Does Alex Trebek like things to be "neat and orderly?"

[Kurt Bray]

Michael Kotler (mek...@radix.net) wrote:
: Has anyone else here ever gotten the impression that Alex Trebek likes
: his game boards to be smooth-looking? Consider two of his shows:

: In the first season of his Jeopardy!, Trebek was always trying to
: "clear the board" and had a difficult time doing so. Indeed, in the
: original show with Art Fleming, I saw them clear the board exactly
: _once_, and they sounded the closing bell anyway. But today, clearing
: the Jeopardy! board seems to be the norm, with the exception of an
: occasional Double Jeopardy that doesn't complete. (Though I suspect
: that to fit everything in, they prune down unnecessary time in the
: editing room) Also, Trebek appears to be visually upset when a
: contestant, in an apparent desire to rack up points quickly, starts
: from the middle or bottom of a category, rather than from the top
: going down (A book titled "Imponderables" by David Feldman makes this
: observation as well.). Of course, it could be that he is afraid of a
: Daily Double with nothing to wager, at least in the first round.

When I played on Jeopardy I don't know whether Alex liked to clear the
board or not, but I certainly did. In the seven games I played, all
fourteen boards were cleared. But I was trying to play as fast as I
could, as were most of my opponents. You see fast players, and you see
slow players, but as far as I can tell none of this has anything to do
with Alex. Whether a board is cleared is determined during the
competition and not later on the editing room floor. Although if play
has been exceptionally fast you will see them roll the credits for a long
time to use up the left over minutes.

I haven't strictly kept track but I have the impression that since they
moved the interview back to after the first the commercial break that
fewer boards are cleared. If Alex gets carried away with the chit-chat
it cuts into playing time. When the chit-chat came after the Jeopardy
round was over this wasn't a problem.

Kurt Bray

: In Classic Concentration, if someone got a match with a wild card,
: Trebek would reveal the other square with that same prize. They never
: did that in the original Concentrations; as a result, the boards could
: never be totally cleared (unless perhaps a double wild card was
: called). However, IIRC, Classic Concentration had more than two wild
: cards on each board, so revealing both occurrances of the prize might
: have reduced the possiblity of a "collision", in which both
: contestants would have the same prize. (theoretically, this could
: have happened on the original Concentrations, but the odds would be
: rather slim with only two wild cards.)

: ----------------------------------------------------
: Michael E. Kotler
: mek...@radix.net