Final Jeopardy

I will admit to being a fairly consistent Jeopardy viewer. I once took the Anytime Test and know I couldn't have done that well. There are people who probably get nearly all the questions/clues right. There's a reason you don't see anyone who is 74 as a contestant. Twenty-first century clues leave me in the dust. And forget the opera and the Greek Mythology ones.

I do well with sports. I had a friend who would seethe with anger when people couldn't get anything right that referred to horse-racing. Win, place, show, furlongs. Triple Crowns question/clues usually wound up not being answered correctly. His world revolved around racing even more than mine. He was good at U.S. President questions/clues as well, being a history major in college. But horse-racing was in this veins.

Being an alert viewer I've noticed that the show's writers can wrap wildly different "answers" to produce the same correct response. It's all in the framing. I've noticed the book Gone with the Wind has been the correct response from very different clues. These writers are clever people.

Usually there is something in the clue that if recognized, will lead you to the answer. But I didn't see it in a recent Final Jeopardy clue a few days ago. It was a very cleverly written clue. I almost feel ashamed I didn't get it.  I thought of my departed friend and wondered if he would have pounced on it correctly.

FAMOUS NAMES

Subject of a 2003 film, his 1947 obituary said he fathered at least 100 & died of a heart attack at 14 at a California ranch.

Answer: Seabiscuit

Ooof. So simple it could make you cry.

The NYT obituary for Seabiscuit touches on all the high points of his career, his owner, trainer, but no mention of the one-eyed jockey Red Pollard. Thoroughbred jockeys were considered part of the "help" and not accorded much status in that era of horse-racing. I can still remember opening up a program in the late '60s when the rider was not yet assigned to an entry there was a notation that "No Boy" was riding. There could be several "No Boys" mentioned on the card. You would think he came from a very large family.

The most famous match race of all time was when Seabiscuit beat War Admiral at  Pimlico in 1938. It was the East Coast racing establishment against the West Coast racing establishment. The popular 2003 movie so accurately captured the era with Jeff Bridges, Elizabeth Banks, Toby McGuire and Chris Cooper.

It is significant that the clue people put the text under a heading of FAMOUS NAMES and not FAMOUS PEOPLE. Despite this subtlety, you might still be groping for a person to have achieved fathering over 100 offspring. But still, by the age of 14?

Only one contestant got it right, but they weren't in a position to advance. When you look at entries the Daily Racing Form, gives you the horse's sire and the dam's sire. By the 1960s when I started to follow racing, any reference to a horse sired by either Seabiscuit or War Admiral had long disappeared. War Admiral was an offspring of Man o' War, who only lost one race. Seabiscuit's breeding was much more pedestrian, but linked to Man o' War through the grandsire line. He was himself sired by Hard Tack, who was sired by Man o' War. Thus, Man o' War figured on both sides of the breeding when the match race took place.

Kudos to the contestant who had Seabiscuit. Like many of my bets, I shoulda had it.

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