JAQR - May 4, 2025
Errol Morris, state songs, contemporary authors, literary characters, 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 4/28 and Friday 5/2. The recap includes Triple Stumpers, Final Jeopardy clues, and a Daily Double. 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.
TRIPLE STUMPER #1
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN
Errol Morris' 2013 documentary "The Unknown Known" focused on this man
TRIPLE STUMPER #2
STATE SONG LYRICS (name the state)
"Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, where the deer & the antelope play"
TRIPLE STUMPER #3
FROM THE BRONX
Raised in the Bronx, she was nicknamed for a brand of rum & has a sister Hennessy, named for a cognac brand
FINAL JEOPARDY #1
CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS
At the start of his writing career, his wife told him, if it didn't work out, at 6'4", he could be a reacher in a supermarket
FINAL JEOPARDY #2
20th CENTURY FIGURES
After studying business in Chicago in the 1920s, this man obsessed with Sherlock Holmes was an investigator for a credit company
FINAL JEOPARDY #3
BOATS & SHIPS
Nearly a century after her 1851 sporting triumph, she was a rotting hulk finally scrapped in 1945
DAILY DOUBLE #1
LITERARY CHARACTERS
This 2008 novel by Liu Cixin follows physicist Ye Wenjie & Wang Miao, a nanotech researcher, across different timelines
LAST WEEK RECAP #1
Al Pacino played a defense attorney who yells "You're out of order! You're out of order! The whole trial is out of order!" at the end of what 1979 movie?
LAST WEEK RECAP #2
What American pole vaulter was the first athlete to appear on the front of a Wheaties cereal box after winning Olympic gold in 1952 (Helsinki) and 1956 (Melbourne)?
BONUS CLUE #1
QUOTABLE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS
"Just think lovely wonderful thoughts... and they lift you up in the air", explains this eternal youth
BONUS CLUE #2
QUOTABLE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS
"We might have made the tour of the world in only 78 days", says this valet to his employer
BONUS CLUE #3
LITERARY CHARACTERS
This Defoe title character was married to 5 men, one of whom was her brother (oops)
BONUS CLUE #4
"POP"-POURRI
The Sherman brothers wrote "Stay Awake" for this classic Disney movie
BONUS CLUE #5
GOVERNORS
He liked to say he was a "small fish" in D.C., but down in the southern state where he was governor, he was kind of a big deal
TRIPLE STUMPER #1
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN
Errol Morris' 2013 documentary "The Unknown Known" focused on this man
***DONALD RUMSFELD***
The director Errol Morris was born in New York in 1948. In high school, he spent a summer studying music in France with Nadia Boulanger. He briefly attended grad school at Princeton, where he didn’t get along with his advisor Thomas Kuhn (author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions who introduced the concept of paradigm shifts). Morris later wrote a 2018 book titled The Ashtray (Or the Man Who Denied Reality), which is titled for a glass object filled with cigarettes that Kuhn allegedly threw at him. In the 1990s, Morris invented a device called the Interrotron, which allowed the people he interviewed to look directly at both him and at the camera.
Documentaries by Morris include:
Gates of Heaven (1978) - about two California pet cemeteries and the people who work there and have pets buried there; Werner Herzog said he would eat his shoe if Morris finished the film (and he did after they were boiled with garlic and herbs)
Vernon, Florida (1981) - originally intended to be about people who cut off their limbs to collect insurance money, he changed his mind after receiving threats and instead focused on the eccentric inhabitants of a small town near Panama City
The Thin Blue Line (1988) - using reenactments, the film makes a case for the innocence of a man (Randall Dale Adams) wrongfully convicted of murdering a police officer in Dallas; the film focuses on the forensic psychiatrist James Grigson (“Dr. Death”), who would later be exposed as a charlatan
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997) - explores the careers of a a lion tamer, robotics designer, topiary gardener, and naked mole rat expert and draws connections between them
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003) - centering on the career of the Secretary of Defense for JFK and LBJ, the film won the Oscar for Best Documentary
The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld (2013) - centering on the career of the government official best known for serving as Dubya’s Secretary of Defense (2001-2006), and who once said “there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know
TRIPLE STUMPER #2
STATE SONG LYRICS (name the state)
"Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, where the deer & the antelope play"
***KANSAS***
The state song of Kansas is “Home on the Range,” which was written in the 1870s by the otolaryngologist Brewster Martin Higley VI.
Ten other state songs to know are:
“Georgia on My Mind” = co-written by Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael, the song was a #1 hit for Ray Charles in 1960
“My Old Kentucky Home” - composed by Stephen Foster, it is sung by ~160,000 people when the horses enter the track at the Kentucky Derby
“Oklahoma” - created by Rodgers and Hammerstein, its lyrics describe the title place as “where the wind comes sweeping down the plain”
“Old Folks At Home” = composed by Stephen Foster, it is the state song of Florida, although the state revised some of the lyrics in 2008 ("old plantation" is now "childhood station" and "darkies" is now "dear ones")
“On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away” - the state song of Indiana, it was composed by Paul Dresser (the brother of the author of Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser)
“Rocky Mountain High” = co-written by John Denver (stage name of Henry John Deutschendorf Jr.), it is one of two states songs of Colorado, along with “Where the Columbines Grow”
“Rocky Top” - one of Tennessee’s ~15 state songs, along with "Tennessee Waltz"
"Take Me Home, Country Roads" - co-written by John Denver, it is one of West Virginia’s four state songs
“Yankee Doodle” - the state song of Connecticut, its full version includes the lyrics “Father and I went down to camp, / Along with Captain Gooding, / And there we saw the men and boys / As thick as hasty pudding”
“You Are My Sunshine” - state song of Louisiana that was first published by Jimmie Davis, who would later serve as governor
TRIPLE STUMPER #3
FROM THE BRONX
Raised in the Bronx, she was nicknamed for a brand of rum & has a sister Hennessy, named for a cognac brand