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The Man Who Knew Too Much
Posted by
simoniker
on Thu Jul 08, 2004 07:19 AM
from the rather-clever dept.
from the rather-clever dept.
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.')"
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movie? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh lord, I hope they don't make a movie about this guy forty years from now and expose him as some kind of patsy in an elaborate scheme to sell more vitamin juice for old people.
He's on the wrong show. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He's on the wrong show. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:He's on the wrong show. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:He's on the wrong show. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:He's on the wrong show. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:He's on the wrong show. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:He's on the wrong show. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:He's on the wrong show. (Score:5, Informative)
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".
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Re:He's on the wrong show. (Score:5, Funny)
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Proud? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Proud? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any one fact by itself is "useless trivia". But assorted "useless trivia" questions are just a way of gathering a random sampling of the entire body of knowledge that someone has.
If you're going to reliably answer a question about who happened to be president in a given year, then you pretty much have to know the entire chronology of the presidency.
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just like a towel (Score:5, Funny)
Just like if you had a towel then you pretty much have to be in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc.
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Re:just like a towel (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Proud? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Proud? (Score:5, Informative)
Fluid Intelligence is "a natural ability which is not dependant on acquired knowledge" Crystallized Intelligence is "ability dependent on acquired knowledge"
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Re:Proud? (Score:5, Funny)
The way I see it, they compliment eachother.
Abstract Reasoning: Why Analogy, what a nice dress you're wearing today!
Analogy: Abstract, where did you get that scarf? You always show such remarkable taste.
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Tonari no Totoro (Score:5, Interesting)
He's fast on the button (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:He's fast on the button (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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Re:He's fast on the button (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking from experience
red floyd -- former Jeopardy! contestant
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Re:He's fast on the button (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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Re:He's fast on the button (Score:5, Informative)
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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Incredible (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Incredible (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I really felt bad for the poor guy that day.
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Constantly Recording (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Constantly Recording (Score:5, Interesting)
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What a change (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone remember the episode of Sliders where Quinn (sp) was on the game show of extremely high level math and science questions (while throwing a ball). The perfect world for geeks
When did Jeopardy get rid of the 5 show max? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Only in america (Score:5, Insightful)
Engineers can put probes on Mars and take pictures of Jupiter, but if you want to be celebrated, you must go on TV
Not even close (Score:5, Interesting)
The New Jeopardy (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, here's to Ken!
Jeopardy Web boards (Score:5, Informative)
Occam's Razor (Score:5, Funny)
He is a cybernetic mutant from the future that was programmed to have all of the answers to a series of game show questions so that he could be sent back in time, win the prize money, and then use said money to fund his killing spree which eventually allows the robots to rise up and take over the earth while only a handful of humans remain plotting to overthrow the robot regime and one day reign supreme again.
And hookers. He is going to blow a ton of that cash on whores.
I know I would.
Jeopardy addict, am I (Score:5, Funny)
And if that happens during Final Jeopardy, I yell out "Final Jeopardy Triple Stumper!" and I'll break into an extended, elaborate dance, not unlike a wide receiver dancing in the endzone after a touchdown. I get maybe one of those every three months. The evening when I performed that dance while watching Jeopardy! with my girlfriend and her parents is particularly memorable.
Then there was a friend of mine who got a "Ultimate Mega Final Jeopardy Triple Stumper," where he correctly guessed the response before the clue was even given, knowing only the category, and all three contestants got it wrong. As I recall, his head exploded. That was quite a day.
Tour does not Pale in comparison (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Tour does not Pale in comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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He has a webpage! (for real) (Score:5, Informative)
So how good will the *next* champion be? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Quote from Newsweek magazine (Score:5, Interesting)
- Newsweek 7/12/04 issue
Re:Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
This is high esteem for a man who does well on a game show by showing of his gargantuan brain. This is high esteem for a man who has probably forgotten more trivia than most of us currently know. This is high esteem for a geek pressing his advantage in an arena suited to his forte.
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Re:Culture (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, we need to get back to the traditional values of throwing a ball and running fast.
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Re:Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't an outback-jack-who-wants-to-marry-a-midget-bachelor type of televised retardation that the reality shows are. You can't fake Jeopardy; either you know it and you're fast enough on the buzzer or you're dead in the water.
Finally someone revered on a gameshow for their mind, not their boobs or conniving.
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Re:Jeopardy hub-bub (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Coaching? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Can you imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
Uh.. What is google?
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Re:Curious about timing (Score:5, Informative)
According to this story [boston.com] 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.
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Re:What is Jeopardy!? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, the guy's good. But there's no way to tell how much better he is than previous 5-day winners, because those previous winners never got the chance to show what they could do.
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Re:Maybe he's a robot (Score:5, Informative)
-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.
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