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| Clive Owen |
I missed what he might be a Ph.D. student in, and I'll assume New Haven, Ct. is shorthand for Yale, but the Clive Own lookalike is taking pages from the James Holzhauer playbook. He whacks the $1,000, $1,600, $2,000 amounts first as he sweeps through the board, building a sizable lead with softly spoken answers, holding the buzzer like he's got a small bird in his hand, and any extra pressure will snap its neck.
He's even a bit near-sighted like James, so the similarities go even further. If he were a thoroughbred, he'd be a sprinter who's got a three length lead as soon as the gates open and the other entrants are just finding their feet.
Going into the show on Monday last night, Matt demolished the other two contestants so much they were hardly ever seen on camera. The No. 3 contestant, the woman who is a private investigator from Queens, New York, only managed to take $400 into the final Jeopardy round. Matt had $32,400, and the middle contestant $7,400. Matt would have had to throw the game to not advance into a 9-Day Champion. And that wasn't going to happen.
Matt doesn't quite have the gambler, swashbuckler mentality like Holzhauer; he doesn't join hands and make an "all-in" motion for a Daily Double bet, but he is aggressive.
And he misses a little more often than Jeopardy James, but so far his opponents haven't been able to mount any kind of challenge. He gets out there and stays there. Watch a replay of the 6½ furlong Amsterdam Stakes race at Saratoga on Sunday, where Jackie's Warrior ran them off heir feet, winning by seven lengths after a :434/5 half, and you'll have an idea of what Matt looks like to a horseplayer.
For last night's Final Jeopardy question no one got it, but Matt's lead was insurmountable. He's holding all the trump cards and can take every trick.
The Final question was under a category of Historic Businessman, and the clue went:
Born in the village of Waldorf Germany, in 1713, he arrived in the United States in 1784.
My answer would have been who was Steinway? Nope. No one got it, but of course Matt didn't go for broke, but he did lose $15,000. The two-week temporary host starting this week is Dave Faber, who was introduced as a financial journalist. Dave is on CNBC, co-hosting Squawk on the Street, and himself somewhat resembling a movie actor, square jawed Rod Taylor.
The answer was, John Jacob Astor, the family that made a fortune first in selling beaver hats. If anyone is aware of this, the Astor Place subway stop on the No.6 train in NYC has mosaics depicting beavers on its walls. The mosaics were meant to be visual cues to immigrants who might not yet know how to read English. Grand Central, 42nd Street has mosaic locomotives on the walls, informing that the stop is another type of train station.
As the dust settled, and Matt turned into a 9-day champion, Faber pointed out the imbedded clue, Waldorf in the question.
On 34th Street, where the Empire State building is now, there once stood two hotels next to each other: The Waldorf and the Astoria. When they merged and moved uptown to Park Avenue the hotel became known as The Waldorf Astoria hotel. There once was a hyphen between the names, but it has been dropped.
No problem. Matt ends the show as a 9-day champion, with a bankroll of $310,400, certainly enough to pay off any student loans he might have or be racking up there in New Haven, Connecticut. We know college is expensive these days.
Will Matt prevail and go even further on, perhaps sailing past Dave Faber's tenure as host and start in with another host?
We know from the run Holzhauer had and the nature of the multi-day schedule of the taping of the show, that when King James was dethroned, the librarian contestant hadn't even viewed Jim's run—his episodes hadn't yet aired. Jeopardy is almost in the Twilight Zone.
Today's Final Jeopardy question looks like a slam dunk for surely Matt, and perhaps the others. I never knew there are websites devoted to summarizing the show and making projections for staying as champion. Matt is given a near 88% chance of making himself a 10-day champion.
But will he?
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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