This may just be a DC thing, but all this week on jeopardy the contestants are famous writers and political types. Last night was Bob Woodward (Go! Washington Post! Go! Go! Go!), Peggy Noonan, and Tucker Carlson.

Despite my cheering, Mr. Woodward came in third. Sigh.

BUT they had a ballet thread -- "You should be in a ballet." They all did dismally. Peggy Noonan thought the ballet with a spindle in it was The Nutcracker. And Bob W did get the $2,000 question right -- who was Nureyev's partner in "Romeo and Juliet" (Margot Fonteyn).

Hey, I don't know if Tucker Carlson is OLD enough to remember Fonteyn/Nureyev firsthand - Woodward is.

Thanks for the warning, Alexandra. With the likes of Peggy Noonan and Tucker Carlson on Jeopardy, I'll make sure to avoid the show this week.

That was yesterday's news. I couldn't watch it tonight, so I don't know who was on, but the guests change, and it's a mix of righties and lefties. The audience is quite, well, partisan.

Of course, we can't count on a ballet category every night, but my mother, who is a diehard Jeopardy fan, says that there are often ballet questions.

Well, Fonteyn was the answer they wanted, but I saw a R&J (Nureyev's own for LaScala) where Nureyev's Juliet was Fracci, and Fonteyn was Lady C.

One day, while walking my late dog, Loretta, we were stopped by someone who, just the previous evening, was a Jeopardy clue: Jerry Robbins. The category was Ballet, and I think the ballet in question was Tyl Eulenspiegel. Well, actually, it was my dog he stopped. (I'd already learned the hard way that when he started a conversation with her, I was not invited to join in. ) So I never got to tell him. Wonder if anyone else did. :shrug:

If I remember correctly, Jeopardy included a question about Labanotation in the last year or so.

There are often ballet catagories on Jeopardy, unfortunately you rarely need to know anything about ballet to know the answer. Often they relate to the story that inspired the ballet, or some other non-balletic information. The question about Nureyev and Fonteyn was the exception to that rule though!

S.

Not doing what you love is neither good sense nor common sense.
- Daniel Nagrin

And for 2000 dollars, what did your dog say to Mr Robbins, Carbro?

In the form of a question: what is "Pant, pant, wag, wag"?

No small talk there, straight to the substance, you'll note.

Yesterday's Jeopardy had a hidden ballet category, the title or which escapes me, but that it had to do with the country of birth of the name given.
The five dancers ("answers") were, in order of difficulty (and I may have transposed nos. 3 & 4):

1) Rudolf Nureyev
2) Margot Fonteyn
3) Uday Shankar
4) Carla Fracci
5) Angel Corella

The first received a quick correct "question", USSR, while I was still spouting place names "Ufa, Russia, uh..... always reluctant to speak the letters "USSR" out loud.
The 3-day champion rang in with an incorrect question for the second (stating "France" as Fonteyn's birthplace). I suppose he may have gotten it right if they had presented her name as Margaret Hookham!
The third was answered correctly. Hard to miss, given the better-known success of Ravi or by drawing a logical conclusion from the sound of the name.
The 3-day champion also got the fourth correct, but I am 100% convinced it was because he deduced "Fracci" to be an Italian name. I am sure he'd never heard of Carla Fracci, the ballerina.
The fifth had no one ring in at all, not even to take a stab at it based on the Hispanic nature of the name. I guess there was just too much leeway for them, and no one wanted to lose money on a guess.

Color me disappointed, once again.

I'm sure I would have answered the Fonteyn question incorrectly and said China

Carlson might not be old enough to know Fonteyn/Nureyev firsthand, but that's no excuse. On the other hand, there are young pitchers today who have no clue who Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson are...

As with my Ufa, there's sometimes a danger in knowing too much, especially with Jeopardy ballet questions.


To confused readers who are not reading the whole thread, Tucker Carlson was a subject of the earlier posts on it, written four years ago. I chose to add to an apt thread rather than start a new one.

Well, he’s a pundit, not a dancer, so we can cut him some slack, I guess. It wouldn’t stun me that twentysomething pitchers (or any other young aspiring athletes) aren’t necessarily conversant with that much history – they’re too focused. I’m sure some of them have heard of Mathewson and Johnson, although they’re more likely to know the older players who were role models for them. Novak Djokovic probably hasn’t heard of Little Bill Johnston, but I’d not think any less of him for it.



I tune in only occasionally, but I think I may have seen that particular show.