Thursday, December 02, 2004

Move Over, Einstein



The dream is over.

Jeopardy champion, Ken Jennings, has been defeated. Tuesday night, Jennings lost to California Real Estate agent, Nancy Zerg.

Here are the Ken Jennings stats:

$2,520,700 in prize winnings
74 wins
Average of: $34,063.51 per show
$75,000 in one game
2,700 + correct answers given
150 contestants defeated

Zerg defeated Jennings in Final Jeopardy. Zerg ended with 14,001 to Jennings 8,799.

The Final Jeopardy Awswer:

Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year.

What is H&R Block?

Zerg answered correctly, Jennings wrote Fed Ex.

At least she beat him by getting the question correctly. (too bad Ken lost 10,000 on blotched Daily Doubles).

For his troubles, H&R Block offered Jennings free lifetime tax help, which he graciously accepted. Their first task? How much taxes would be taken out of the enourmous prize.

Answer: $1.04 million.

After the show, Jennings said: "I'm actually cheering for somebody to beat my record. How cool would that be? But, realistically, I don't think there's much of a chance ... So many lucky things had to happen. Everything had to fall the right way."

Well, let's just hope Nancy Zerg isn't a fluke, and can actually carry the torch for a few games. Is she still on there? Maybe she lost last night, I don't know, without Ken, I have no reason to watch.

(SIDE NOTE: I would like to add a BOO to channel 13...the station which airs Jeopardy...for it's poor placement of advertising. Alex told the contestants that the Final Jeopardy catergory was Business and Industry, and then the station took a commercial break. The last commercial before the show came back on was a promo for the News at 11. The segment they featured?

"Tonight we talk with Ken Jennings about his run on Jeopardy."

Why not just say, Ken losses tonight on Jeopardy? That was poor.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

No need for channel 13 to keep quiet it had already been plastered all over the wires. CNN posted it to their web site early in the day - long before the start of the show.

Nancy did very poorly on last night's show. She lost to a young girl who works in finance I think. I think Ken wanted off the show he was ready to get busy writing that book AND working on his "ken Jennings" board game.

Gillespie said...

Yeah, I knew Tuesday was "The Day", too. I had read it on the internet...some people, however, don't search the news out, and for those people, I think the secret should have been kept.

A Ken Jennings board game, eh? "The Morman Life". "Jeopardy! The Ken Jennings Show".

I'll keep my eye out for that.