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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.')"
Personally, I thought it was wonderful when Jennings announced that his good luck charm was a stuffed Totoro doll from Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro), a Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki animated film. (See nausicaa.net for more)
You may treat all information submitted above as wild speculation.
Not only does Ken know a lot, he's got his "signalling button fu" working. He's going to be hard to beat as a result of that alone, as we've seen. But even when he guesses, he seems to guess correctly, so there's no doubt about the breadth of his knowledge. Go Ken!
I had only heard about him until two days ago when he won his 25th in a row, and his winnings for that day were only $14,000, which was his lowest in all 25 games.
I've watched a few of his shows, and I have to say, he is definitely a learner. On the rare occasions that he misses a response, I've never seen him say "Oh, I knew that". Instead, he has this intense look, as if he's going to remember it for next time. If he's been doing that his whole life, then it's no wonder he has such a knowledge base.
Based on myself, and some others that read here, I suspect a lot of the Slashdot community is the same way. How else could we recall so much about Linux, servers, PC upkeep, and any number of topics that appear here on a regular basis?
I wish Ken the best of luck, and maybe we'll be able to talk to him here, at some point.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
These games arent even close... last night he had 40k at the end, the next closest was like 4 or 5k. The night before that he had over 25k, both of the other people were in the red, for nearly the entire show. It's one thing to win 25 closely contested shows, its quite another to win by the impressive margins that he does every night.
Firstly, I don't think he's cheating. People we're speculating on it the last time he was /.'d but he's just under too much scrutiny. The elimination of the five win rule set the stage for this new form of Jeopardy and I can't see how it can change from here unless the reinstate the rule. Ken will stay on top until someone like Ken but better comes along, and it stands to reason that whoever can beat him will remain unbeatable for a long run until some equally rare triv-master knocks them out. I noticed that last night when he referred to himself as a 'nerd' Trebek quickly insisted he was anything but; He used to seem more antagonistic to him. It's like Alex has Stockholm syndrome now that his show has been taken hostage by Ken. I wonder if the people who select the questions will deliberately start stacking the questions to exploit his weakspots or maybe they won't given the ratings boost he's bringing them.
Anyway, here's to Ken!
Actually I am getting sort of tired of watching Ken. I used to watch Jeopardy every evening, but have tunned out lately. He has gotten the signaling button down. Most of the lower value questions are general knowledge and its a matter of who ever signals in first. If you can control the board you can choose the categories and can pic the ones you know more about, also you have a greater chance of getting a daily double. This give an adavantage to those who have been on for a few shows and has gotten used to the timing of the signaling button, regardless of knowledge.
I say bring back the five show rule and get some competition back in the game.
There was a guy in Croatia who made a nice income from the local version of the show. I think he was eventually banned as a phone a friend. Here you go.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
[spoiler]
Ken wins until July 23rd, the last episode of this season. When the next season airs, he wins the first 10 shows, amassing somewhere in the tune of $1.5 million.
This season stopped taping in February and he can't legally comment on anything related to the show until his reign is over.
[/spoiler]
That said, I don't think this guy is all that special. Who knows how many prior 5 day champs could have done what Ken has.
And don't ask me how I know. Let's just say a little birdie told me.
Ah - you missed out the moutain stage - stage 15 - where he effectively won the race. He was going up this HC climb (really steep and long) with Jan Ullrich and Tyler Hamilton in his group - the leader of the stage being about a minute a head.
Lance attacked and was starting to pull away when his handlebar got caught on a spectator's bag and he crashed to the ground most spectacularly. Jan's and Tyler's group went by him and slowed to wait - tradition demands you beat the yellow jersey, not take advantage of misfortune.
Lance climbed back on his bike and immediately the chain slipped and he went groin first into the top-bar - eyewatering stuff. He got his rhythm again, caught up with the group. And kept going - straight through them. Tyler and Jan just could not respond and Lance went on to win the stage by 40 seconds. This gave him enough margin to eliminate any possible challenge in the last time trial.
Tyler Hamilton, incidently, broke his collar-bone on stage one. He still went on to win a stage and finish overall fourth last year. True "Clash of the Titans" stuff. And people think a quiz-show compares?
Assuming that he doesn't just quit first....
The guy is so good, you know that he'll never do anything stupid enough to lose. There have likely been many like him on this show, but they never had this chance (the limit on 5 wins cut them off).
It will take another super-duper geek to beat him. Is this the future of Jeopardy? "Unbeatable" champions that just win for months at a time? Personally, that'll get boring quick. Having a heroic run once in a while is thrilling: having it happen all the time is just dull. Michael Schumacher's dominance has similarly turned me off of F1 racing.
Methinks another rule change may be in the making for next season: a cap on earnings. Maybe $1,000,000 is the right amount.
BTW, I'm REALLY looking forward to a "Tournament of Champions" where he can square off against some of the others that got cut off at 5 wins. I think he'd do well (likely very well), but he'd certainly not be a lock to beat some of the others we've seen on this show in the past.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
"I feel like 'Cactus Gavvy' Cravath. Do you know who that is? Right. Nobody does. He's the guy who had the home run record before Babe Ruth came along." Tom Walsh, of Washington, D.C., who held the record for "Jeopardy" winnings until Ken Jennings of Salt Lake City broke it recently
- Newsweek 7/12/04 issue
And who monitors them? Seriously, these days with all sorts of corruption coming to light in business and government, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some of these "Standards and Practices guys" have ties to the network execs or show owners.
Perhaps this is a test run, to see what the audience will eat up... a quick search on google turned up nothing on these "standards" guys.