Final Jeopardy: Words & Phrase Origins (1-27-12)
The Final Jeopardy question (1/27/2012) in the category “Words & Phrase Origins” was:
After living in Honduras, O. Henry coined this term for a small country dependent on a single export.
New champ Brendan Graham won $26,401 yesterday. To add to that, he will have to defeat these two new players: Bruce Vale, originally from Newark, DE, and Emily Kelly from Somerville, MA.
Emily got the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in the category “Pants.” It was the $800 clue and last on the board. She was in second place with $1,400. Bruce was in the lead with $3,200 more than that. She went for a true Daily Double. We really thought she’d get this — most women know it, but she overthought it and came up with jodhpurs just as time ran out and that was WRONG.
Tight-fitting pants patterned after those worn by bullfighters aren’t usually called matador pants but these. show
Bruce finished first with $5,600. Brendan had $1,000 and Emily had nada.
In Double Jeopardy, Emily found the first Daily Double in “1940s American Literature.” She had $6,400 but not wishing to go back to zero again, (but still wishing to make some headway), she bet $5,400. It was easy (though not as easy as the toreador pants), and she was RIGHT.
This 1946 novel about a southern politician takes its title from the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ nursery rhyme. show
That put Emily in a tie for the lead with Brendan at $11,800.
The last Daily Double was the last clue on the board. It was in “First in War” and it went to Emily. She now had $14,600 (and Brendan still had $11,800). She bet $2,799. She was WRONG with the SS but still had the lead by a dollar.
The 1940 invasion of Norway saw the first combat use of these troops, the German fallschirmjäger. show
Bruce was in third place with $8,400.
Final Jeopardy seemed like a no-brainer, but guess not. Only ONE contestant got it RIGHT.
“Banana republic” is a pejorative with a hundred-year old history. Thomas H. Holloway, Professor of Latin American History at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, traces it back to O. Henry (1862-1910), the famous American short story writer.
Before going to prison for bank fraud, William Sydney Porter hid out for a time in Honduras. Professor Holloway found the earliest reference to the term on page 328 of the 1912 edition of “Cabbages and King” (that title comes from Lewis Carroll’s “Walrus and the Carpenter“) when a gringo character explains why he emigrated to O. Henry’s fictional setting. “At that time we had a treaty with about every foreign country except Belgium and that banana republic, Anchuria.”
Bruce wrote down “what is a rice economy” and bet $3,402. He ended up with $4,998.
Brendan got it right and bet $8,401. His total was $20,201.
Emily wrote down “what is a coffee state,” bet $11,000 and ended up in third place with $801.
Brendan won again and his 2-day total is $46,602.
