JAQR - September 17, 2023
African capitals, John Ford films, Coleridge poems, British monarchs, Greek geography, the Jules Rimet Trophy, Pueblos Mágicos, Civil War heroes, and more...
Thank you for reading another issue of the Jeopardy Answer & Question Recap, or JAQR [“jacker”] for short. This recap includes at least two clues from each episode of Jeopardy! between Monday 9/11 and Friday 9/15. The recap will include Daily Doubles, Final Jeopardy clues, 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
AFRICAN CAPITAL HAIKU
Western port city / It's named for a president / '90s Civil War
DAILY DOUBLE #2
POP CULTURE
John Ford directed the Oscar-winning 1942 documentary "Battle of" this locale at which Ford himself was wounded
DAILY DOUBLE #3
SONG BIRDS
In the 1960s Fleetwood Mac had an international hit with their song about one of these seabirds; Coleridge put one in a poem
FINAL JEOPARDY #1
BRITISH MONARCHS
The most recent British monarch not to succeed a parent or a sibling was this ruler who succeeded an uncle
FINAL JEOPARDY #2
ARTISTS
On October 26, 1886 he said, "The dream of my life is accomplished... I see the symbol of unity & friendship between 2 nations"
FINAL JEOPARDY #3
ASTRONOMY
The only dwarf planet located in the inner Solar System, it's named for an ancient deity of planting & harvests
TRIPLE STUMPER #1
GREEK GEOGRAPHY
Corfu is in this sea on Greece's west coast
TRIPLE STUMPER #2
THE SPORTING LIFE
Named for the 3-decade president of its gov. body, this tourney's top prize was once called the Jules Rimet Trophy
TRIPLE STUMPER #3A & #3B
PUEBLOS MÁGICOS
This Baja border town whose name begins & ends with the same 2 letters is known for a beer with the same name & great eats
"X" marks the spot of this cobblestoned town renowned as the "silver capital of the world"
TRIPLE STUMPER #4
RECONSTRUCTION
In 2023, USS Chancellorsville was renamed after this Black Civil War hero & Reconstruction-era congressman
TRIPLE STUMPER #5 (bonus clue!)
BUILDING, AMERICA
Originally the Union Gospel Tabernacle, it was home to the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974
DAILY DOUBLE #1
AFRICAN CAPITAL HAIKU
Western port city / It's named for a president / '90s Civil War
***MONROVIA***
The port city of Monrovia is the capital of Liberia (pictured below). It was founded in 1822 and was briefly known as Christopolis before being named for the fifth U.S. president, James Monroe. It was founded by the ACS (American Colonization Society) as a settlement for free Black people from the United States. Monrovia was named by Ralph Randolph Gurley, a member of the ACS who also came up with the name for Liberia. The city is located on Cape Mesurado and is at the mouth of the Mesurado River. The Freeport of Monrovia is located on nearby Bushrod Island, which is named for George Washington’s nephew, Bushrod Washington, who was the first president of the ACS.
Liberia has been the site of two civil wars. The first, from 1989-1997, saw the overthrow and execution of Samuel Doe and ended with Charles Taylor being elected president. The second, from 1999-2003, resulted in the resignation of Charles Taylor, who was later convicted of war crimes.
DAILY DOUBLE #2
POP CULTURE
John Ford directed the Oscar-winning 1942 documentary "Battle of" this locale at which Ford himself was wounded
***MIDWAY***
John Ford won the Oscar for Best Director four times:
The Informer (1935) - based on a novel by Irish author Liam O'Flaherty, the film stars boxer-turned-actor Victor McLaglen as the title character, Gypo Nolan, a drunkard who receives a cash reward for telling authorities the whereabouts of his wanted best friend, who is a member of the IRA (Irish Republican Army); the movie's screenwriter, Dudley Nichols, was the first person to decline an Oscar (in order to help gain recognition for the Screen Writers Guild)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940) - based on the John Steinbeck novel, the film starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, who gives a famous speech containing the line "Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there”
How Green Was My Valley (1941) - based on a novel by Welsh author Richard Llewellyn [loo-EL-in], it notably beat Citizen Kane to win Best Picture; the film centers on a 19th century Welsh coal mining family that includes a father named Gwilym Morgan and his youngest son Huw [hugh]; near the end of the film, Gwilym dies in a mining accident and Huw states “Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still -- real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. How green was my valley then.”
The Quiet Man (1952) - romcom starring John Wayne as the ex-boxer Sean "Trooper Thorn" Thornton, who unintentionally kills an opponent during a bout, and leaves the U.S. for his homeland of Ireland, where he romances Mary Kate Danaher (played by Maureen O’Hara) over the objections of her possessive brother (who is also mad that Sean bought some property he wanted), culminating in a ridiculously long brawl (it literally stretches miles!) that ends with the two men taking a break at a pub and becoming friends, sort of (see video below); a musical based on the film was titled Donnybrook!
DAILY DOUBLE #3
SONG BIRDS
In the 1960s Fleetwood Mac had an international hit with their song about one of these seabirds; Coleridge put one in a poem
***ALBATROSS***
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the seven-part poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It first appeared in the 1798 collection Lyrical Ballads, which was a collaboration between Coleridge and William Wordsworth. The title character of the poem detains a wedding guest on the way to the ceremony and tells him a story about his time at sea. The mariner killed an albatross using a cross-bow, which brings a curse upon the ship. The ship entered uncharted waters in the tropics of the Pacific, prompting the lines “Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink.” They encounter an old ship, on which Life in Death beats Death in a dice game to win the mariner's soul. The mariner is ultimately rescued from the sea, but is forced to wander the earth telling his story. Lines near the end of the poem include “He prayeth best, who loveth best / All things both great and small; / For the dear God who loveth us, / He made and loveth all.” The instrumental Fleetwood Mac song “Albatross” can be heard below:
FINAL JEOPARDY #1
BRITISH MONARCHS
The most recent British monarch not to succeed a parent or a sibling was this ruler who succeeded an uncle
***QUEEN VICTORIA***
George III was the British monarch from 1760-1820. His sons included:
Oldest = King George IV, who reigned from 1820-1830
Second oldest = Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, who died in 1827
Third oldest = King William IV, who reigned from 1830-1837
Fourth oldest = Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, who died in 1820, but did have one child, the future Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria (pictured below) succeeded her uncle King William IV to become the British monarch in 1837 because her father's three older brothers were dead and didn’t have any surviving legitimate child. She was followed as monarch by:
Edward VII (1901-1910) = son of Queen Victoria
George V (1910-1936) = son of Edward VII
Edward VIII (1936) = oldest son of George V - abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson
George VI (1936-1952) = second oldest son of George V
Elizabeth II (1952-2022) = daughter of George VI
Charles III (2022-) = son of Elizabeth II
FINAL JEOPARDY #2
ARTISTS
On October 26, 1886 he said, "The dream of my life is accomplished... I see the symbol of unity & friendship between 2 nations"
***FRÉDÉRIC AUGUSTE BARTHOLDI***
French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904) designed the Statue of Liberty, which is also known as Liberty Enlightening the World. Bartholdi [bar-tohl-dee] made the statue using a technique called repoussé [rep-oo-SAY], in which copper sheets (2.4. millimeters thick) were hammed into shape. The statue’s internal steel supports were designed by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (who died in 1879) and Gustave Eiffel (the tower dude). Bartholdi’s friend Édouard René de Laboulaye [lah-bah-lay] is the one who came up with the idea of a statue to be presented to the U.S. by the people of France.
Lady Liberty holds tablets of law in her left hand and a torch in her right hand. The copper statue originally had a reddish-brown color, but now has a patina green coating due to oxidation and weathering. American poet Emma Lazarus wrote the sonnet "The New Colossus" to help raise money for the construction of the statue's pedestal, which was designed by Richard Morris Hunt. Other sculptures by Bartholdi include the Lion of Belfort, which is carved out of red sandstone (pictured below). He designed another statue for the Suez Canal called Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia, but it was too expensive to ever be built.
FINAL JEOPARDY #3
ASTRONOMY
The only dwarf planet located in the inner Solar System, it's named for an ancient deity of planting & harvests
***CERES***
Ceres [SEER-eez] is the largest asteroid in the main asteroid belt, which is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It was discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801. Ceres was named after the Roman goddess of agriculture and grain, whose Greek equivalent was Demeter. It was designated a dwarf planet in 2006, the same year Pluto got reclassified. The largest mountain of Ceres is the cryovolcano Ahuna Mons, which is named after a post-harvest festival of the Sümi Naga, an ethnic group from northeast India. Ceres has been studied by the NASA spacecraft Dawn, which also studied the second-largest asteroid, Vesta. Ceres, pictured below, has some bluish surface regions that are thought to be fresh impact craters.
TRIPLE STUMPER #1
GREEK GEOGRAPHY
Corfu is in this sea on Greece's west coast
***IONIAN SEA***
Corfu is a 36-mile long Greek island off the coast of Albania and Greece. It is the most populous and second largest in area of the Ionian Islands, which are also called the Heptanesos since there are seven main islands (Cephalonia, or Kefalonia, is the largest by area). Corfu is in the Ionian Sea, which is south of the Adriatic Sea. It has been called the “Door of Venice.”
Queen Elizabeth II's husband, Prince Philip, was born on Corfu, specifically, in a royal residence called Mon Repos [reh-POH], even more specifically, on the dining room table. Corfu is also home to a palace called the Achilleion, which was built for Empress Elisabeth of Austria and named for Achilles. It was a refuge for the empress following the death of her only son, Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, in the 1889 Mayerling Incident (a murder-suicide pact involving him and his lover Baroness Mary Vetsera). The novelist Lawrence Durrell and his nature writer brother Gerald both lived on the island for several years.
TRIPLE STUMPER #2
THE SPORTING LIFE
Named for the 3-decade president of its gov. body, this tourney's top prize was once called the Jules Rimet Trophy
***FIFA WORLD CUP***
French lawyer Jules Rimet [zhool rih-may] was the third president of FIFA, serving from 1921-1954. He is credited with coming up with the idea for the World Cup, which was first held in 1930 in Uruguay. The winning team originally received a trophy depicting Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. The trophy was stolen in 1966 in England and was later found by a dog named Pickles. Brazil won the Jules Rimet Trophy in 1970 for the third time and was allowed to keep it in perpetuity. A replacement, the FIFA World Cup Trophy, was awarded starting in 1974. This new version depicts two humans holding up the Earth and is pictured below.
Other presidents of FIFA have included:
João Havelange [HAH-veh-lanzh] - Brazilian businessman who was the first non-European to hold the office (1974-1998); he was later implicated in a corruption scandal with his son-in-law that involved taking over $20 million in bribes for marketing rights
Sepp Blatter - Swiss man who served as president of FIFA from 1998 until 2015, the year he was impeached for a corruption case that involved several FIFA officials being accused of taking $150 million in bribes; the amusingly named Tokyo Sexwale was a candidate to succeed him, but Blatter was ultimately followed in office by Gianni Infantino
TRIPLE STUMPER #3A & 3B
PUEBLOS MÁGICOS
This Baja border town whose name begins & ends with the same 2 letters is known for a beer with the same name & great eats
***TECATE***
"X" marks the spot of this cobblestoned town renowned as the "silver capital of the world"
***TAXCO***
Tecate is a city of over 100,000 people west of Tijuana in the state of Baja California. The beer brand Tecate shares its name with the city and uses a black eagle in its logo (pictured below). The city is one of Mexico’s “Pueblos Mágicos,” which are "magic cities" designated by the Mexican government to promote tourism. Another “magic city” is Taxco, which is southwest of Mexico City in the state of Guerrero. American designer William Spratling established a workshop in the town, where he produced silver jewelry. Perhaps future editions of JAQR will cover some of the other 175 Pueblos Mágicos.
TRIPLE STUMPER #4
RECONSTRUCTION
In 2023, USS Chancellorsville was renamed after this Black Civil War hero & Reconstruction-era congressman
***ROBERT SMALLS***
Robert Smalls (1839-1915) gained fame and freedom in 1862 by commandeering a Confederate ship (the CSS Planter) in Charleston Harbor and turning it over to a Union naval squadron. Using money given as a prize for capturing the ship, Smalls purchased the mansion of the man, Henry McKee, who had once enslaved him (McKee fled Beaufort, SC when the city fell to Union forces and the abandoned mansion went up for auction due to unpaid taxes). In 1864, Smalls was in Philadelphia when he was arrested for riding in an all-White streetcar. He then led a boycott that ultimately resulted in the desegregation of Philadelphia's streetcars. After the war, Smalls served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing South Carolina.
TRIPLE STUMPER #5 (bonus clue!)
BUILDING, AMERICA
Originally the Union Gospel Tabernacle, it was home to the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974
***RYMAN AUDITORIUM***
Today’s contestants must not have read the 10/28/22 issue of JAQR, which mentioned the Ryman Auditorium. Check out that issue and don’t let it be a triple stumper when you’re on Jeopardy! https://jaqr.substack.com/p/jaqr-october-28-2022