Current Events > Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions controversy [spoilers through game 3]

(+) Yeah! (+)

After two games in the first-to-three wins format, Amy and Andrew are tied with 1 win each.
Tonight had a good game through Double Jeopardy, with Sam dominating later in the round but Andrew doubling up on a Daily Double late in the round, putting the scores going into Final at $14800 for Sam, $13200 for Andrew and $2400 for Amy, who lost $5K on the other DJ Daily Double.

Then we get to Final Jeopardy with the category The New Testament, and they give this clue:

Paul's letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations

According to the show, Amy is correct with Hebrews, while Sam responded with Romans and Andrew guessed "Philippiaes". Andrew made a small wager to keep Amy locked out, giving him his 2nd win since Sam of course wagered enough to cover Andrew with a correct response.

EXCEPT... 1) Different sources give different counts as to how many Old Testament references are included in each book, with some saying Hebrews has more and others saying Romans has more, but even more egregiously,
2) Hebrews was written anonymously and it's disputed who the author actually was many biblical scholars agree it likely wasn't Paul and a clue from a game in June of last year even points this out (see the $1000 clue on The Bible from https://j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=7036).

Since this is a Tournament final and not a regular game there doesn't really seem like there's much they can do to rectify this after the fact. If they'd caught it at the time they most likely would've thrown it out and re-did Final with a different clue. As it stands Sam seems to have potentially gotten screwed out of a win and Andrew is now one game away from taking the whole thing instead of two.

It's most commonly attributed to Paul and whether or not its authorship is disputed doesn't change the answer. But I understand what you mean in terms of that detail contributing to it not being a great question. In general I didn't think it was a good question because Final Jeopardy questions usually have a few different hints to lead you to the answer, with some general knowledge. This question kind of just had the 1 hint that "Hebrew people would probably want to hear more about Old Testament stuff" and so if you were vaguely familiar with the different epistles you might guess that that would be the answer but it wouldn't be an answer that almost anyone would feel very confident in.

I kind of doubt Sam had a good understanding of which letters had which number of Old Testament quotes and he was probably throwing out a kind of random guess on which one it might be. I don't know to what degree the references are disputed but if that's true then that's the more egregious part I think.

Just not a good clue in general, let alone a FJ in arguably the most anticipated ToC Finals ever. Jeopardy needs to do better, and I say that as a huge fan.

Jeopardy material should not be ambiguous, equivocal or debatable. If they insisted on this FJ, they could have easily rectified it by wording it as such: "Either of the two New Testament epistles with the most Old Testament quotations, both credited to Paul, though the authorship of one is disputed."

This would've given Sam his due win.

Kuuko posted...

It's most commonly attributed to Paul and whether or not its authorship is disputed doesn't change the answer. But I understand what you mean in terms of that detail contributing to it not being a great question. In general I didn't think it was a good question because Final Jeopardy questions usually have a few different hints to lead you to the answer, with some general knowledge. This question kind of just had the 1 hint that "Hebrew people would probably want to hear more about Old Testament stuff" and so if you were vaguely familiar with the different epistles you might guess that that would be the answer but it wouldn't be an answer that almost anyone would feel very confident in.

I kind of doubt Sam had a good understanding of which letters had which number of Old Testament quotes and he was probably throwing out a kind of random guess on which one it might be. I don't know to what degree the references are disputed but if that's true then that's the more egregious part I think.

Actually I went to the jeopardy reddit and read everyone going crazy about it and understand why the authorship part is the more egregious aspect. Lots of people claiming they watched at home, considered it could be Hebrews but knew the authorship isn't clear (and depending on who you ask the author is at the very least NOT Paul) and so they eliminated that choice and went with Romans or another letter that's definitively written by Paul. Yeah it's a pretty bad mess-up.

Like I said, it would even be a pretty bad question even without these 2 mistakes though. Final Jeopardy questions typically leave more hints that general knowledge would guide you toward and even if these details were correct, the one hint is still a pretty bad one.