Jeopardy! catches up to Detectives Beyond Borders, then gets one of its own questions wrong

Loyal readers will know I've posted several Shakespeare comments recently, noting instances in which the Bard drew from the same wellspring that inspires current crime writers.

Someone in TV land must have read those posts, because tonight's Jeopardy! including the cleverly titled category "C.S.I.: Shakespeare." Once they'd run through categories of '70s hits and words with the letter z, the contestants correctly answered, in ascending order of monetary value, questions that amounted to the following: Who kills the king who married his (the killer's) mother? Who stabs a king? What play has two dead lovers in it? and Which king who suffers heavy losses had three daughters?

Only the fifth question posed any kind of a test, asking, in effect, who drowned the Duke of Clarence in a cask of wine. None of the cautious contestants took a stab at that one (the answer was Richard III).

I expect a note of gratitude and a hefty royalty check from the Jeopardy! folks any day now.
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If money and thanks fail to arrive, I'll console myself with the rare pleasure of having seen the show's question writers and host Alex Trebek make a mistake. A category called "The Star-Spangled Banner" asked: "Which two (sic) times of day" are mentioned in the U.S. national anthem? One contestant answered: "Dawn and night," which was closer to correct than Trebek got it. No, Trebek said, the answer is dawn ("by the dawn's early light") and twilight ("at the twilight's last gleaming").

Question for Alex Trebek: "This word completes the following line from `The Star Spangled Banner': `Gave proof through the ________ that our flag was still there.'"

(On second thought, I hope the question did not refer to the first verse of the anthem, in which case Jeopardy! would be right. Yikes!)

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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