Jeopardy! (04/17/19)

[TPIRfan#9821]

^

“I’ve got to give Jeopardy immense credit, and The Chase U.S.A.,” Labbett told me. “In Britain or Australia”—where The Chase still airs—“James would not have made it onto television, because he’s just too damn good. They would never have him on.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/04/james-holzhauer-jeopardy-1-million-win-or-lose/587878/

I'm still amazed how James is still going.

[Axl]

Very interesting read, including the fact that James apparently auditioned to be another Chaser.

“I’ve got to give Jeopardy immense credit, and The Chase U.S.A.,” Labbett told me. “In Britain or Australia”—where The Chase still airs—“James would not have made it onto television, because he’s just too damn good. They would never have him on.”

The funny thing is there's a Holzhauer interview on the Jeopardy! website now where he says had to wait almost two years from his last audition, which is far longer than they usually take to pick somebody.  (In fact, you're allowed to test again 18 months after your last in-person audition because it's assumed that, by that point, you're not going to be picked.)  It would be fascinating to know if there was some sort of disagreement behind the scenes as to whether or not to cast James, as there was between Bill Carruthers and his contestant coordinator when it came to Michael Larson in 1984.

[gamesurf]

It seems like the first Holzhauer-inspired rule change has been implemented:

No more personal messages or shout-outs allowed during Final Jeopardy!

[mellongraig]

And last night he won his 18th game by $18 when normally a $53,999 result by the 2nd place contestant would be a winning score any other night. The $53,999 was the highest losing score ever on the show and only got $2,000 like losing $51,999 in the process.

[pannoni1]

It seems like the first Holzhauer-inspired rule change has been implemented:

No more personal messages or shout-outs allowed during Final Jeopardy!

I remember back in the '90s when Alex mentioned that one player had a lot of writing, and it turned out that she added "Please, Please" to her response. It seemed very weird at the time, but it happened so infrequently that most didn't care. But probably around 2010, there was a noticeable upward trend of these shout-outs starting to take place, increasing to a somewhat regular occurrence over the past couple weeks or so. There's always the interview portion for those shout-outs anyways.