Final Jeopardy! 8/19, 8/21-8/22, 8/25-8/28 (or, I Am Falling Behind)

8/19

Category: State Capitals

Clue: One of the 2 state capitals whose name ends with the Greek word for "city."

Answer: Annapolis

Easy. Two of them got Annapolis, which is what I answered (the other possible answer being, of course, Indianapolis). The third kid was way off and thought it was Sacramento. He needs to spruce up his Greek. Socrates must be rolling around in his hemlock-infested grave.

8/21

Category: Famous Americans

Clue: In 1773 he wrote, "The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart."

Answer: Benjamin Franklin

This was another easy one, mostly because Benjamin Franklin was one of the few Americans who was actually writing anything at all -- let alone anything of any significance -- at that time. The concept of "American Literature" really didn't existed at such an early date. And one of my favorite things that Franklin ever wrote was the letter "Advice on the Choice of a Mistress." He argues that when choosing the right person to have an affair with, always pick an older woman over a younger girl. And he really does bring up some good points.

8/22

Category: U.S. Government History

Clue: This man cast the first tie-breaking vote in U.S. history.

Answer: John Adams.

I honestly didn't know. And I couldn't even come up with a guess in time. One of the contests just wrote down "Adams," but they couldn't accept it as a correct answer because there's two Adams' -- both John and then his son John Quincy Adams -- to distinguish from. Haha, she tried to get sneaky. And I always heard such amazing things about that John Adams TV series, but I never bothered watching it. This was mostly due to two reasons: 1) I don't have HBO, and 2) I didn't feel like it.

8/25

Category: American Thinkers

Clue: "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude," he wrote in a chapter on solitude in an 1854 work.

Answer: Henry David Thoreau

Easy.

And, theoretically, going out and living in a cabin on Walden pond to live deliberately and suck the marrow out of life and all that transcendental stuff truly is a beautiful pursuit. But unless I get internet access in the middle of the woods, there really is no practical use to it.

8/26

Category: The 7 Wonders of the World

Clue: Philo of Byzantium called it a ploughed field "above the heads of those who walk between the columns below."

Answer: Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

I had no idea. I only knew of 2 of the 7 Wonders of the World off the top of my head -- the Great Pyramid of Giza and the statue of Zeus at Olympia -- neither of which were the right answer. Whenever there's any kind of countdown (The Old Seven Wonders of the World, the New Seven Wonders of the World, AMC's 100 Greatest Movies, Rolling Stones' Top 100 albums of all-time, etc., etc.), I always sympathize with whoever and whatever just misses the cut. After all, there really isn't any considerable difference between #100 and #101. Somewhere, Stonehenge is fuming.

8/27

Category: U.S. Presidents

Clue: Only 50 years old when he left office, he was our nation's youngest ex-President.

Answer: Theodore Roosevelt.

I didn't know the answer and I didn't realize he was so young by the time his tenure ended. I thought it was going to be one of the useless Presidents, like, oh I don't know, Rutherford B. Hayes.


8/28

Category: Famous Austrians

Clue: The home on Vienna's Domgasse where he lived in hte 1780s was reopened amid fanfare in January 2006.

Answer: Mozart.

Ahh, I should've gotten that one. And I haven't seen Amadeus in a while.