JAQR - April 9, 2023
Marcus Garvey, polio vaccines, Swiss lakes, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and more...
Thank you for reading another issue of the Jeopardy Answer & Question Recap, or JAQR [“jacker”] for short. This recap focuses on the recent week (Monday 4/3 - Friday 4/7) of Jeopardy! episodes. It will include some Daily Doubles, Final Jeopardys, and Triple Stumpers. The first half of the recap will include just the clues so you can quiz yourself if you want. The second half will give you some (hopefully) interesting information about the clues and/or some related info.
DAILY DOUBLE #1
NATIONAL HEROES
A hero of this island nation where he was born, Marcus Garvey has been proposed to appear on its $100 bill
DAILY DOUBLE #2
ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
He worked to develop a flu vaccine before coming up with one for polio, declared safe on April 12, 1955
DAILY DOUBLE #3
LAKES & RIVERS
This alliterative Swiss body of water is also known as Lac des Quatre Cantons
DAILY DOUBLE #4
DE-COMPOSING
On March 25, 1918 the sun set on this "Moonlight" composer in Paris
FINAL JEOPARDY #1
20th CENTURY EPONYMS
A 1940 headline about this included "failure", "liability when it came to offense" & "stout hearts no match for tanks"
FINAL JEOPARDY #2
NOVELISTS
A 2012 book review noted subjects that "sparked his ire": capital punishment, big tobacco & "the plight of the unjustly convicted"
FINAL JEOPARDY #3
MOVIES OF THE '80s
Based on an off-Broadway play with just 3 characters, it won the Best Picture Oscar & the actors in all 3 roles were nominated
TRIPLE STUMPER #1
BE ARTHUR
In the 1920s, he began a successful mail order business to teach ballroom dancing; his dance centers can be found worldwide
TRIPLE STUMPER #2
& THEN THERE'S MOD
Mod style began in the late '50s; in the late '70s, its avatar was this band, led by Paul Weller
TRIPLE STUMPER #3
LIFE & DEATH IN LITERARY TITLES
Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of" this character is the story of an inmate struggling to survive in a Soviet prison camp
DAILY DOUBLE #1
NATIONAL HEROES
A hero of this island nation where he was born, Marcus Garvey has been proposed to appear on its $100 bill
***JAMAICA***
Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) was the Jamaican-born founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). He established branches in the U.S. in the late 1910s. He also established the Black Star Line, which was intended to facilitate Black commerce and help transport Blacks back to Africa. In Jamaican currency news, Garvey (pictured wearing a cool hat below) will soon be getting “upgraded” from the $20 coin to the $100 bill. The following people currently appear on the front of Jamaican bills:
$50 = Samuel Sharpe - deacon who led an 1831 strike for better wages and working conditions; after the demands were ignored by the British, the strike turned into a failed slave rebellion (the Baptist War)
$100 = Donald Sangster - namesake of Montego Bay’s airport, he succeeded Alexander Bustamante in 1967 to become Jamaica’s second Prime Minister (but only served a few weeks before dying)
$500 = Nanny of the Maroons - one of the leaders of the Maroons (enslaved Africans and their descendants who gained their freedom by escaping to remote mountains and/or dense tropical terrains) during the First Maroon War (1728-1740); according to legend, she was successful against the British army because she could catch their bullets in her butt and fart them back at the soldiers
$1000 = Michael Norman Manley - Jamaica's fourth Prime Minister (1972-1980 and 1989-1992), he instituted policies that redistributed wealth
DAILY DOUBLE #2
ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE
He worked to develop a flu vaccine before coming up with one for polio, declared safe on April 12, 1955
***JONAS SALK***
Polio can cause the permanent paralysis of muscles in the limbs, throat, and/or chest. In 1938, FDR founded the March of Dimes (originally called the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis) to find a cure for polio. That funding helped lead to the first widely used vaccine for polio, which was developed in the 1950s by Jonas Salk (pictured below, not wearing a cool hat). The journalist Edward Murrow asked Salk “who owns the patent on this vaccine?” and Salk replied “well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” Salk’s research built upon the work of Polish-born scientist Hilary Koprowski, who developed the first live-virus polio vaccine. In the 1960s, Albert Sabin developed an oral polio vaccine.
DAILY DOUBLE #3
LAKES & RIVERS
This alliterative Swiss body of water is also known as Lac des Quatre Cantons
***LAKE LUCERNE***
Lake Lucerne [loo-SERN] (pictured below) is Switzerland’s fifth largest lake. Also known as the Lake of the Four Cantons, it is located in central Switzerland. The four cantons that surround it are Lucerne (home to the city of Lucerne, the lake’s namesake), Nidwalden, Uri (home to legendary figure William Tell), and Schwyz (from which Switzerland derives its name). Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (or Piano Sonata No. 14) takes its nickname from a music critic who compared the slow first movement to “a boat, visiting, by moonlight, the remote parts of the lake.” The four largest lakes in Switzerland are Lake Geneva (shared with its western neighbor France), Lake Constance (shared with its northeastern neighbors Germany and Austria), Lake Neuchâtel (in western Switzerland), and Lake Maggiore (shared with its southern neighbor Italy).
DAILY DOUBLE #4
DE-COMPOSING
On March 25, 1918 the sun set on this "Moonlight" composer in Paris
***CLAUDE DEBUSSY***
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a French impressionist composer. His music, which was considered to be a reaction against Richard Wagner, established a new “concept of tonality” in European music. His piano work Clair de lune (heard below) is in 9/8 time and D-flat major. It has a French title meaning "Moonlight" and is from his collection Suite bergamasque. All four movements in that piano suite share their names with poems by Paul Verlaine.
Other works by Debussy include:
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894) - tone poem that begins with a chromatic solo played by the flute, and is based on Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem “Afternoon of a Faun”
Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) - Debussy’s only opera, it features a libretto by Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck
La Mer (1905) - three symphonic sketches (including "From dawn to noon on the sea," "Play of the waves," and "Dialogue of the wind and the sea") with a French title meaning "The Sea"
Children’s Corner (1908) - six-movement piano suite (ends with Golliwogg's Cakewalk) dedicated to his daughter, Claude-Emma, who was known as "Chou-Chou"
FINAL JEOPARDY #1
20th CENTURY EPONYMS
A 1940 headline about this included "failure", "liability when it came to offense" & "stout hearts no match for tanks"
***MAGINOT LINE***
Named for the French minister of war André Maginot [mah-zhee-noh], the Maginot Line was a defensive barrier (part of which is pictured below) built in the 1930s to protect France’s eastern border from German attack. It consisted of concrete fortifications, obstacles, and weapon installations. Germany invaded Belgium on May 10, 1940, and a mere two days later, German troops and tanks entered France by going around the rear of the main part of the Maginot Line. The headline in the clue is from the New York Times in June 1940. The full headline is “Failure of French Military Policy Is Laid to Maginot Fortifications; Devised Purely for Defense, Line Proved to Be Liability When It Came to Offense-- Stout Hearts No Match for Tanks.” Germany had built its own defensive structure during the 1930s called the Siegfried Line.
FINAL JEOPARDY #2
NOVELISTS
A 2012 book review noted subjects that "sparked his ire": capital punishment, big tobacco & "the plight of the unjustly convicted"
***JOHN GRISHAM***
John Grisham (pictured below) is a lawyer best known for his legal thrillers. He was born in 1955, attended Ole Miss for law school, and served in the Mississippi state legislature before beginning to write books. Many of his works are set in the fictional town of Clanton, Mississippi. The clue mentions a review of Grisham’s The Racketeer in which the reviewer writes “among the subjects that have sparked his ire are capital punishment (The Chamber), the depredations of Big Tobacco (The Runaway Jury), and, most notably, the plight of the unjustly convicted” (The Innocent Man and The Confession).
Grisham’s first four novels were:
A Time to Kill (1989) - a Black man (Carl Lee Hailey, played by Samuel L. Jackson in the movie) is tried for the murder of two white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter; he is represented by his friend (Jake Brigance, played by Matthew McConaughey) and helped by a law student (Ellen Roark, played by Sandra Bullock); its title is from a passage in the Book of Ecclesiastes
The Firm (1991) - a Harvard law school grad (Mitch McDeere, played by Tom Cruise in the movie) is coaxed into joining the small Memphis tax law firm Bendini, Lambert and Locke, which turns out to have connections to the Mafia
The Pelican Brief (1992) - a Tulane law student (Darby Shaw, played by Julia Roberts in the movie) investigates the assassinations of two Supreme Court justices and is helped by a reporter for The Washington Post (Gray Grantham, played by Denzel Washington)
The Client (1993) - an 11-year-old boy, who learns where the body of a U.S. Senator is who was involved in a mob-related murder plot, is represented by Regina "Reggie" Love (played by Susan Sarandon in the movie)
FINAL JEOPARDY #3
MOVIES OF THE '80s
Based on an off-Broadway play with just 3 characters, it won the Best Picture Oscar & the actors in all 3 roles were nominated
***DRIVING MISS DAISY***
Alfred Uhry [YOOR-ee] wrote the one-act play Driving Miss Daisy, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1988. The three characters in the play are the elderly Jewish widow Daisy Werthan, her Black chauffeur Hoke Coleburn, and her son Boolie, who hires the chauffeur for her. In the 1989 movie, those characters are played by Jessica Tandy, Morgan Freeman, and Dan Aykroyd. At the age 80, Tandy is still the oldest woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Actress. The movie Driving Miss Daisy was directed by Bruce Beresford, an Australian, and is set in Atlanta over a 25-year period beginning in 1948. Morgan Freeman made the progression of time look convincing by remembering advice from his acting instructor: “in order to play age well, you had to imagine that your testicles are made out of Christmas balls."
TRIPLE STUMPER #1
BE ARTHUR
In the 1920s, he began a successful mail order business to teach ballroom dancing; his dance centers can be found worldwide
***ARTHUR MURRAY***
Arthur Murray (1895-1991), pictured below, was a ballroom-dancing teacher. He had a mail-order dance instruction business and also hundreds of franchised dance studios that grossed more than $25 million a year. His books, such as 1938’s How to Become a Good Dancer, promoted the social aspects of dance. His methods relied on using clearly drawn diagrams to show students how to move their feet. His students included Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller Jr., and President Manuel Quezon of the Philippines. The TV variety show The Arthur Murray Party (1950–60) was hosted by his wife Kathryn, who reminded viewers “to put a little fun in your life, try dancing!” The couple’s daughter Jane married Dr. Henry J. Heimlich, the namesake of the Heimlich maneuver.
TRIPLE STUMPER #2
& THEN THERE'S MOD
Mod style began in the late '50s; in the late '70s, its avatar was this band, led by Paul Weller
***THE JAM***
The Jam (1973-1982) were a British group that mixed the energy of punk rock with the sound of 1960s mod bands. Paul Weller, nicknamed "The Modfather," wrote and sang most of their songs and also played lead guitar. The socially aware band had politically charged songs with lyrics about working class life. They were very popular in the U.K. (four #1 hits), but never gained international popularity. Their U.K. #1 hits included "Going Underground" (1980), heard below, and "Town Called Malice" (1982). The group disbanded in 1982 and Weller formed a new group called The Style Council.
TRIPLE STUMPER #3
LIFE & DEATH IN LITERARY TITLES
Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of" this character is the story of an inmate struggling to survive in a Soviet prison camp
***IVAN DENISOVICH***
Alexander Solzhenitsyn [sohl-zheh-NEET-sin] (1918-2008) is the author of the 1962 novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich [deh-NEE-soh-vich]. The work was based on Solzhenitsyn’s time in a labor camp for criticizing Stalin. The work describes a typical day in the life of a zek, or prisoner, named Shukhov. Ditloid puzzles (e.g. 24 H in a D = 24 Hours in a Day) take their name from the first letter in each of the words in the title of the book (1 DITLOID).
A few years later, Solzhenitsyn [sohl-zheh-NEET-sin], pictured below, was not allowed to have his works published anymore. He resorted to clandestinely circulating them in the form of samizdat [SAH-meez-daht] (“self-published”) literature. Despite winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, Solzhenitsyn was charged with treason in 1974 and exiled from the Soviet Union. He then lived in Vermont for a while, but his citizenship was eventually restored in 1990 following glasnost ("openness"). He returned to Russia in 1994.
Other works by Solzhenitsyn include:
The First Circle (1968) - based on Solzhenitsyn’s time working in a prison research institute as a mathematician; the characters must decide whether to cooperate with the secret police authorities and remain within the relatively gentle labor camp (the title alludes to Dante’s Divine Comedy), or refuse helping them and be sent to brutal labor camps
Cancer Ward (1968) - based on Solzhenitsyn’s hospitalization and treatment for cancer during his forced exile in Kazakhstan during the 1950s
The Gulag Archipelago (1973) - three-volume literary-historical record of the vast system of prisons and labor camps that are compared to a string of islands
Two Hundred Years Together (2002) - a history of Jews in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and modern-day Russia between the years of 1795 and 1995
