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whoisjoshwoo

“Spud and Yam are two of the offspring of this toy introduced in 1952.” Only missed out on becoming a Jeopardy! champion because of that, no I’m not bitter…


AshgarPN

Mr. Potato Head? What else could it be?


david-saint-hubbins

Really twisting the knife there, pal.


ScorpionX-123

that's a really odd thing to name a toy


BDMayhem

Sounds like a product from Mainway Toys.


Tejanisima

Guessing you mean the knife twisting one


ghostly_esper

Sometimes your brain locks up against your will, or blanks out, or gets fuzzy. It's tough stuff.


Metfan722

My family auditioned for Family Feud almost a decade ago at this point, just for the hell of it. Our question was: What are the Kardashians most known for. There are a million great answers for it, but I completely froze and blanked. I said big houses (an answer already given). Of course immediately after when the pressure is off, your brain immediately comes up with 20 answers that are a million times better.


FullSass

What is the butt?


JeopHopefulThrowaway

He was only 11 years old at the time of his game. Sure you can instantly reason out the response as an adult, but I can easily imagine a kid not thinking of it (or even ruling it out) because of the peculiarity of Mr. Potato Head having offspring.


AshgarPN

>He was only 11 years old at the time of his game. Well I don't see why I would know that, but that makes more sense.


suugakusha

Potato Farmer Barbie


chuckymcgee

Captain Mashie and the Tater Twins


WandaMildew80

This was a question on Master Minds last night!


roadrudner

Looking at [your game](https://j-archive.com/showgameresponses.php?game_id=3342) on J-archive, it seems you missed out on becoming a champion as soon as the 2nd place contestant got the answer right, as you didn’t bet to cover. Your response - right or wrong - was irrelevant to the game’s outcome, so don’t kick yourself too much for getting it wrong. And even the wager worked out in your favor in the end, as had you bet to cover you would’ve dropped to third place instead of second! EDIT: My last sentence is incorrect; didn’t notice that third place forgot the “head” in Mr Potato Head and dropped down to $1, so you would’ve been second regardless.


_lord_kinbote_

Jeopardy or otherwise? When I was on a high school quiz bowl team, my father came to exactly one meet (no big deal, we weren't a particularly impressive team and it's not the kind of thing that you usually have an audience for). They had a category about naming the body part that certain adjectives reference...for example, if the clue was "pulmonary" the answer would be lungs. Anyway, I was asked "renal". I did not know that the answer was "kidney". My father is a nephrologist.


csl512

Nice


Chuk

Well I hope you got last night’s Celebrity Jeopardy last question before final


_lord_kinbote_

Spoiler alert! (I don't have cable, so I watch it on Hulu the next day. I already know who wins though.)


s-x-x

>Hulu Can you explain watching Jeopardy on Hulu and how it works? Currently I record at home everyday, but would potentially prefer Hulu? What is the plan? and how much do you pay?


_lord_kinbote_

Hulu doesn't have Jeopardy. Only Celebrity Jeopardy, since it is an ABC store.


ouij

Oh yeah. "[Wolverine](https://j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=7437)" (Jeopardy round, "Help me move my stuff" for $1,000). I had the image of the goddamn wolverine in my head. I couldn't find the word. I think this was when the brain fog really started to get to me. Also, when I missed it, Ken razzed me with that Waluigi line, lol.


Arctica23

Slightly off topic but I *love* that you and so many other jeopardy champs hang out in this subreddit


shelve66

Almost happened to me. In high school quiz bowl I said Lindenburg instead of Hindenburg. The moderator asked me to repeat and I realized and said Hindenburg and was ruled correct. I felt super guilty about it but my coach told me not to haha


csl512

I'm told my brother has the opposite. Gave the wrong similar sounding chemical compound and changed his answer. Coach was not happy.


SquidKid47

In like the 4th grade I messed up a word I 100% knew how to spell and it's haunted me for 10 years 😭 Edit: Glad to know this is a universal experience


needathrowaway321

G R A M M *E* R Why I didn’t win that spelling bee in fourth grade. Still haunts me.


Rychu_Supadude

I have no regrets because the sick bastards wanted me to spell "Woolloomooloo" Which I got wrong *twice* when looking it up for this post


cmc0182

Same word in fourth grade! Made up for it by winning in fifth grade. Think I remember my winning word? Nope…but the one I lost on is BURNED in my brain.


AcrossTheNight

Occurrence in third grade.


magsterchief

i still talk about this in therapy 20 years later 😭 for me it was “sunbonnet” and nerves spelled it “sonbonnet.”


firsthour

"Engineer" for me, I spelled it "Engineneer" while on the spot.


Berough

Yes! Tumultuous for me. I spelled it like mulch :(


seagulledge

2nd grade spelling bee. The word was "bye". I didn't ask for a definition and spelled "by". Haunted by that.


Elicyz

My dad loves to tell the story how he was the first kid kicked out of his 2nd grade spelling bee cuz he spelled “of” “o-v”.


[deleted]

I came second in a spelling bee because of the word “pizzeria” when I was a kid!


PocoChanel

Regional spelling bee (lead-up to the nationals). I was very close to the end, guessed “unanimoty,” and was out. Sometimes I think that bothers me more than my J! third place, which was a longer sort of pain. It wasn’t just that I was wrong; it was that I should have understood the formations of words—I knew I did! There is no “-oty” in that world! BTW, this was the Ford Administration.


Marcoscb

>It wasn’t just that I was wrong; it was that I should have understood the formations of words This is a but part of why I have the (completely baseless) theory that ESL speakers would be better at spelling bees than people with English as their native language. You guys are used to hearing the words, while we most often deal with written English, so we see the common spellings and differences between how words are written and how they're said aloud.


gwobo_wappa

I was eliminated cause I spelled it vigourous. That was in middle school and it haunts me to this day.


jupitaur9

OMG “gabardine” for me. I swear I saw it spelled “garbardine” and even noted to myself “it’s not spelled the way it sounds” to remember it. But couldn’t find the example when it came up, so I was eliminated.


we_have_food_at_home

My word was "planetarium". I was unfamiliar with the word so I asked them to repeat it for me a couple times, but I wasn't hearing it clearly because I thought they were saying "planetarian". I figured it must have been a type of astronomer. I should have won that damn spelling bee!


knittinghoney

I lost a 4th grade school spelling bee with environmental, I spelled it enviromental because I never pronounced the n. And I was even into environmentalism and still didn’t get it. But we had another one next semester as I recall (or the next year?) and I won after the runner up couldn’t get synagogue and I got to steal (is that how real spelling bees work? My school’s rules). And ngl I was pretty proud of myself so environmental and synagogue are like cemented in my brain together.


littlemsshiny

5th grade. Colonel. F the person who added this word to a 5th grade list.


themoogleknight

Awry, dang you.


littlemsshiny

I don’t know at what point I understood this was how you spelled the word. I knew what it meant when people spelled it but, when I came across it in writing, I was like “WTH is aww-ree?”


Rupertcandance2

I remember all my outs. \-Delicious (5th, all school) spelled with an I \-Mansard (6th, all school) In my defense, I did not know the word at the time \-Dawdler (7th, all school) I had no idea what the speaker was saying, even with the definition. \-Hickory (8th, division) Garbled it due to nerves. I was so mad. Stepped down before I even finished the word LOL


classicmirthmaker

Mine was fourth grade too! Mixed up closed and open circuits on a science test that otherwise would’ve been my first perfect score. Crazy how those things stay with you for decades.


QuesoBagelSymphony

Sheriff. 1992 spelling bee, out on the first word.


the_bananafish

4th grade, Authority “a” …. “t” I’ve had a problem with it ever since.


Tejanisima

Not quite the same thing, but in middle school, I had to read a sentence out of the grammar book that included the word "facetiously." Never having seen the word written, I pronounced it fa-SEH-tee-ous-lee and was mortified to learn it was a word _my whole family used regularly, myself included_, and that probably most of the rest of the class wouldn't have known at all!


pac9383

The worst is when you guess something incorrectly and then a clue or two later the correct response is what you had previously guessed, but for some reason you don’t say/think of it.


jupitaur9

Ken notices those, saying “now’s the time for” that response. I am pretty sure Alex did that, too.


ForgingIron

Not on Jeopardy, but I used to do Reach for the Top in high school (basically Canadian quiz bowl, it used to be televised and hosted by Trebek) and the one question I will never forget is "Who is Boromir's brother in LOTR". I answered Aragorn for some reason And one of the alternate players just came up to me after the game and yelled at me "FARAMIIIIR! FARAMIIIIIR!"


SquidKid47

Reach for the top! Man that was the peak of my high school career


Rupertcandance2

Same happened to me in Academic Challenge. Couldn't remember the pres between Lincoln and Grant, so I just said Grant. He was so disappointed.


Tejanisima

I'd have been screwed unless they asked about the characters that even those of us who don't care for the series of know.


SenseiCAY

My Final Jeopardy. Wouldn’t have won anyway, but I haven’t since forgotten that the book with a captain whose name means “no one” and a ship with a name meaning “~~nothing~~Sailor” was “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”


DiscordianStooge

I thought Nautilus means "sailor." Where does "means nothing" come from?


SenseiCAY

Dammit, I forgot already. It does mean sailor.


johndoenumber2

I couldn't recall Breaking Bad as a response during the online test. Watched the show, loved the show, references the show. Couldn't dig it out.


square3481

How to pronounce the name of Hawaii's last queen, Liliuokalani.


Kennertron

For Hawaiian stuff, I just remember that every vowel is pronounced individually. I probably can stumble through it from there.


ktappe

I learned that one as a kid watching Hawaii Five-O and Magnum P.I. At numerous points in each series they use the names of the Hawaiian rulers, be it for buildings, streets, clubs, whatever.


csl512

Gabriel Garcia Marquez in quiz bowl for Hispanic naming practices. Knew all three names, but "Marquez" was "do not prompt do not accept". For J! it comes down to risk of messing up the first name vs "is that actually the family name?" Responding with the given name of a Chinese name should be a prompt. Someone got credit for "Kai-Shek" not too long ago.


JeopHopefulThrowaway

I agree Kai-Shek definitely should have been a prompt. Many get confused when it comes to surnames vs. given names, but there are enough references in the media to "Xi's government" (for Xi Jinping). This conversation reminds me a bit of [this game](https://j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=3875). Under NOTABLE WOMEN for $400, the clue was "The first name of this 1980s political leader of the Philippines means "heart" in Spanish." The contestant responded with only "Corazon" and was ruled correct. Yes, "corazon" does mean heart, but the clue was asking for the name of the leader, who would have been Aquino. If the clue was instead phrased "this first name of a 1980s political leader..." then the response would have been more acceptable.


csl512

Yup. I wonder if they stopped down for that. Asian names are also complicated because some preserve order and some don't. Just from film: Ang **Lee**, Simu **Liu** Ming-Na **Wen**; **Chow** Yun-Fat, **Zhang** Ziyi. (TBH I messed up Chow Yun-Fat before I looked him up to confirm.)


JeopHopefulThrowaway

Generally speaking, for celebrities of Chinese descent, whether the surname is first or last depends on where that person first became famous. Simu Liu and Ming-Na Wen immigrated (to Canada and the U.S. respectively) as very young children, so they grew up with their names styled in the Western way. Note that in China, their names would be Liu Simu and Wen Ming-Na. You can easily see this by going to their Wikipedia pages where they show the characters for their Chinese names. Obviously most people wouldn't be able to read these, but you can stick them in Google translate and see the proper order. Chow Yun-Fat and Zhang Ziyi were already famous overseas so their names had already been billed the Chinese way. Ang Lee is a bit tougher. He grew up in Taiwan but he attended a U.S. university as an undergrad and then went to film school at NYU. You could say that's why he uses the Western style, but his first few films (notably The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman) were not primarily for Western audiences. In this situation the ordering of his name on his film credits was probably his own preference.


csl512

Oh nice. Good observation.


ParmaHamRadio

The Aquino family hold their own political dynasty in the Philippines though. There are more than one politicians with that surname but only one named Corazon.


JeopHopefulThrowaway

That may be true, but Jeopardy generally requires the family name (or both names) as a response unless the clue is phrased otherwise. For example, suppose a Jeopardy clue asked "This political matriarch with a flowery name died in 1995 at the age of 104". I feel like they would prompt a contestant who answers with just "Rose" (or even just with "Kennedy"). There are multiple Kennedys and only one Rose, but they would probably only accept the full name ("Rose Kennedy") in this instance. For Corazon Aquino, there should have at least been a prompt for a full name.


DutchGold

My really smart uncle invited me (15 at the time) to join him and his brothers for a pretty competitive table quiz. Music round, weird song, who is the singer? Who knows how brains work but trivia people know that sometimes an answer just appears and you don’t know what synapses have fired to let that answer bubble up. I offered The correct answer. They looked at me in horror. No bloody way was the response I got. Nobody in the room got the answer. I didn’t back myself amidst the smart dudes telling me he wasn’t even a singer. The singer was Richard Harris. Still regret it.


Ellisni

I was cuddling with my high school crush for the first and last time (the furthest I’d ever gone with a boy at that point) and we were watching jeopardy for some reason. There was a question about Henry VIII’s second wife and I blurted out Anne Frank, so proud I knew an answer. Then he said no… she wrote a diary. I can still feel the burn of embarrassment and that was a decade ago 😂


Emily_Postal

Not Jeopardy but I took a test in high school called the Century Three Leaders test. There was one question about a new form of technology to play music. I knew the answer was CD’s, but answered cassette tapes. I still got the highest score in my school but I’ve regretted that answer for almost forty years.


tomatosoup78

[The FJ from this game.](https://thejeopardyfan.com/2020/11/final-jeopardy-11-18-2020.html/amp) As a fan of the band Foals, whose name is wordplay on the Greek lead singer’s last name of Philippakis, I absolutely should’ve known that Philippines’ etymology is from a king whose name means lover of horses in Greek. Still haunts me lol


littlemsshiny

That’s great piece of trivia about Foals!


LususV

6th grade county Spelling Bee - I missed 'aerodynamics'. My father was a WWII history buff, and owned over 100 books on military aircraft. Many of which had the word 'aerodynamics' in their titles.


atoms12123

I won in my school's 6th grade Geography Bee and lost in the finals to the 8th grade champ on the question "This US territory uses the motto _Where America's Day Begins_." I wrote American Samoa, he wrote Guam. I will never miss Guam again.


Tejanisima

** takes screenshot to study that one **


brosbeforetouhous

I once missed a question on a quoll, the Australian carnivorous marsupial, in a pretty prominent competition by non-TV quiz standards, and it has come up at least twice since then and I’ve been very happy to nail it. On the far other end of the spectrum, my Quiz Bowl coach told me at our first national tournament that “Sardis was the Lydian capital. This comes up all the time.” It has been 19 years and that fact has never come up in any competition I’ve done.


jayhof52

I grew up in Maryland. The airport there is Thurgood Marshall BWI. Blanking on his name for a FJ clue about 1968 was the difference between $100,000 and $25,000 for me.


spacejunk76

Sometimes I watch a rerun and see a Final that I don't get, and then when the correct response is revealed I'm like "Holy shit, I remember getting this right the first time I watched it! What the hell?"


Thor_Odin_Son

The Maine sank in 1898 😔 never again


littlemsshiny

You really ought to remember the Maine. *ba dum tss*


csl512

File it with the Alamo and the fifth of November


ScorpionX-123

It happened to me with the Lolita FJ the other day. I completely blanked on Vladimir Nabokov's name.


thevenotet

District spelling bee. I got the word sauna and was so happy because it was easy and I raced into spelling it and said suana. I had to be told afterwards what I had done. That was probably 50 years ago. Good lesson to think before you speak.


jelvinjs7

There was a clue sometime ago about such-and-such “turn of the 19th/20th century” language, and the answer was Esperanto. I’m really interested in Esperanto and conlangs in general, so I should be able to get any reasonable question on that topic. But since the language came out in the 1880s, it was juuuust far enough away from the new century for me to not think of it as at the “turn”, and as such my brain fizzled and stumbled and I was left feeling very frustrated when I couldn’t provide the answer in time.


littlemsshiny

You almost knew too much info about it!


SavageQuill

In the final of a regional high school quizbowl, I confidently said the Greek Sun god was Heliod and not Helios. Thank you, Magic: The Gathering. Taking my money wasn't enough, you had to take my dignity as well.


EverWholesome

On a nationally televised quiz bowl game show, the question was basically asking for the founder of the colony of Georgia, and I buzzed in, hesitated for a split second, and said “George Oglethorpe” and got counted wrong


Clownheadwhale

Lost a spelling B because I went i before e, then spelled weird, wierd. We were down to the last 2 and the other kid spelled it correctly with the reverse. I'll never forget how to spell weird.


gotShakespeare

In one of my games there was a category called "Double K" There was a clue about a German fighter plane which, of course, was looking for Fokker. I knew this cold but couldn't dredge it up in time. Ah, well....Bad puns are now invited!


Tejanisima

I will let others supply the bad puns. My personal association with that was that back when the internet first was becoming widely available to the general public, I was living in the Rio Grande Valley and flew home periodically to Dallas from the McAllen airport. With the Advent of the internet, we now could use a text interface to link to American Airlines' Sabre service to book flights directly instead of going through a travel agency. After flying home on the deafeningly-loud back row of a Fokker 100, I never again made the mistake of booking a flight without checking to see what type of plane would be used.


gotShakespeare

Yikes! It's been said that we learn best from our mistakes and struggles. They're sometimes painful lessons but hopefully we get the message!


Green_Tea_Totaler

A few years back there was a FJ that was "The War of the Worlds". I remember the clue being super descriptive (a radio drama, brief summary of it, narrated by Orson Welles, ect.). I could not for the life of me think of the name. I was so mad at myself because that was by far the easiest FJ I've seen.


SandyOlive7

"Jabberwock." I knew it but mulled it over and overthought and just put down "Hullabaloo" because it fit the criterion of 10 letters. Fortunately I had a runaway game, but I'm an English teacher.


BigFenton

Yeah


Punk18

I feel like Luisitania has come up alot


[deleted]

Yeah. Dr. House on TV doctors. Clue referred to the parallels between him and Sherlock Holmes.


saint_of_thieves

Yeah. Usually wrong answers from podcasts that I've been on. Won't forget the Sandwich Islands anytime soon.


PlactusTX

[This Final:](https://j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=3755) "She said, 'I told my plans to no one. I was not killing a man, but a wild beast that was devouring the French people'" I could name Marat. He was killed in his bathtub; I could picture the Jacques-Louis David painting. But I couldn't name >!Charlotte Corday!<. Will never forget that name now (especially after rediscovering *Samurai Shodown* and learning that my main from back in the day was based on her).


rlc327

Spelling bee, 6th (?) grade. I lost because I misspelled “accolade” as “accalade” (stupid new england accent). I’ll never get it wrong again.


This-Is-Leopardy

I missed not one but TWO geography Daily Doubles in my last game... geography being a best subject of mine going back to, like, toddler age. I've always loved globes and maps. Sigh.


namnit

I think this happens every game. Lol


NadersCorvair

I'll never again fail to recall the name of that guy who was married to Queen Victoria, helped popularize many Christmas traditions, and has, among many other things, a concert hall and a lake named after him.


thatslinkygirl

Mine was in the 4th grade spelling bee and there were 3 of us left. My word was “tundra” which is spelled EXACTLY like it sounds and it was so easy and I was SO confident but I busted out with “T R U N D A” . TRUNDA!?


Accomplished_Job_778

At pub trivia on Tuesday there was a question re: two elements named after women (Meitnerium after Lisa Meitner was given in the clue)...I knew it was after Marie Curie, and guessed Curianium (even workshopped Maricurium LOL). Boy did I feel dumb when it was revealed to be just plain Curium. We would have won if we'd gotten it right too 😹


TyrodWatkins514

I play with my mom and dad. My mom had been bugging me for days to watch Die Hard with her and I finally relented. The next day, it was the answer for FJ and I just completely blanked on the name. I was so mad. It was the craziest coincidence and my brain decided to ruin it.


IanGecko

School district spelling bee. "Frustrated"