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.')"

Comments

Tonari no Totoro

[Karrde712]

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)

He's fast on the button

[tommasz]

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!

Re:He's fast on the button

[HungWeiLo]

Personally I think he will just decide to walk once he hits $1000000.

Anybody else notice his slight political slant that he lents into his comments? It was towards the beginning of his reign. But in the last couple of shows, he jokes that he is now in favor of the Bush tax cuts.

Speaking of which, does anyone else notice that Bush advertises on Wheel of Fortune and Kerry on Jeopardy?

Re:He's fast on the button

[Augie De Blieck Jr.]

The signaling button is no doubt an important part of the show. And last I heard, the J! producers put different people in charge of "turning on" the buzzers for every show. This way, you won't get one contestant in tune with one producer to lock into the timing. (Remember, you can't buzz in until AFTER Alex finishes reading the answer.)

People often forget (or don't realize) that there is a certain amount of strategy involved with Jeopardy! Being smart and a trivia hound is definitely the first thing, but then the buzzer comes into play, and answer selection. (If you're under a minute to go in Double Jeopardy and another contestant is at -$2000, try hard not to pick a $2000 answer right away...)

The idea I like the most to unseat KenJen is to bring back Chuck Forrest, Frank Spangenberg, etc. to compete against him. All out Super Jeopardy! brawl!

-Augie

Incredible

[WenisMonger]

It's like he knows one of the guys who makes up the trivia. It's really incredible.

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.

The New Jeopardy

[gwjc]

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!

Re:He's on the wrong show.

[AndroidCat]

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.