The Final Jeopardy question (3/21/2012) in the category “Famous Names” was:

At his death in January 2010, he was called “the Garbo of Letters’ famous for not wanting to be famous.”

Our new champ today is Melanie Spratford, the 6th one-day winner with a chance to stick around. But before that can happen, she will have to make sure neither of these new players takes over her spot: Greg Bentley from Pikeville, KY, and Cathy Guiles originally from Baltimore, MD.

Greg found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “God Did It.” He had $800. Cathy was in the lead with $3,000 and Melanie didn’t have anything yet. He chose to risk the entire $1,000 allowance and he was RIGHT.

In Exodus 3, God promised to smite this land ‘with all my wonders’: in Exodus 7, he did. show

WHAT IS EGYPT?

Cathy finished in the lead with $6,000. Greg was next with $4,600 and Melanie was in last place with $1,800.

Greg found the first Double Jeopardy! in “Hey Hey Hey, It’s Phat Albert.” At $7,400, he was $4,200 short of Melanie’s lead and chose to bet $5,000 and he was RIGHT.

This man used his $33,000 in Nobel Prize money to expand the hospital he built & to establish a leper colony. show

WHO IS ALBERT SCHWEITZER?

The next clue Greg picked in “Ballet” just happened to be the second Daily Double. He now had an $800 lead over Cathy and he chose to only bet $400. “Intimidated by ballet,” Alex teased. It turned out to be a wise bet, because he didn’t know and so he was WRONG.

A young prince is saved by a magic feather in this 1910 Stravinsky ballet.’ show

WHAT IS ‘THE FIREBIRD’?

Cathy and Greg finished in a tie at $13,600 each. Melanie had $6,200. Alex thought that could all work out to Melanie’s advantage, but given the relatively easy Final Jeopardy! clue, we highly doubted it.

Well, maybe it wasn’t as relatively easy as we thought — only ONE of the players got Final Jeopardy! right.

WHO IS J.D. SALINGER?

The author of “The Catcher in the Rye,” who died on 1/27/2010 was as famous for his reclusiveness as he was for the 1951 classic starring Holden Caulfield. The ‘Garbo of Letters’ reference comes from Charles McGrath’s NY Times obituary.

In a Salinger biography, J. D. Salinger: A Life, author Kenneth Slawenski writes: “On February 16, 1953, J. D. Salinger became the official owner of 90 acres of hillside property in Cornish, New Hampshire. The temptation to interpret Salinger’s move as life imitating art is compelling. In ‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ Holden Caulfield dreams of running away to neighboring Vermont and finding a cabin in the woods where he can live a life of seclusion. To ensure his separation from the world, Holden plans to pretend he is a deaf-mute. ‘Then I’d be through with having conversations for the rest of my life,’ he rationalizes, ‘and they’d leave me alone.'”

Melanie wrote down [Norman] Mailer. He died on 11/10/2007. She bet nothing so she remained at $6,200.

Cathy had it right and bet $1,000. She finished with $14,600.

Greg bet everything but wrote down [Andy] Warhol, who was not a writer, and passed away two decades before Mailer, on 2/22/1987. Greg wound up with zero.

So Cathy won the game, with a lot less than she might have. She was probably glad she bet conservatively when she saw the clue, then maybe not so much when she saw the other contestants’ answers.

Unlike us, Alex only counted this week’s string of one-day champions.