Gameshow

Wokeness ended my backroom Jeopardy! habit

In May I got a Facebook message from a guy named Mikey Walsh, who I’d met once at a trivia night at Mister Tramps, one of the diviest dive bars in Austin, Texas. He told me he’d been running a quiz called “Buzz In Buzzed,” which was exactly like Jeopardy!. Several of the regular players had been on Jeopardy! like me, and he was looking for more contestants to play. “This is not a business,” he said. “It’s free to play, and there’s no prizes. It’s just nerds playing trivia for fun.” This wasn’t the kind of offer I turn down. The opportunity to play fake Jeopardy! in the back of the bar for no money? Sign me up, I said. A couple of weeks later, I went to Buzz In Buzzed.

jeopardy

Still the best thing on TV: Apple TV+’s Slow Horses reviewed

From our UK edition

Slow Horses is the best thing on television. And it’s now so successful and popular it can afford to launch series three with a sequence worthy of James Bond: Istanbul location budget; spectacular chase sequences involving cars and speedboats with some thrillingly dangerous manoeuvres round a huge container vessel; a beautiful, immaculately dressed female agent meeting (spoiler alert, though to be fair you can see this one coming a mile off) a tragically sticky end. Except it’s better than Bond – not that difficult these days, it must be said – because it is missing all that grim portentousness, over-earnestness and pomposity. The cars are beaten up and gadget-free; the stunts look plausible; and the agents behave like real human beings.

Jeopardy! is in trouble

THIS...iiiiiis Jeopardy! And it’s time now for today’s final answer. This pack of gibbering monsters is witlessly tearing down everything that’s good and decent about our society. What is us? All of us. The vicious and grievance-obsessed people we’ve become. Jeopardy! is that rarest of American traditions, one that really hasn’t changed. The quiz show has remained a granite bulwark against the pop-cultural tides: same sober presentation and aesthetic, same challenging questions and unforgiving pace. There are no blazing graphics, no CGI car chases through downtown Montpelier during the ‘State Capitals’ category. There hasn’t even been a crossover with the Real Housewives — ‘Bitch, the largest fossil-fuels producer in Central Asia isn’t Uzbekistan!

jeopardy