Fittingly, the NYT ran his obit this morning on the front page, lower right, complete with a color photo of Alex in 2005, looking sharp and fit.
The obit writer, Katherine Q. Seelye opens with a great lede about Alex being challenged by a stranger as if he were the contestant and was asked to provide the question to "the American flag flies here 24 hours a day every day of the year." Alex nailed it. Can you? I didn't.
Alex gets the full Monty. The obit jumps to page A16 and takes up two full pages, with a giant photo of Alex spreading across two pages. It's a masterful piece for a true American icon who happened to be born in Canada.
Most knew Alex was from Canada. I always assumed it was from the French speaking province of Quebec since Trebek and Quebec even rhymed. But no, Alex from Sudbury, Ontario, a mining town north of Toronto, which also happens to be where the New York Ranger Hall of Fame goaltender Eddie Giacomin is from, as well as my friend Tom Deacon from the Clarkson College hockey team of 1966. Small world, eh?
The history of Jeopardy is revealed, noting the show was cancelled twice, once in 1975 and again in 1978. It was revived in 1984 with Trebek as the host for all the years since.
And most people know Merv Griffin developed "Jeopardy," as well as "Wheel of Fortune," another long-running game show, that Alex was once even a substitute host for. The story is told that Merv felt quiz shows were missing from American television, having fallen out of favor due to the rigging scandals in the 1950s when certain contestants were given the answers, with instructions to fake intense dramatic thinking in order to goose the ratings. The rigging worked, until it didn't.
In what became an "ah-ha" moment, Merv's wife Julann suggested giving the contestants the answers and have them come up with the questions. The contestant's answer had to be framed to as if it were a question.
An early iteration of show saw it titled as, "What's the Question?" And that's where we might have a completely unexplored paradox. The front page obituary tells us: "Unflappable Host Who Gave America the Answers."
Huh? He acknowledged the correct answer as a question to the answer that was asked. If your answer is in the form of question, are you answering a question or providing the question to the answer, as the original name of the show implies.
It would seem to me that the NYT missed a chance to have a New York Post moment and say something clever about answers being questions. It is not really their fault, since they're not trained to think like that coming from the top J-schools in the country, rather than the saloons of Manhattan.
Play around with it. I'm sure most of us could improve the headline. How about "Unflappable Host Who Got All the Questions?" "Unflappable Host Where the Answers Were Always the Question." The game show host always has the answers on his cards, even if the answers are the questions.
So, did he tell us the answer, or did he tell ask us a question? It's a slippery slope that I'm sure (I'm not really sure about this. Sounds good.) had the editors gnashing their teeth at the meeting when the next day's stories were discussed.
Perhaps The Times will do one of their Page Two pieces revealing how they came to decide the headline was about being given answers vs. being asked questions in the form of answers.
Who gets the throne after Alex? The Vegas money says Ken Jennings is the natural for being the next host. Ken is the GOAT, the Greatest of All Time contestants, beating Brad Rutter and the glint-in-his-eye, squinting professional sports gambler James Holzhauer, whose "all in" hand gestures appealed to the riverboat gambler in all of us willing to bet the farm, in the GOAT tournament early this year.
Interesting note is that Trebek was noted for his precision in speech, his diction, and his expectancy of getting it as the answer (or is it the question?). He wouldn't consider the answer from a contestant the other night that "Iderondacks" was going to be acceptable for the word "Adirondacks." "Sorry, Ida."
One of the contestants last week, an immigrant from India, told the story of how he as a young boy watched "Jeopardy" with his father in order to learn English and how to say it properly. Together they admired Alex's diction. Gracious Alex thanked him.
So, the G.H.O.S.T, Greatest Host of Syndicated Television, as Jim Holzhauer called Alex early in the year, is no longer with us.
Because of the taping schedule, it is going to be strange to watch Trebek for the remainder of the year, seemingly from the grave, continue to give us the answers. Or is it the question to the answer that is the answer? Or is it the response?
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