{"id":26055,"date":"2018-12-05T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T13:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=26055"},"modified":"2018-12-21T13:24:43","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T18:24:43","slug":"jeopardy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/05\/jeopardy-2\/","title":{"rendered":"JEOPARDY!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

At a<\/strong><\/span> Detroit wedding, the bride came down the aisle to a Barbra Streisand record.\u00a0She paused several times to read from her childhood diaries. She had 109 journals. Luckily she only paused five times. Eight years later, she emailed me and asked if I remembered her. Yes, I did, and I remembered her bridal dance, too. Also, Billy Wisse was a groomsman at that wedding. I pronounced it Billy Weiss<\/em>. I explained to him, \u201cThere\u2019s a Ruth Wisse, a Yiddishist and professor at Harvard, and I\u2019ve heard her name pronounced that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s my mother,\u201d Billy said.<\/p>\n

So I<\/strong><\/span> asked Billy if he was a professor as well. He said he wrote questions for Jeopardy. <\/em>I said, \u201cThat\u2019s a job<\/em>?\u201d And I jotted down his email address, because my son Teddy — a college student then — would love a job at Jeopardy <\/em>on graduation. Teddy was on Brandeis\u2019 Quiz Bowl team.<\/p>\n

Two years later, Brandeis\u2019 Quiz Bowl team played a national championship game in Los Angeles, and Ted and his Brandeis teammates met Billy Wisse for breakfast at Canter\u2019s Deli.<\/p>\n

Two more years ago by. We’re at 2004: Ted gets a call from Sony, which owns Jeopardy,<\/em> offering Ted a slot on Jeopardy. <\/em>A paragraph in the contract reads something like \u201cDo you know anybody from Sony or Jeopardy<\/em>? If so, you cannot be on the show.\u201d Teddy did not know anybody on Jeopardy<\/em>! Teddy and Billy Wisse ate breakfast once, two years ago.<\/p>\n

Alex Trebek,<\/strong><\/span> the Jeopardy<\/em> host,\u00a0 wore a cast on his wrist the day I went to the show. I sat in the peanut gallery. Trebek told the studio audience he had fallen off a ladder cleaning his gutters. Billy Wisse stood by a computer at the edge of the Jeopardy<\/em> set. This was at Sony Studios in Culver City, a suburb of Los Angeles. I was nervous Billy Wisse was going to disqualify Teddy, but Billy didn’t make a move.<\/p>\n

\"jeopardy\"Ted aced the category \u201cOur Lady,\u201d about Catholic shrines. He knew Our Lady of Czestochowa (Poland), Our Lady of Gethsemane (Kentucky) and several others. The Final Jeopardy category was Fictional Children. The answer was \u201cThis boy, introduced in a 1902 book, flew away from his mother when he was 7 days old.\u201d<\/p>\n

An editor from Boston answered, \u201cWho is Peter Pan?\u201d Right! She went up to $10,900.<\/p>\n

Teddy said, \u201cWho is Peter Pan?\u201d He went up to $13,399.<\/p>\n

The returning <\/strong>champ<\/span><\/span>,<\/span> a scientist from Tennessee, said, \u201cWho is the Little Prince?\u201d He went down to $7,900.<\/p>\n

Alex Trebek said, \u201cThe new champion, Ted Stratton, a reporter from Cleveland Heights, Ohio.\u201d<\/p>\n

Look it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a Detroit wedding, the bride came down the aisle to a Barbra Streisand record.\u00a0She paused several times to read from her childhood diaries. She had 109 journals. Luckily she only paused five times. Eight years later, she emailed me and asked if I remembered her. Yes, I did, and I remembered her bridal dance, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kinder-the"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26055"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26094,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26055\/revisions\/26094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}