Given how much I enjoy “knowing a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff,” you’d think I would be religiously following the Jeopardy “Greatest of All Time” (GOAT) Tournament, but I have to admit I wasn’t. I was in to Jeopardy back in the day when they faced off against IBM’s Watson computer and the computer just destroyed everybody. But in the interviews afterward the champion, I think it was Ken Jennings then, too, said something that changed my view of the game. He said, “Anybody that’s up there usually knows most of the answers, it’s a matter of being fastest on the buzzer. And nobody was faster than the computer.” He’s not wrong. Once it becomes obvious that the game is more about details like that and less about who knows more, it’s not nearly as interesting.
That doesn’t mean, though, that we don’t like showing off what we know! Given the chance I don’t mind having it on in the background, just to test what I know but also to add to that knowledge for next time.
Sure enough, what came up as the Final Jeopardy question last night? Our dear dear friend Shakespeare;
He has 272 speeches, the most of any non-title character in a Shakespeare tragedy.
Hat tip to @Bardfilm who actually pointed this out to me, by the way. I wasn’t watching.
Nor, I will admit, did I know the answer. It seems obvious in hindsight but off the top of my head I immediately went to the histories, not realizing that “tragedy” was right there in the clue. I could think of plenty of people that it wasn’t – Polonius, Richard III, Falstaff … but it took him patiently walking me through the clue before I got it.
But I’m not telling the answer, I’ll let you folks work it out in the comments. I’m sure some know it already (whether you saw the episode or not), but some will probably have to guess.
Going to take a punt on Iago…. Close?
I was so thrown by the use of “speeches”. Are they counting every time he speaks? Or lines of a certain length?
And there was much debating, Andy. First we thought, “They meant lines.” But then people argued about what is a line? Because some would say that Iago has over a thousand lines.
Actors would say “How many cues does he have?”
Basically they’re counting every time it’s his turn to speak.
And yes, Rob H, the answer is Iago. 🙂