Andy’s Mailbag (12/17): Singular Host, Plural Octopi?

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Welcome back to my weekly Mailbag column! As always, if you have a question that you’d like me to answer, email me at mailbag@thejeopardyfan.com and I’ll answer it in the column!

An Editorial Comment

I just wanted to say: my answer to Jim from December 3, saying that I expected to see Mayim Bialik hosting Season 40’s regular-play games, certainly aged like milk. I think that just goes to show how surprised we all were by the announcement itself.

Travel & Accommodations For First-Time Players

Triumph asks,

With the news that came out in your mailbag two weeks ago that Jeopardy! is covering the travel and accommodations for all of the returning contestants for this season’s ultra-expanded tournament structure, do you think there’s any chance the show would continue to do so for first-time contestants once they return to regular play?

I mean, there’s a chance, in the “So you’re saying there’s a chance…” sense. Do I think it will happen, though? I’d be pleasantly surprised if it did.

The show is simply following past practice when it comes to this. Tournament and competition contestants have always had travel and accommodation paid for, while regular players have not (with the exception that the show will pay for a returning champion’s flight back if their run spans multiple taping sessions). However, I do believe that the increase in consolation prizes to $3,000 and $2,000 was intended to act as “this is in lieu of paying for travel and accommodation” for first-time players.

How Many Hosts?

Lynn asks,

Now that Mayim Bialik will no longer be hosting, will the show select another alternate host, or will the burden—and honor!—of hosting fall entirely on Ken Jennings’ shoulders?

In terms of the normal daily syndicated show: Ken Jennings will be the sole host of those episodes for the foreseeable future. The show’s own statement on Friday said that Ken would be the singular host.

What isn’t to be foreseen is what happens to any other games—say, future seasons of Celebrity or any special prime time (or even streaming!) tournaments that might happen. In that case, whoever the show is partnering with to produce and air these episodes might want Ken to host. Or, they might want Mayim to host. Or, they might pick a new host. That would be a joint decision between Jeopardy! and its partner to be made at the time the series is produced.

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“Wrong” Plurals?

Paranjaya asks,

Last week, there was an answer where a contestant answered “octopi” as a plural of “octopus”, which is not the correct plural form but is nowadays accepted as an alternative plural form. This got me thinking about what happens if a contestant answers “sheep’s” instead of “sheep” or “oxes” instead of “oxen”. Does Jeopardy! accept responses that contain errors like these?

Unfortunately, there is no “case law” on the specific cases you’ve mentioned: according to J! Archive—which does tend to note such attempts—the correctness of a response has never hinged on either example you gave (though I will give a shout-out to semi-regular in my comments Enos, who did attempt “sheeps” in a “rhyme time” category to rhyme with “(Meryl) Streep’s” during his Teen Tournament semifinal many years ago—however, as the intended response was “Streep’s leaps”, it was a moot point.)

That being said, “sheeps” and “oxes” do have entries in Merriam-Webster, so I’m guessing the show would accept such non-standard plurals, assuming that there isn’t something else in the clue or category precluding them from doing so. (On the flip side, Jack Weller’s famous attempt to pluralize “moose” as “meese” was met with “meese” not having an entry in Merriam-Webster, so the show correctly ruled him incorrect there.)

In conclusion, I believe that the show’s standard here would very likely be “as today’s dictionary-makers tend to be descriptivist in their construction and not prescriptivist, if it’s in the dictionary, it’s seen enough usage to accept, even if it’s non-standard.”

In Conclusion

Thanks again for your emails and I’ll do another one of these next week!

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