They Killed Ken!

kwings writes "SF Gate (via the AP) is reporting that your pal, Ken Jennings has been beaten after his 75th(!) game. I fully expect Mr. Trebek to hold a wake, or to keep calling the champion 'Ken' for the rest of the season. :) Since they're only up to airing game 41, it will be an interesting few months (or 34 shows)."

Spoilers?

[Capt_Troy]

What's up with this? Why not just start posting all the endings for upcoming movies?

Thanks

[asesti]

Glad I don't watch this show or I would be pissed...

What "Game" ?

[e2ka]

Could you at least put the subject of the article somewhere in the description?

Sure, I agree with RTFA, if I can determine it is worthwhile...

Re: technically no

[Chess_the_cat]

Had you RTFA you would have noticed that they don't disclose whether he lost, but only that he's no longer on the show.

Are you saying he just gave up? If he's no longer on the show then he must have lost. Slashdot fucked up huge on this one. Thanks for letting me know. I've been watching Ken since his first appearance and have been obsessed with this guy. Now I know that in 30 shows he's gone. What's the point now? FUCKERS!

Re:Spoilers?

[Jearil]

I agree with the parent,

It does seem a bit rude to those of us who watch Jeopardy as if it were a national sport. I know some people who would be horridly offended if you were to tell them the results of every football/baseball/basketball/soccar/nascar/rugby/w ater polo/cricket/volleyball/bullfighting .... etc. before the event was ever aired on TV. It sort of takes away from watching these things when you know the end result.

I know that for the whole last season I'd feel myself compelled to gravitate towards the TV whenever I heard that Ken was on... even if I was in the middle of something else, I found I couldn't concentrate until I watched the damn show. Mostly it was because I wanted to see if that night would be the last night for Ken or not. A few times there was at least a chance he could lose, and finding out by watching was the big event of the evening if nothing else was going on.

So please keep away from the spoilers.. I'm still hoping he's going to go on until Trebek gets sick of him and retires from the job :)

No spoiler warning on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just happened to look at the front page and now it's ruined for me. Thanks a ton guys. At least put a little more...ambiguous title on it and hold the spoiler for inside the article so that I can choose whether to click on it or not.

Thanks again.

Re:What "Game" ?

[MightyYar]

Safe to say you wouldn't find it interesting, if you don't know who Trebek and Ken are. Safe to say you won't be on the show, as well! :)

Re:You Bastards!

[alSeen]

They are bastards for putting this on the main page.

Some of us like to be surprised by things. Now slashdot has decided to take it upon themselves to ruin the next 30 shows for their readers that have been watching Jeopardy.

Thank you oh so much /.

Please take this off the main page or reword the article so no one else has to have their enjoyment ruined.

Re:What "Game" ?

[Nadir]

I only wish that people in the US recognized that there is more to the world than the States.
Like 6 billion people more.

Re:Loaded questions

[tuxter]

No. There are laws regarding this sort of stuff. In Australia I believe it's the lotteries commision. It will be stipulated by the local lotteries and gaming commission of where the event is actually held. The Questions will be picked totally at random. Of course, as we know, with all of these things, they are totally secure, [diebold.com] and not open to any form of malicious tampering

Re:Don't count on it

[Anonymous Coward]

me on, guys. We're notorious skeptics here on Slashdot. Don't believe everything you read.

ESPECIALLY when it's posted ON /. ;)

Re:You Bastards!

[LiquidCoooled]

First we complain thats theres no news.

Then we complain thats the news is duped.

Now we complain that we didn't want to see the news!

(I'm actually 100% behind you on this, im not even American, and have never seen the show, but giving out spoilers on the main page is just bad m'kay!)

Re:Don't count on it

[Metallic Matty]

While you raise an interesting point, seems kind of like the wrong analysis IMHO. If this was indeed a ploy to raise ratings, its a horrible one. Consider, you KNOW that Ken won't lose for another thirty four games, and then after that he's done. What incentive to you have to watch, knowing that he'll win every night? If anything, this would hurt their ratings. (At least until this 75th game, where he will or will not be defeated, and then we find out if this was true or just a rumor.)

Re:What "Game" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I only wish that people that frequent a US based website would understand why said website seems to be US centric. Sheesh.

Re:Categories that Ken lost on...

[Zorilla]

I wasn't surprised at all that Ken, a guy from Utah, barely knew anything in the music categories.

Re:You Bastards!

[TopShelf]

You would have to hide in a cave to avoid a story like this - it's already on CNN and (presumably) a zillion other news outlets...

Re:I think they should give Ken Alex's job.

[Ubergrendle]

Don't underestimate Trebek... he's a pretty smart guy himself. If for no other reason than he's read trivia questions for 20 years straight. ;)

Seriously, he's more than a stuffed shirt that you see on most other gameshows.

Re:What?

[east coast]

I AM NOT IN U.S., YOUR INSENSITIVE CLODS

I'm not in the UK but I've seen every episode of Blackadder...

Re:Spoilers?

[cjpez]

Er, the story is no bigger than any other story, and this is also on the frontpage of, for example, cnn.com. You'll probably hear about it on your local news, too, if you're foolish enough to watch it. I hardly think that Slashdot bears the full brunt of the blame for that.

Re:What "Game" ?

[Ford Prefect]

I only wish that people that frequent a US based website would understand why said website seems to be US centric. Sheesh.

I only wish that people who contribute to a US-based website with a significant international audience would understand why people get pissed off when said website seems to be US-centric in a particularly impenetrable way.

I hadn't a clue what this article was supposed to be about. Some mention of 'Jeopardy', 'game-show' or whatever would have helped greatly...

Michael YOU killed Jeopardy! Lone Gunmen redux!

[John Harrison]

Michael why on earth would you post this on the main page? Don't you people learn? Remember the Lone Gunmen? Don't you have a policy in place now?

If people are interested enough for Ken Jennings to be news for nerds then they are interested enough to not want it spoiled.

Take this off the main page or modify it immediately.

Idiot.

feeling like an outsider ...

[fadir]

Well, technically I am one here.
I have not the slightest clue what you are talking about. It's a game show, that's what I understood so far.
But what the hell is this show about?

Seems I have to move to the U.S. for some weeks each year to be able to understand /. postings nowadays.

The article might be funny for you, but I would like to see at least 1 sentence regarding the backround to give foreigners a chance to get the whole picture without milking google for ages.

Re:The losing Final Jeopardy question of Ken Jenni

[lucabrasi999]

AP and /. have no love for weblogs?

Nothing personal intended, but I would not use anybody's weblog for the basis of a story. I would confirm it somewhere else, first. Believe it or not, not everything you read on a blog is true.

Who? What? Eh?

[CaptainBaz]

SF Gate (via the AP) is reporting that your pal, Ken Jennings

Who he?

has been beaten after his 75th(!) game.

75th game of what? Tiddlywinks?

I fully expect Mr. Trebek to hold a wake, or to keep calling the champion 'Ken' for the rest of the season.

Who on earth is Mr Trebek?

Slashdot Ruined my Morning

[BondGamer]

A big thank you to the editors for posting this story front page! I mean could they have been anymore stupid?

Re:Don't count on it

[mwood]

"What incentive to you have to watch...?"

The wagering on the Daily Doubles? Wondering how Contestant X could possibly, possibly not know the question to *that* answer? The chitchat they use to fill the time slot when the play is too rapid? Seeing what sort of categories appeal to a left-handed pipefitter from Oshkosh who once bungee-jumped off the Sears Tower? The schadenfreude when a player relearns that pushing the button too soon makes it go dead? Discovering what the writers' idea of Really Tough Physics Questions is?

Re:Support the First Amendment: Kwit yer Bitchin..

[Anonymous Coward]

What does the first amendment have to do with anything? Sure he has the right to do this but so what.

This is just a matter of common courtesy. Of course trying to find that on the internet is pretty difficult.

Re:You Bastards!

[Liselle]

Doesn't make it right to post spoilers, though. It's still bad form, even if everyone else is doing it to get the scoop.

Re:I think they should give Ken Alex's job.

[hey]

I have noticed that too but I wonder if the researchers provide Trebek with info on possible near misses. eg: The operating system Linus Torvalds wrote? What is Unix? Sorry, Unix was written by AT&T. Linux is the correct answer.

Re:Michael YOU killed Jeopardy! Lone Gunmen redux!

[John Harrison]

When the Lone Gunmen died on X-Files chrisd posted the news ahead of time on the /. main page. [slashdot.org] This caused no small amount of complaining.

chrisd even made a joke about it in a later posting. [slashdot.org] Notice though that he didn't post the actual spoilers this time, just that there were spoilers to be found and where to find them.

Re:You Bastards!

[strider44]

South Park is popular outside the US. Jeoperdy is not.

His pointing out that he isn't American was on-topic. Your idiotic post was not.

Re:You Bastards!

[TheFlyingGoat]

The CNN article starts with this:

"Editor's Note: CNN picked this story up from The Associated Press, which gives details below. We have no idea as to the status of Ken Jennings' run. If you'd prefer to not know anything, stop reading now."

Slashdot should have done something similar with a "Read More" break.

IDIOTS!

[robaustin]

Get the freakin' spoiler off the main page! You have summarily killed my enjoyment of Jeopardy for the next few months. Asses! --*Rob

Re:You Bastards!

[gowen]

British shows play on US stations. Don't other countries allow US made TV shows on their TV systems?

yeah, but no one shows gameshows from other countries, due to the fact that quiz questions are so culture specific. Do you really think that Brits are sitting round their TV trying to remember whether it was Carl Yaztremski or Carlton Fisk who hit that famous home run in the 1975 World Series?

Or that USians are watching Australian Jeopardy, and racking their brains for the name of the guy who dismissed Don Bradman for 0 in his final Test?

Re:No spoiler warning on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no evidence that it's true. The information is based on what someone told some guy running a blog. It's not very credible, but it is fun to consider.

Re:I don't get the spoiler anger

[BuzzLY]

1) So? That doesn't excuse it. Your mother did use the "friend jumping off a bridge" metaphor with you, didn't she?

2) True, but we wouldn't know WHEN he loses, or what the specifics were. If the 75th day loss is true, it negates some of the excitement of watching every night to see if he finally loses.

3) If you visit New York and walk down an alleyway, you're likely to get mugged. So, why don't you just hand over your money to me right now?

4) It still would have been nice if /. had taken the high road. Yes, the world is full of trolls -- I would just as soon prefer that there were no trolls at /. responsible for delivering us the day's news.

I would imagine that anyone capable of unseating Ken (if that's what ends up happening) is capable of making a pretty good run like he did. My guess is that Jeopardy will modify the rules a bit (although not much -- they gotta love the ratings!).

The odds of THIS spoiler happening again are slim, but that doesn't mean other spoilers won't happen. Which reminds me... in case nobody knows, Darth Vader doesn't die in SW3.

Yes, he lost....

[Choachy]

He lost, but you still wont know when, because youre not going to be counting! Why complain about this being posted? You knew he was going to lose eventually. Now if youre going to count all remaining 34 shows, then youre going to be disappointed, but if youre normal, then you will not keep track, and you will still be shocked the day he goes down. BTW, who'd they bring on to beat him? Stephen Hawking and Ben Stein?

Re:What "Game" ?

[toetagger1]

News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."

Where does it say that this is only for ammercians? I whish they would say in the title what the content is, without having to RTFA to find out if it is intersting or not!

Wait a minute, ...

Re:this guy WRITES QUIZ SOFTWARE FOR A LIVING

[julesh]

Christ, people, I'm usually the first person to mock the tin foil hat brigade, but don't any of you guys know that the man is employed to write systems for the very quizzes that he's answering questions on? Could that possibly (rather than him being some hero genius to ambition-failing nerds everywhere) explain his winning streak? Isn't this a more reasonable explanation for his fantastic performance than "well, suddenly, this genius just appeared"? Or are dreams nicer to hold on to?

I know you're probably trolling, but: I also have written computer software for a quiz, in my case an Internet pay-to-play one. You don't see me making a fortune off it. Why? Because if I did, I would be scrutinised very closely to ensure I wasn't cheating. If you're right about this contestant (being British, I'd never heard of him until this story -- which I only clicked on because I couldn't work out what it was about), then I doubt he's doing anything even remotely dishonest. In fact, I doubt there is anything dishonest that he could hope to get away with -- someone will almost certainly audit any work he does that ever deals with a live question (or should that be answer?) database.

Stop the Unrealistic Suggestions

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot should have done something similar with a "Read More" break.

I sympathize with those who are crying foul, but most of these suggestions are foolish and unrealistic. Their choice was binary: Publish the story, or don't.

You insist there was some way to cover the story without spoilers. There wasn't. What were they supposed to write? "We've got news about Ken Jennings on Jeopardy. Don't read further if you don't want to know." You'd know immediately: He lost. Granted, you wouldn't know when, or on what question -- but the important point can't be hidden.

This isn't like a movie, where a spoiler could be any number of things (e.g., main character dies, antagonist is revealed to be protagonist's father, etc.). If there's any news about Jennings that could possibly involve spoilers, then you know immediately: He lost. There's no way to effectively obscure it.