The Final Jeopardy question (9/26/2013) in the category “The Internet” was:

The animal for which this computer program is named is actually a red panda.

Current champ Neal Pollack has a 2-day total of $45,999. Today he is up against two new opponents: Heidi McEchron, from Iowa City, IA; and Fran Altamore, originally from Quakertown, PA.

Heidi found the Jeopardy! round Daily Double in “Let’s Get Together,” on the first pick after the chat segment. She was in third place with $2,200 but only $600 behind Fran’s lead. She bet $1,000 and guessed “Baltic Commonwealth.” That was WRONG.

In 2009, Georgia left the group called this Commonwealth, originally formed in the early 1990s. show

WHAT IS THE COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES?

Fran finished in the lead with $8,600. Neal was second with $3,400 and Heidi was last with $2,400.

Fran found the first Double Jeopardy Daily Double in “The Art of Georgia O’Keeffe.” He was in the lead with $13,800, $2,000 ahead of Neal in second place. He bet $3,000 and thought it was Albuquerque. That was WRONG.

O’Keeffe said artists who spend any time in this city near Santa Fe have to paint the Ranchos Church. show

WHAT IS TAOS?

Neal found the last Daily Double in “On the Marquis.” In the lead with $15,000, he was $4,200 ahead of Fran in second place. He bet $1,200, and he was RIGHT.

Of the British surrender at Yorktown, he said “The play is over… the fifth act has just come to an end.”
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WHO IS THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE?

Neal finished in the lead with $16,200. Fran was next with $8,800 and Heidi was in third place with $8,400.

NONE of the contestants got Final Jeopardy! right.

WHAT IS FIREFOX?

Here is a historical page on Mozilla archives explaining why they changed from Firebird to Firefox some years ago, and noting that firefox is a nickname for the red panda. Some questions and answers are pretty funny. As to whether the name change will be confusing, they say people will forget all about the old name in 6 months. (VJ calls it Foxfire more often than Firefox).

Heidi didn’t quite finish whatever began with “su” that she was thinking of. She lost her $8,000 bet and finished with $400.

Fran thought it was a raccoon. That cost him $8,200 and he finished with $600, which Alex thought could win if Neal bet a lot and was wrong.

But Neal’s momma didn’t raise no fool. He only bet $1,401 and took a guess with “excel.” So Neal won his third game with $14,799. His 3-day total is $60,798. We’ll have to get him on the Top 12 TOC list because he just knocked John Anneken off.

Yesterday, in the chat segment, Neal said he was trained as a yoga instructor in the Ashtanga Vinyasa tradition, an extremely physical form of yoga, he no longer practices because he always get hurt! Today, he revealed that he is the author of 8 books, some of which involve a former yoga teacher who becomes a private investigator and solves yoga crimes. The hero’s name is Matt Bolster. Check out Neal Pollack’s author page on Amazon.