictable moves and won what was then large $. Then the network would not pay him, although IMO he did nothing wrong.
Not true. The producers tried to weasel out of paying him but could not prove he was cheating, only paying close attention. There is an interesting site here
This space for rent
Some time next year Disney will release a new and uncut version with subtitles and a new dub.
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Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
http://boards.sonypictures.com/boards/forumdisplay .php?s=50aa46369dcf5a3280b1ed37548dfe79&forumid=34
These are the actual message boards for Jeopardy and Ken Jennings posts there frequently on such topics. They also have running tallies of his scores and precantages. Kinda cool information if you like that kind of stuff. Also I have watched most of Ken's game and this guy is amazing with the amount of trivia he knows.
According to this story and countless others, the tapings occurred in February. The next tapings are scheduled for August.
If Ken didn't lose by the end of his season, then he could be back for those tapings. I assume the current season will continue airing even during these tapings, and while Jeopardy has been extremely good at keeping the length of the streak under wraps, I imagine if KJ shows up in August, we're going to hear about it from somebody.
For the non-US readership: three contestants with a ring-in button. 'Hook' for the show is that you get an 'answer' and have to respond in the form of a question ("The US President who wrote the Declaration of Independence"; "Who is Thomas Jefferson?")
Three rounds: first two consist of six categories of five questions each (game 'board' is six columns of five monitors each). Cash value of questions in first round runs $200-1000. in $200 increments, second round ('Double Jeopardy') runs $400-2000 in $400 jumps. You lose the value of the question on wrong answers, so you can potentially run negative. There are random 'Daily Double' squares (one in first round, two in second), where you can wager some/all of your winnings on getting that item correct, allowing for big shifts in position during the game. Third round ('Final Jeopardy') the players wager some/all of their winnings on a single question/answer; high total wins for the day.
Former rule was five days and you're out (but eligible for the year-end 'Tournament of Champions'); this has been dropped this year allowing for the current streak of said Ken J.
I think it may be difficult for many Americans to appreciate what a feat Lance Armstrong has been able to accomplish by winning these past few Tours. I happenly vacationed in Paris last summer around the time the Tour was going on, and let me say that was one insane tour Armstrong had to go through. I'd never seen cycling before then, but I'm now forever hooked. On the first day there was a massive crash among the huge swarm of cyclists in their final dash to the finishing line. Armstrong had also crashed. On the ground with his bike broken, one of his teammates stopped beside him and handed him his own bike so that Armstrong could finish the race. Amazing.
Another time the tires of a cyclist in front of him exploded and that cyclist went skidding across the pavement. I don't remember how fast they were going (maybe 40-50mph), but Armstrong just barely misses running the guy over but had to swerve off track onto the grass before finally getting back on the road and continuing on. And there was one day when due to perhaps his own mistake, he ran out of water. By the time he finished that day he was completely dehydrated and had lost 1/3 of his body mass. Crazy.
And finally the tour had a thriller of an ending. I think the day before the Tour ended Armstrong was still neck and neck with this closest competitor. Racing through a timed trial in the rain, Armstrong finished a bit slow if I remember correctly, but the other guy ended crashing on the wet road, losing too much time and hence guaranteed Armstrong's victory. A toss-up to the very end. Amazing.
And so while Ken Jennings is certainly impressive with his winnings so far, I'd be hard press to say that the Tour pales in comparison.
Little Bricklets
Basicially this is it in a nutshell.
-Michael Larson at the time was unemployed. He became obsessed with game shows thinking that he could get on one and outsmart the system to win on it.
-He starting watching Press your luck and realized that the pattern was psudorandom and completely reversed engenerred the Random pattern, and even perfected a button pressing method to be as precise as possible
-Mike applied to be a contestant on Press your luck, and eventually got the green light to get on. CBS Producers commented that his demeanor was different from other contestants and they were suspicious of him, but couldn't find anything wrong so he got the go ahead.
-Once on the show, In the beginning, he acted just like any other contestant, and went through the question and answer session pretty unenentfully.
-the spin round, was where it got interesting. The First thing Mike did was get a whammy. It's believed that he did it on purpose to get a feel of the button to the board interaction and also not to look like he was blantently hacking the board.
-after the first whammy, it was all big bucks from there. he would almost always either hit big bucks or another space on the "wheel" that he knew would never popup a whammy. The whole time doing it he was in some sort of trancelike state.
-The second Q&A Session goes underway, already he's won a good amount of money but CBS hasn't seen anything yet. CBS Producers are going nuts in the back, more than aware that he's got the system beat from his first round performance. Peter Tomarken is basicially shocked at this point.
-Second round comes around. Mike basicially spins and never stops, collecting even more spins and more money. it gets to the point that Peter is beyond stunned now and doesn't know how to react to this, CBS is going insane in the back, and the episode is running way out of bounds for it's time.
-Mike breaks the $100,000 barrier. at this point he's won more money than was not only thought possible, but has broke the daytime money winnings record.
-finally, he gets frightened that he's going to screw up and get a whammy, so he passes the spins.
-eventually, some spins he has to take get passed to him. Wins Even more money. until basicially all the spins are gone.
-in the end, CBS "retired" him as champion, and originally would not pay him for cheating. eventually they paid him when their lawyers advised thm that they would lose because their wheel was too predictive. They aired te show as a two day show, because it was so long, they increased the patterns, and added more whammy slots where there originally were none.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Personally I think he will just decide to walk once he hits $1000000.
Ken has himself said (on the 23rd show I think it was; where a the lady got ~$1800 taken away retrospectivelly for saying 'Olympics' instead of 'Summer Olympics' and didn't end up with enough $$ to challenge him) that his goal is to be invited to become a writer for Jeopardy. All Jeopardy writers are previous contestants (according to Trebek).
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What's astonishing to me is that *nobody* mentions that the only reason he's so far ahead of previous records is that in all previous seasons you were booted after 5 wins.
Actually the article mentions this, did you read it? Another person pointed out that the doubled the value of the questions also this season (when they did away with the 5 day limit). That wasn't mentioned in the article.Speaking from experience (I came in 2nd in 1991) they film 5 episodes a day. They used to tape two days per week.
When did they change the rules? It used to be that you could be on 5 times... max, at which point you retired as an "undefeated 5 time champion".
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
They have a light around the contest board. You can't ring in until the light goes on (otherwise, you have a 2 second lockout).
Speaking from experience
red floyd -- former Jeopardy! contestant
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet (apparantly). Ken Jennings has a webpage! I'm sorry to report to the /. crowd that it was designed in MS Word. But it seems to be more of a personal checklist (and a window into how he got so much "useless" knowledge) than a page he intended for other people to see.
You can't buzz in as soon as Alex begins to speak. The buzzers are locked out by a producer until Alex finishes the question. That's how it was when I was on in 1991, and other posts here indicate that's still the case. I haven't watched the show myself recently.
And as far as the record goes, an important factor is that until recently after 5 wins a champion was retired, and would only come back for a tournament of champions. So he's the first "champion" to be given this opportunity.
Which is not to imply that he's not preternaturally smart, just that there's more to it than just trivia capacity.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.