JAQR - July 6, 2025
Fields Medal, Chinese dynasties, The Bear, Exciting librarians, Victorian authors, World capital etymologies, and more...
Thank you for reading another issue of the Jeopardy Answer & Question Recap, or JAQR [“jacker”] for short. This recap includes at least one clue from each Jeopardy! episode between Monday 6/30 and Friday 7/4. The recap includes a Final Jeopardy clue, a Daily Double, and many Triple Stumpers. There’s also questions about material from last week and Bonus Clues about long ago covered topics. The first half of the recap includes just the clues so you can quiz yourself if you want. The second half gives you some (hopefully) interesting information about the clues and/or some related info.
FINAL JEOPARDY #1
BURIED AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY
In 1991 he became the first actor in over 85 years to be interred in Poets' Corner & rests near Shakespeare's memorial
DAILY DOUBLE #1
YOU'RE ALL GETTING MEDALS
The Fields Medal, "the Nobel Prize of" this discipline, is for thinkers under 40, so Andrew Wiles wasn't eligible; he got a special plaque
TRIPLE STUMPER #1
CHINESE HISTORY
The Ming ruled from 1368 to 1644 between the control of these 2 "M" dynasties
TRIPLE STUMPER #2
SCIENCE STUFF
These microscopic pores in leaves & stems are opened & closed to exchange gases & reduce water loss
TRIPLE STUMPER #3
TELEVISION
This Canadian chef turned actor plays Neil Fak on "The Bear"
TRIPLE STUMPER #4
EXCITING LIBRARIANS
At the end of his life, this man whose name is synonymous with the libertine lifestyle worked as a librarian in Bohemia
TRIPLE STUMPER #5
QUESTIONABLE BOOK TITLES
"Can You Forgive Her?" is one of the Palliser novels by this Victorian who wrote hefty books in long series
TRIPLE STUMPER #6
WORLD CAPITALS
One theory for its name goes back to a Spanish or Portuguese explorer who exclaimed, "I saw a mountain"
LAST WEEK RECAP #1
Princess Diana died in Paris in a 1997 car crash that also took the lives of the car’s drunk driver, Henri Paul, and what boyfriend of hers, an Egyptian film producer?
LAST WEEK RECAP #2
The 1815 eruption of what volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa resulted in the "Year without a Summer"?
BONUS CLUE #1
EMOTING FOR MY EMMY
That ascending 3-note motif... the dynamics, rising & falling... the sheer melancholy of this 1938 Barber piece... it overwhelms
BONUS CLUE #2
NO MAN'S LAND
This capital of South Australia was named for a consort of William IV
BONUS CLUE #3
LITERARY CHARACTERS
This title guy in "A Tale of the Christ" is wrongly accused of a crime by his former pal Messala & is enslaved
FINAL JEOPARDY #1
BURIED AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY
In 1991 he became the first actor in over 85 years to be interred in Poets' Corner & rests near Shakespeare's memorial
***LAURENCE OLIVIER***
The actor Laurence Olivier [oh-LIV-ee-ay] was born in England in 1907. One of his first West End appearances came in a 1929 stage adaptation of P. C. Wren's adventure novel Beau Geste, which has a French title meaning “gracious gesture.” Olivier played that work’s main character, Michael "Beau" Geste. He joins the French Foreign Legion in Algeria with his brothers after their aunt’s precious sapphire jewel called the "Blue Water" goes missing. In the end, Michael dies in a battle against some Tuaregs and it is revealed that Beau stole a fake gem to protect his aunt’s reputation (a “beau geste”) since she had earlier sold the real one to help some exploited tenants.
Olivier received his first Academy Award for Best Actor nomination for the 1939 movie Wuthering Heights, which was based on the Emily Brontë novel and was directed by William Wyler. The character of Heathcliff was played by Olivier, while Catherine was played by Merle Oberon. He received his second Academy Award for Best Actor nomination for the 1940 movie Rebecca, which was based on the Daphne du Maurier novel and was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The character of Maxim de Winter was played by Olivier, while Joan Fontaine played his unnamed second wife (his deceased first wife is the title character).
Olivier starred in (and directed and produced) several movies based on the works of Shakespeare, including Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), and Richard III (1955), all three of which were scored by William Walton. Those movies earned Olivier his third, fourth, and fifth nomination for the Best Actor Oscar. His only ever acting Oscar win was for Hamlet, and he was the first person to direct themselves to that award. Roberto Benigni [beh-NEE-nee] achieved that same accomplishment later on for the 1997 movie Life is Beautiful. Olivier starred with Marilyn Monroe in the 1957 romcom The Prince and the Showgirl.
Olivier married three times and each woman was an actress. The first was Jill Esmond (1930 - 1940). The second was Vivien Leigh (1940 - 1960), who is perhaps best remembered for playing Scarlett O'Hara in the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind and Blanche DuBois in the 1951 movie A Streetcar Named Desire. They starred together in the 1941 movie That Hamilton Woman, in which Olivier played Horatio Nelson and Leigh played his mistress, Lady Hamilton. His third wife was Joan Plowright, who married him one year after playing his daughter in the 1960 movie The Entertainer, which earned him his sixth Academy Award for Best Actor nomination. The movie was based on a John Osborne play and centers on Archie Rice, a failing music-hall comedian. Olivier and Plowright were married until he died in 1989. Olivier was buried in Poets’ Corner, which is also the final resting place of Henry Irving (alluded to in the clue), who died in 1905.
Olivier finished with ten acting Oscar nominations in total. That is the second-most among men (Jack Nicholson was nominated twelve times). Olivier’s seventh was for the 1965 movie Othello, in which he controversially wore blackface to play the title character, while Maggie Smith played Desdemona. In 1970, he became the first actor to be named a baron. The eighth nomination was for the 1972 movie Sleuth, which was based on a play by Anthony Shaffer (identical twin brother of Peter Shaffer). The movie co-starred Michael Caine and featured the tagline "Think of the perfect crime . . . then go one step further." Olivier was the narrator of the 1973 WWII documentary The World at War.
Olivier’s ninth acting nomination (and the only one that was for Best Supporting Actor) was for the 1976 movie Marathon Man. It starred Dustin Hoffman as the title character and featured Olivier as a Nazi war criminal attempting to recover some ill-gotten diamonds. The film is remembered for a scene in which the former concentration camp dentist tortures Hoffman’s character, an avid runner known as Babe, while repeatedly asking “Is it safe?” (for him to retrieve his diamonds from the bank). Olivier’s tenth and final nomination was for the 1978 movie The Boys from Brazil, which was based on a novel by Ira Levin (who also wrote Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives). This time, Olivier plays a Nazi hunter who is investigating Josef Mengele (played by Gregory Peck), who has made 94 clones of Hitler. In 1984, he became the namesake of the West End’s theater awards.
DAILY DOUBLE #1
YOU'RE ALL GETTING MEDALS
The Fields Medal, "the Nobel Prize of" this discipline, is for thinkers under 40, so Andrew Wiles wasn't eligible; he got a special plaque
***MATHEMATICS***
The Fields Medal was named for a math professor at the University of Toronto, John Charles Fields, and was first awarded in 1936. It is typically awarded every four years by the International Mathematical Union, and recipients must be under 40 years old. It’s often referred to as the Nobel Prize of math, but the Abel Prize might have something to say about that.
The first two winners of the Fields Medal were Lars Ahlfors (Finnish) and Jesse Douglas (American). Notable winners of the Fields Medal include:
Jean-Pierre Serre [rhymes with hair] (1954, French) - youngest person ever to win (27 years old), he was a member of the Bourbaki group and later became the first winner of the Abel Prize
Edward Witten (1990, American) - first physicist to win the award, he is the founder of M-theory
Grigori Perelman (2006, Russian) - first person to decline the prize, he technically won for his work on the Ricci flow, but is best known for proving the Poincaré [pwon-car-AY] conjecture
Maryam Mirzakhani (2014, Iranian) - first female winner, she won for her work on Riemann surfaces, which are a type of one-dimensional manifold
Maryna Viazovska (2022, Ukrainian) - second female winner, she won for her work on sphere packing
TRIPLE STUMPER #1
CHINESE HISTORY
The Ming ruled from 1368 to 1644 between the control of these 2 "M" dynasties
***MONGOL & MANCHU***
Here is a list of some Chinese dynasties and periods from the past ~2,000 years:
Three Kingdoms period (220–280) = it followed the Han dynasty and included an arrangement between the Cao Wei, Eastern Wu, and Shu Han (featured the strategist Zhuge Liang, who was nicknamed “Sleeping Dragon”); it is the namesake of Luo Guanzhong’s historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which depicts the defeat of Cao Cao at the Battle of Red Cliffs
Jin dynasty (266–420) = established by Sima Yan, it can be divided into the Xi (western) and Dong (eastern) phases; the War of the Eight Princes followed the death of Sima Yan
Northern and Southern dynasties (420-589) = featured the Wei (north) and Liang (south) dynasties, among others; the first written record of Hua Mulan, a girl who went to war in place of her father, is from the Wei dynasty
Sui [sway] dynasty (581-618) = short-lived, but it unified China for the first time in several centuries; its first emperor was Wen (ruled from 581-604), who was killed and succeeded by his son Yang (604-617), whose reign saw the completion of the Grand Canal; during a coup, Yang offered to swallow poison, but none could be found, so he was strangled to death with a scarf instead; the forcible conscription of millions of people and the failed invasion of the Goguryeo kingdom in Korea (including a loss at the Battle of Salsu) led to revolts and the fall of the dynasty