| "I'll try 'Hence the Title' for $1200, Alex." On June 13th, 2005, the 4,796th show of Jeopardy was broadcast to its average nightly viewership of 12 million Americans. On this Monday night, in heated competition, was Omar Shokeir, a pathologist from Bellingham, Washington, Willie Costley, an administrative assistant from Lexington, Kentucky, and Lisa Osterman, a geologist from Bethesda, Maryland (whose 1-day cash winnings totaled $3,600). In the Double Jeopardy Round, after the first commercial break and host Alex Trebek's inane small-talk with the contestants, a category called "Hence the Title" revealed itself on the board, alongside "Classical Music," "Potent Potables," "The Indian Ocean," "Seasonal Movies," and "'VE' Day." After tearing through "'VE' Day," "The Indian Ocean," and "Potent Potables," the contestants, led by Lisa, launched into "Hence the Title" and 3 answers later, Willie, who had rung in first and correctly answered the $800 question ("The title of this 1994 John Grisham novel refers to the gas one." Willie: "The Chamber.") moved onto the third question of the category, the 18th question of the round, and the 45th question of the show. "I'll try 'Hence the Title' for $1200, Alex." On cue from Alex, action shifted from the Jeopardy stage at Sony Studios in Culver City to Sarah of the Clue Crew reporting from the brightly-lit nighttime streets of New York. Sarah provided the answer to which Lisa, Omar or Willie needed to formulate a question: "John Rechy wrote,
'I would think of America as one vast city of' this stretching gaudily
from Times Square'" Omar buzzed in: "What are lights?" "No," Alex replied, as $1200 was swiftly subtracted from Omar's total winnings. Willie, who had quickly buzzed in second, offered "What is light?" believing that poor Omar had missed the answer it by a single 's'. "No...." Alex repeated. Both Willie and Omar had been tripped by the subliminal light fantastic association of Paris, forgetting the sidewalks of New York where Sarah of the Clue Crew stood in the darkened, Disney-winking, Musak-moaning streets of Times Square. Alex looked to Lisa who stood as mute as the stones she studied as a geologist until the buzzer announced that the time to ring in had expired. "The correct response was 'Night'," Alex uttered in his usual politely contemptuous way that suggests he knew the answer all along. Crestfallen, the contestants moved on to the next answer in that category, this one involving Erskine Caldwell and whose correctly formed question would have been "What is 'God's Little Acre'?" That was a triple-stumper, too. No one even buzzed in. This trio had been far better with "Potent Potables" than literature. Lucas Crown Some infomation for this account was gathered from J-Archive.com. |
