Bonus Episode: Jeopardy Dreams & Trivia Banter

Hello everybody and welcome to a little bit of bonus content from all of us here at your
dark companion. Now, you may be saying, okay, well, what is so bonus like about this? Oh,
well, for one thing, it's not going to be a regular episode. I don't know how long it's
going to go. It may go a whole hour. It may not. It may go five minutes. It may go five minutes.
That's right. We can truncate this any way we want. Now, you're wondering no doubt on this,
the 28th of July. What are these guys doing? Because they've already done one podcast already
today. What are they doing another four? Well, here's why we're doing another. I don't know if
you know this about me, but I am a big jeopardy nut. I have been ever since I was a little kid and
I've kind of gone in and out of it over the years. There was a while there when I was liking my
20s and stuff where you know, you're 20 and you're 20s and playing in a band and stuff,
you're too cool for any jeopardy. You know, you know, you don't need it. And I would kind of
drift in and out on it. But what I didn't tell anybody was every time I drifted back into it,
I really, really liked it. And I wanted to keep watching it, but I had to be cool. So I didn't.
And over the years, that's kind of how it would go. I would go in and out of it. Well,
somewhere along the line in my 50s or maybe even early 60s, something clicked. I guess this is
what happens when you get old. You get into jeopardy. And at that point, once you're into it,
you're really into it. And what goes on on jeopardy really matters. And you're watching closely.
And you're playing along with it to see how much you know and what you may know that they don't.
And that's kind of where I am with it right now. These days, I record it. And it is the last thing I do
before I go to sleep every night is watch jeopardy. And that's just the way we're rolling these days.
Why are we bringing all this up? Well, because something pretty, pretty, pretty,
did damn dramatic happen on jeopardy a few nights ago Friday night. It was less Friday night.
When that had a champion who had been on for a long time, I believe 16 days, he was a 16 day
champion. He was very, very good. Over the course of his run, he ran into and vanquished
a few very, very capable challengers who had he not been on his game could have easily upended him.
But something happened on that night. It was the end of season 41. So this whole story is just kind
of hanging in the air until the start of next season. But that night, Scott Riccardi lost in final
jeopardy. And what was really, really upsetting to me about this is that I knew the answer to
the final jeopardy question. I knew it. He did not. And I just thought, no, no, no, this can't be.
He's supposed to know this. Not me. There's nothing natural order. No, it's not the natural order of
things. You'll see. Maybe. The question was about. Yeah, Becca. Yeah, Becca. I don't have the
exact question, but the question was about, is it a publishing? We can find it magnet. Yeah, we can
find it. That also owned movie studios. Yeah, the category was 20th century names. The clue was
according to one obituary in 1935, he owned 13 magazines, eight radio stations, two movie companies,
and 56 million dollars in real estate. The answer was who is William Randolph Hearst. But Riccardi
answered Howard Hughes, which is a very understandable response. I suppose, but some to be clear,
I obviously knew it was wrong as well. The first guy that came to mind for me was William Randolph
Hearst. Yeah. And when he said, Howard Hughes, I just thought, no, no, no, no, no, no, is that who found
it Hearst? Down what? William Randolph Hearst? Yeah. Yeah. So he's the one who, like he was the
original founder of. I believe so. Okay. But I don't really know that. However, we have with us right
now joining us by the miracle of Riverside from, I believe Houston. Is that right?
Now this is the guy who has been in here with us before here inside the YDC mothership
to talk about Jeopardy and being on it and everything. His name is Jack McGuire. And I thank you
very much for doing this. So all this a pleasure. Mike, good to see you again, man.
What did, were you watching that night? Were you by the channel for this?
I, I saw it after the fact. And frankly, I'm going to, I'm going to say I cannot believe you
watch Jeopardy right before going to bed. If it were me, I don't think I'd be able to sleep for,
you know, two or three hours after the fact. I don't know. I know that it's weird.
I, I, I, I get you. It's weird. But there's something. You would amp me up. But hey, man, you,
you, you do you. He pretty much doesn't sleep well no matter what. So
well, okay, well, okay, well, that explains it. So I wasn't actually watching the episode
as an error, but I did see it. I did see it recorded. And yeah, I, I think my reaction mures yours
and pretty probably everybody in America who was watching at that point.
Yeah, it was, it was really shocking because Scott Riccardi is like most Jeopardy winners
is very low key. It seems like for a Jeopardy and Jeopardy winner, the more flat line you are
and the more low key you are, the better you're going to do on the show. I mean, nothing ever
phased him. He, would you agree with that? To, to, for the most part, I think a lot of,
this is coming from somebody who has won a stunning total of zero jeopardies.
But I, I get, you know, what, what? Yeah, it's okay fair enough. But I, I, you know, sometimes
that, you know, the winners who, what they put, that the, the Hall of Legends, they, they are,
you know, they're absolutely dialed in, you're right, they're consistent, they are unflappable,
they're, they also tend to be a little, they have some sort of eccentricities,
but that usually aids in their ability to dominate the others. And I think in Scott's case,
that was certainly the case. I mean, I, and I was thoroughly entertained by, by the episodes
that he, that I did watch. I was impressed with his ability to keep winning in even when he was,
even when he was, had, had a cold streak, or when he, you know, answered questions incorrectly,
even when he answered final incorrectly at one point, he was still able to pull out the win.
And yes, I mean, that's, that's the sign of a, of, of, of a champion. I did hear him mention
that he, he has a, he's, he's a video gamer and he's very much into that world.
Right. That would, that would strike me as someone, especially someone who is good with,
you know, good with hand-eye and timing, as, as I told you when, when we last talked,
that is 75% of, of the, of the miracle of jeopardy is, is being able to time it exactly right.
And I think, you know, with, with more episodes, the more episodes he, the more wins he racked up,
the more episodes he was able to appear on, the better he was able to time, not only the,
the buzzer and, and the, the circuit, but also just the cadence of, of, of the, the reading of the
questions. Yeah. Um, I want to get back into that with you. But another thing that I noticed about
him was the way he treated daily double. Along the way, he found the daily double on numerous
occasions. And he was, he was never really a big roller of the dice on that. His wagers were
always, you know, relatively conservative. I mean, not, not nothing or anything like that. But,
but, you know, some guys, if they find the daily double, they'll go big. They'll make it a true
daily devil or something like that. He never did that. He played very conservative. I remember,
I remember Holtzauer when he was, when he racked up his streak, his, his strategy was to always bet
big on, on the doubles. And so Scott was very different in that regard. And I can only surmise
that his, he was playing the game in a strategic fashion, such that he expected to be there for a
long time. Yeah. Bet, bet conservatively with the, with your eye on maintaining a lead,
walking away with the wind and coming back time after time. On Jeopardy, what is the, you talked
about how you handle the buzzer and time and everything. Can you give us some idea of the,
rhythmic qualities of that? Sure. I mean, the, the buzzer looks like a, it has the look and feel
of a very heavy ballpoint pen, except if there's a chord on the bottom. There's a button on the top
that if you, if you have a tendency to click a pen top for, for a, a push pen, it would seem,
it would feel quite familiar. You're talking to a guy that definitely does that.
I, you know, I can't, it's my nervous thing. But yeah, I mean, it's the, the, the motion is
essentially identical. It's, it's, it's just the buzzer's a little heavier than the typical pen.
But yeah, you press down with your thumb and the tendency in whatever, what all the contestants do
is to press rapid fire, reflexively, as, as fast as they can. But what the, what the good
champs will do is they will know, or they will develop a rhythm to know exactly within a fraction
of a second, when the question stops being read and the circuit opens for, for one to answer.
When you press the button, I think if, if memory serves, it's something like two-tenths of the
second delay, if you, if you're not first in, and it will, you, you will, essentially penalize
yourself by a couple of tenths of the second until you can ring in again. And so I think that's,
if I, if my memory serves, that's how the circuit works. The, the, the really good champions,
the, the, the Ken Jennings of the world, the Jim Holtz Hours, they, they really develop their
timing to a point where they always seem to get the timing when the circuit opened exactly right.
And of course, there is no getting in before the questions even read.
Or anything. No, that is not. And it's been that way for most if not all of, of, of the show's
history that, you know, even from the, even from the 80s, they made quite certain to make sure
that you couldn't gain the advantage just by ringing in early. Well, it's really amazing and,
and interesting to see a run like this come to an end. I guess it just goes to show that all good
things do come to an end sometimes, some way, somehow, sometime. But, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
How, where would you place him among the, the Jeopardy champions?
Of those I've, I've, I've watched myself probably in the top five. I think once,
you know, like any good, like any good sports star in his prime, you know, in elite athlete,
they seem to have a way of once they're in their rhythm, they're unbeatable, right? That, you know,
the, the, the Michael Jordan's of the world, the, uh, we'll, we'll take the Greg Maddoxes of the world.
If you know, when they were in their zone, they were all but unbeatable. And I think I would put,
I would put Scott in that category. Would you say Jennings is the best ever?
I would. I mean, I think that Jennings had kind of the, the, the perfect mix of, uh, skill,
timing, knowledge and personality that made people want to watch him as well. And I think that's
ultimately why they decided to go with, with Ken as host. And I think it was a good choice.
I think it was a good choice too. I mean, you can't have any kind of, you know, clown or
yuck monkey up their hosting jeopardy. You got to have somebody with a little bit of gravitas.
Exactly. Uh, I'm just, I'm curious though, for you, you and the crew, does anybody remember a movie
from 30, roughly 30 years ago called Quiz Show? Did, did, did anybody? Yeah, I do. Anybody remember
that? You do? Okay. Yes. Um, I will admit that, that, that movie immediately came to mind at the,
at the conclusion of final when, when Scott finally lost, uh, because again, it was just like they
described in the film that it was a, it was an answer that a fair number of people and certainly
fair number of viewers probably knew reflexively. And so the fact that the, you know, one of the grand
masters, the grand champions, uh, somehow stumbled on that was, seemed, seemed really odd to a
whole bunch of America, but, you know, I guess we'll never know. Well, I was going to say for what
it's worth, he, he did, uh, give, uh, I believe a response on Reddit, kind of talking through his
mindset mentality. It's a little bit of, it's a few, it's a couple paragraphs, but, uh, basically
says, as for final jeopardy, my mind unfortunately went straight to Howard Hughes, mostly due to
overestimating the importance of the movie companies, part of the clue. Any previous final
jeopardies that had come to mind immediately had worked out. So I trust my initial response on
this. Hurst wasn't on my mind at all until the moment Charlotte's answer was revealed. And even
then it didn't immediately strike me as correct until kin confirmed it. Truthfully, I was just
especially unprepared to respond correctly to a clue about Hurst. I made a mental note before
flying out that I was consistently forgetting to consider of all things citizen Kane and the tower
of London as responses whenever they come up, or whenever they came up in archive practice clues.
In the green room, in the green room that week, I remind myself about the tower of London,
but could not remember the other half of that mental note. Also, before I started my prep for the
show and earnest, I found that I was having a hard time properly retaining info on what I found
to be a confusing amount of three named Williams in publishing. He says William Randolph Hurst,
William Lloyd Garrison and William F Buckley to name a few. Never circling back to that thought
after I got the call to be on the show. So several information near misses and a poor understanding
of the timeline in the clue really piled up to prevent me from getting what I now understand
to be a very getable clue. So it makes some sense. It makes perfect sense. Yeah.
Yeah, and well, and again, that the convoluted nature of it speaks to kind of the mind of
jeopardy whizzes. I mean, I guess my critique of his the way he went about answering the question,
generally speaking, though, is the date because remember that they provided the year in that
in that clue, the year, I think, believe it was 1935. Well, Howard Hughes didn't really come into his
own until World War II and post World War II. He founded Hughes Aircraft. I believe in the early
30s. So the kind of media empire that they're talking about, that didn't really come for another
decade or even two. And so I mean, that was, I guess that would just be me from a historical
perspective saying, you know, your timing is a little off there. I think you're saying he's a
buffoon. Yeah, right. That's exactly what I'm saying. This is your jeopardy. That is
I'm here to help. No, yeah. Well, I it's, but it's perfectly understandable that you know, when
when you're when you're in that situation, you, whatever comes to mind, you try to work through
all the different possibilities. But if you're fixated on something for some unknown reason,
your first instinct in almost every case is generally correct. And that's probably why he went the
way he was. Well, I'm with you. My first thought was he was tired and ready to go home. And he
did it on purpose. Yeah, no, I don't think so. No, I think it was in it for the long haul for
sure however long however long long haul was. But guys, there have been so many, so many great
champions over time. And I thought he was, I was right there with him. I thought he was right
there with the best and the brightest, the Adriana harmonies and whoever else you might want to
bring up. I know I really do think that I mean, Scott kind of handled himself beautifully through
through all 16 episodes and and had the added benefit, as I said, of kind of tuffing it out through
through the episodes where he wasn't perfect. And when he did have to struggle a bit or where he
a lesser, a lesser player like me would have stumbled. He kept pushing through and managed to
find a way to win no matter what. So yeah, I mean, money, money aside, number of episodes aside,
I think for for sheer dramatic value, I think he, he ranks as I said probably in my top five.
Have you seen any medium or long term winners on jeopardy who you thought caught a little bit of
an attitude? Yes, well, the way I would put that again, it kind of goes back to what, what makes
some of these people really good is a bit of is a bit of eccentricity. And so they may not be as
they may be a bit more socially awkward, they may be not as congenial as some of us would,
otherwise hope they would be or want them to be. But I don't think that necessarily makes them,
I don't think that necessarily makes them conceded. I think it's more just a question of, wow,
people know my name. I'm famous now. What do I do with that? Yeah. And then it's also one of those
deals where you are really good at something. And when you are really good at something, you generally
know it, you know, and I guess the difference between people is how one guy handles it as
composed to another or as opposed to another, I should say. Good catch. Thank you.
Yeah, well, and as I think that explains why one of the major reasons why they decided to go with
with Ken as host, because I think he began, he incorporated all of the not just the intellectual
qualities, but also the social qualities that go along with being part of the part of jeopardy
lore. And they wanted to figure out a way to make that continue in the wake of Alex's passing.
And so I think it was, I think it was again, I think it was a good fit and good choice.
Excellent choice. No doubt about it. You ever seen anybody on jeopardy?
You mean like in person? Yeah. Like, you know, before the show starts or something,
somebody tried to big time a guy or something like that?
When I walked into the green room and was introduced to the other contestants, I think I had a
preconceived notion that that might happen. But I got to tell you, you know, of the, what was
it? The 8 or 10 or 12 people I encountered that day. Every one of them, I mean, it's a varying
degrees, but every one of them seemed to be genuine and nice. And they, and I think they viewed it,
viewed the opportunity to be on jeopardy in its proper context, which is this is a great opportunity.
It's the dream of a lifetime to actually do this in front of people. So I know I have not seen
that in person, but again, I was only there for a day. How has your life changed because of jeopardy?
Or has it? You get to talk to us? Yeah, you got people. I get to meet nice interesting people
from North Texas. I think, well, and in my own family, my sister and I, you know,
stare down each other because we both finished second place on our respective episodes of jeopardy.
But I mean, as a practical matter, you know, I, well, other than the fact that my, you know,
the episode that I appeared on happened to have a controversial slip up that got my name.
That got me denounced by code pink of all people. But no, I mean, in the long term,
in the long term, I think it was a good experience. It changed my viewing habits. It changed my,
I think it, it, it, it answered the question to me to my satisfaction. How would you do on
jeopardy? Do you think you could do it? Now I know that I can't. I'd take that. I'd take that
any day of the week and just be damn happy with it. Is that, I have a question.
Recently, in fact, I think that this young lady may have gone against Scott in one of his games
early on. But I'm not, not certain of that, but she moved nonstop. Like physically was swinging
back and forth a lot. Is that irritating? If you're up there trying to focus and somebody next to you
is moving a lot or, or rolling their eyes or making, you know, noises when they don't get in or,
you know, they missed the buzzer. It would if I had to look at them. But, but with the way they have,
the way they have the set, the way they have the set up with, with each of us at a, at a podium is
that there are, there are actual dividers. They're not, they don't, they don't completely wall us off
like in the movie quiz show, for example. But there are dividers that exist between the,
our positions so that our focus is on the board, on the host. And we don't really see or detect
movement from our fellow contestants to either our left or our right. Now, if, if they got
loud or if they were humming or if they were, you know, stamping their feet, for example,
then yeah, that might, you know, that might result in some sort of controversy or a contestant might
say, can you, you know, knock that off? I do recall, actually, there was one episode, there was one
episode during my taping session. It wasn't the episode I appeared in, but there was a woman who
had difficulty, she had a, a, a disability and she had difficulty standing for more than 10 or
15 minutes at the time. So they did provide her like a, like a bar stool for her to sit on.
For, I think for the duration of the episode, but, but the way she was positioned, you'd never
would have known it. Yeah. How do they coach you guys up before the show and tell you how they want
you to be in everything? They, they try to give us, well, I mean, they give us the standard warnings
about not singing or doing copyright material in, in the character. So, for example, I wouldn't say
something in, in, I wouldn't quote a Simpson's character mimicking that Simpson character's voice.
I wouldn't sing, I wouldn't try to adopt a falsetto and try to sing like a virgin like Madonna
actually would. Yeah, you're not, you know, they get, they get very, they were very specific about,
you know, be careful when we're referencing copyrighted material because we may not own the rights.
But other than that, other than that warning, it was really just about getting familiar with the set,
not getting overwhelmed by the, the bright lights or the, the very cold studio, they intentionally
keep it, I think at 60 degrees. They, but they general, I mean, as you might expect that what they
generally tell us is to try to have fun with it and be, and be animated, be, be personable because
that's again, what makes good television. How much do you notice the audience when you're up there?
Not a heck of a lot. Which is kind of strange considering that sometimes you'll, you'll freeze on
stage. But no, I think, again, they, they keep the audience quiet. They do give them cues for
appreciating, you know, when somebody gets a daily double or when someone, and I know this
happened in the last few episodes, when somebody runs a category, the audience is allowed to show their
appreciation for that with, with applause only. You do notice them during the, when they, when the
host chats with the, with the contestants, and occasionally they'll, they'll give a fun
quip or a response in the audience will laugh. Yeah.
Gosh, so cool, so cool. He still gets so giddy talking. I thought, yeah, you know, my guy certainly
thought it was. I'm such a fanboy, I gotta tell you. Oh, God, you got anything, you're shooting?
Oh, that was great though. I got what I would need it at this, just your reaction.
I'm so great. Well, I guess that's all we got. We just wanted to do a little blast with you here.
That's fine. And see what you thought. My wife is almost home anyway. So I gotta wrap this up.
Jack, thanks so much, man. Mike was great seeing you. Great seeing you all. All right, great to see you.
Thank you, Jack. There he is. That is Jack McGuire.
All right.
I don't know what to do. Hands off.
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