Transcript 06/16/08 Michael Kent

[BBTranscriptTeam]

Michael Kent
Des Moines, IA
College student

$100 The reality TV show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” stars five men who are all what?
A. Senior citizens
B. Athletes
C. Gay
D. Republican senators

$200 Which of these phrases is commonly used to describe a fast runner?
A. Fleet of arm
B. Fleet of foot
C. Fleet of ear
D. Fleet of nose

$300 Which of the following was the name of an all-you-can-eat promotion at Red Lobster?
A. Perpetual Pasta
B. Tacos A Go Go
C. Chicken Ad Infinitum
D. Endless Crab

$500 As a schoolboy, Bill Gates designed a gadget called the Traf-O-Data, a device that recorded stats about what?
A. Trees
B. Musical instruments
C. Cars
D. Foreign coins

$1K “The Roaring Twenties” is a well-known nickname for a decade that coincided with what historic period?
A. The Bronze age
B. The Jazz age
C. The Victorian age
D. The Space age

commercial break

$2K The 2007 CBS drama “Moonlight” centers on a private investigator who is also a what?
A. Drag queen
B. Computer hacker
C. Priest
D. Vampire

ATA

4% A. Drag queen
4% B. Computer hacker
6% C. Priest
86% D. Vampire

$4K On the job, which of these professionals would most likely use a plumb bob?
A. Carpenter
B. Bartender
C. Locksmith
D. Butcher

$8K According to the Pythagorean theorem, if two legs of a right triangle measure 3 and 4 inches, the third side must be how long?
A. 3.5 inches
B. 5 inches
C. 7 inches
D. 12 inches

horn

Michael will return for tomorrow’s show.

Answers:
$100 C. Gay
$200 B. Fleet of foot
$300 D. Endless Crab
$500 C. Cars
$1K B. The Jazz age
$2K D. Vampire
$4K A. Carpenter
$8K B. 5 inches

[silvercamaro]

Michael Kent
Des Moines, IA
College student


$8K According to the Pythagorean theorem, if two legs of a right triangle measure 3 and 4 inches, the third side must be how long?
A. 3.5 inches
B. 5 inches
C. 7 inches
D. 12 inches

It was pleasant to see somebody figure out an equation in his head -- even a simple one -- without going into math panic.

[slam]

Michael Kent
Des Moines, IA
College student


$8K According to the Pythagorean theorem, if two legs of a right triangle measure 3 and 4 inches, the third side must be how long?
A. 3.5 inches
B. 5 inches
C. 7 inches
D. 12 inches

It was pleasant to see somebody figure out an equation in his head -- even a simple one -- without going into math panic.

Agreed, but he left his logic behind on the Moonlight question. I'd never heard of the show, yet, given the level of the clue, I would just have gone for it.

[NellyLunatic1980]

$100 The reality TV show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” stars five men who are all what?
A. Senior citizens
B. Athletes
C. Gay
D. Republican senators

D! D! D! IT'S D!

$200 Which of these phrases is commonly used to describe a fast runner?
A. Fleet of arm
B. Fleet of foot
C. Fleet of ear
D. Fleet of nose

Larry Craig is fleet of foot as well.

$300 Which of the following was the name of an all-you-can-eat promotion at Red Lobster?
A. Perpetual Pasta
B. Tacos A Go Go
C. Chicken Ad Infinitum
D. Endless Crab

Eliot Spitzer got that from his hookers, I believe.

Nihil obstat®

[earendel]

Michael Kent
Des Moines, IA
College student

$2K The 2007 CBS drama “Moonlight” centers on a private investigator who is also a what?
A. Drag queen
B. Computer hacker
C. Priest
D. Vampire

ATA

4% A. Drag queen
4% B. Computer hacker
6% C. Priest
86% D. Vampire

Michael said maybe he didn't watch as much TV as he should have. I watched this show and was sorry that it got cancelled.

$8K According to the Pythagorean theorem, if two legs of a right triangle measure 3 and 4 inches, the third side must be how long?
A. 3.5 inches
B. 5 inches
C. 7 inches
D. 12 inches

horn

Michael will return for tomorrow’s show.

Meredith stumbled over the pronunciation of "Pythagorean" and Michael said it for her.

Once again a nihil obstat® stack so far. Let's see what the next day brings.

[peacock2121]

What a great stack - for me, anyway.

Surprising that an 'easy' math question would be worth 8K.

[MarleysGh0st]

Surprising that an 'easy' math question would be worth 8K.

But how often do we see contestants panic and reach for lifelines whenever there's a requirement to do math? Michael was a rare one, to be able to just go ahead and do the math without any fuss or bother.

[frogman042]

Agreed, but he left his logic behind on the Moonlight question. I'd never heard of the show, yet, given the level of the clue, I would just have gone for it.

Not sure I agree with you about him leaving the logic behind on the Moonlight question. At that level of question I think if falls into 2 categories
- 1 - popular enough to be known by a lot of people and
- 2 - obscure but can be reasoned out by both hints in the clue and exclusion of distractors.

In this case it is CBS primetime show - not an obscure off-hour cable show - so it falls into category 1. My assumption now would be the BAM writers may just figure a lot of people have seen it, so there is no implicit hint in the clue itself that needs to be provided. At this point the question now becomes did the creators of the show name it to give a clue to the answer? There is no reason to believe the show creators will always do this - true many shows titles play off of the content of the show - but not all shows. In this case 'Moonlight' does have a 'vampire' aspect - but it also has the 2nd job aspect. Also, think of the Bruce Willis/Cybel Shepard hit 'Moonlighting' which had nothing to do vampires. Are some of the distractors plausable? Sure it could be a priest doing a 2nd job at night or even a transvestite.

I would (having personally never heard of the show and keeping the above analysis to myself) would have done a ATA without providing any info from my chair. Now lets consider 3 possible outcomes of the ATA:
- a - clear spike
- b - 2 strong candidates and 2 very weak responses
- c - roughly equal split across 3 or 4 choices

If it is 'a' then assume it is popularly known and go with the audience response.

If it is 'b' - then either use the logic of moonlight/vampire (if that is one of the choices) or burn a 50/50 if the moonlight/vampire is not one of the 2.

For 'c' then it is not a well enough known show and assume that there must be a secondary clue in the question - go with the moonlight/vampire logiic.

In summary - I don't want to miss a question because of hole in some popular entertainment knowledge that my ATA would know. So I would use it because at this point the value of the ATA lifeline is much less then the cost of a missed question. The ATA lifeline is really only good for at most 2 or 3 more questions anyway - having not seen the show it would have been an easy call for me to burn it. I think he did the right move.

[LarryCraig]

$100 The reality TV show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” stars five men who are all what?
A. Senior citizens
B. Athletes
C. Gay
D. Republican senators

This show is run by a bunch of commie liberal elitists. How dare they defame me and my very heterosexual friends in the Senate, who are not gay.

[ulysses5019]

$100 The reality TV show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” stars five men who are all what?
A. Senior citizens
B. Athletes
C. Gay
D. Republican senators

This show is run by a bunch of commie liberal elitists. How dare they defame me and my very heterosexual friends in the Senate, who are not gay.

Did you have them design your senate bathroom?

[slam]

I agree with parts of your logic, but not all of it.

First, I don't quite buy your premise that simply because it's a CBS primetime show it is popular enough that lots of people will know it is true for this particular show. Ratings and critical reception were poor (I just looked this stuff up) and the show has been cancelled after it's first season (though that was after taping). At the time of taping (probably in Oct. or Nov.), it was a brand new show. I don't know how much promotion it had, but obviously not enough for me to remember it.

As the level clue, I think that the Moonlight=vampire (at least from those choices) works well enough for me. You certainly do have a good point about the ATA not having much future value particularly since the middle of each stack is unlikely to have more than one question like this (pop culture type which the audience is likely to help on). In practice, I could see myself actually using the ATA and then kicking myself later because of my case of HotSeatitis.

If you do go with the ATA, I'm not convinced about your decision if "b" happens. If there are 2 strong candidates and Vampire is one of them, doesn't that suggest that the correct choice is the other one? Vampire has the reasons we've already mentioned to attract votes. The other choice probably attracted it's similar number of votes because it's actually the right answer.

[frogman042]

I agree with parts of your logic, but not all of it.

... snipped some of the response ...

If you do go with the ATA, I'm not convinced about your decision if "b" happens. If there are 2 strong candidates and Vampire is one of them, doesn't that suggest that the correct choice is the other one? Vampire has the reasons we've already mentioned to attract votes. The other choice probably attracted it's similar number of votes because it's actually the right answer.

Good point regarding case 'b' - again it is so dependent on the circumstances of the response, but I agree, that might be a good strategy - eliminate the ones that fall for the distractor and select the other choice under the assumption that they really know - I like that.

Since I'm in the pool I've been going through the archive of old shows and I find that in general I get to the 2nd safe level 25K/32K most of the time with most of my lifelines - usually burning only the AKA on a pop-culture question. Every so often (more often then I like) I get burned and go down to 1K because of questions like these - where I use logic for the right answer when I have no direct knowledge but get burned by the distractor - my sense of play now is to be a little cautious in that area, use the ATA since A- it is most likely they know the answer and B it is less useful later in the game. So I would have totally done what Michael Kent did - based on my practicing to date.

I had a two-fold reason for my response - one was to defend his choice - I really don't think he left his logic behind on using his ATA - I think it was a reasonable chioce. The second reason was to open a discussion on my thinking - is it a good strategy - does it make sense - are there any pitfalls, etc?

Since I'm new to this board I'm also curious if there are any other threads that discuss general strategy and what to use when as one climbs the ladder?

Thanks.

[slam]

Certainly going through stacks and figuring out what works best for you makes a lot of sense. No one knows your strengths and weaknesses better than you do.

[KillerTomato]

Slam, if you were a CSI fan, you were inundated with promos for "Moonlight" from June through November last year. It's as if the Eye put about 90% of their eggs into that basket last year. Then there was the writers strike, and just about every new series fell of the side of the earth, since there weren't enough episodes to repeat. I'm curious to see how just-over-the-bubble or even well-received shows fare when the new season starts...will we have lost our "Pushing Daisies" obsession forever? I was personally glad to see a couple of new episodes of my personal favorite new show of the recently-ended season, "Reaper" before summer. But "Daisies" for examle just pretty much shut down (probably because of special effects issues) until September.