Jeopardy TV Show

It was the President of University of Ottawa, Allan Rock, who took the initiative, but joining him in his gesture was one of the former alumni of the University.

Can you guess the name?

Hey! This is not too difficult to answer. Well, if you can’t guess, no worries. The person I am talking about is none other than the famed quiz show Jeopardy’s host, Alex Trebek.

Yes right!

Didn’t you ever notice the flamboyant mentioning of Alex about his native place Canada, in most of the show’s episodes?

He indeed takes pride in flaunting the fact that he hails from Canada.

And another fact that not many know about him is that he owns a degree in Philosophy from the University of Ottawa.

Allan, with the support of Trek and Michaëlle Jean, has planned to open up wings of his University a bit more, by launching the Centre for Global and Community Engagement.

Now ask me what is it all about?

Well, under the new strategic plan taken up by the University, Destination 20/20, the students and faculty of the University, will be proffered with prospects to get engaged with various volunteer opportunities, both at home and abroad.

Won’t that be a great deal?

And the eye-catching factor is the annual budget of this project. Can you guess how much that would be?

It is a whopping sum of $800,000.

OMG!

And the cherry on the top is that the host of jeopardy, Alex has nodded to fund an amazing sum of upto $100,000, and that too, for about three years.

Nice!

I guess Alex has earned really well by hosting Jeopardy episodes. Well, we just hope this initiation does really well in the future and brightens up the careers of the students even more.

When Jeopardy! announced that IBM had built a supercomputer that would face the two strongest participants on the show, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the whole world waited in awe, to see whether these confident prodigies stood a chance to win against this super-smart machine.

If you missed this highly-discussed episode, which aired earlier this year, you can watch it now, by securing a Jeopardy download.

But before you do that, let’s hear it from the man himself, Brad Rutter, who was in the seat opposite the imposing machine, and represented the entire human race in the adrenaline-fueled episode.

Even though Brad ended up losing to the computer, he jokes, saying that they had to build a supercomputer worth $10 million to defeat him, so he thinks it’s not that bad a loss!

The biggest question on everyone’s mind, as Brad stepped up with that trademark confident and poised look, was whether he really thought that he stood a chance at this.

Surprisingly, the answer to this is yes, he did!

Brad refers back to the time, when he was paired up against Ken Jennings, who had become a household name, after he seemed impossible to defeat on the show.

Recalling the moment, when he chose to battle against Ken, he says that even then, he believed that someone had to secure this win, so why couldn’t it be him.

He proved that impossible was possible, in that episode, by outing Ken and taking over the title of America’s smartest man.

When he walked in to compete against the IBM machine, he was driven by the exact same attitude.

Moreover, the fact that he had won against ‘Watson’, which was the name of the computer, in the practice rounds, made him all the more confident.

In retrospect, he says that it is possible that the show’s producers were not using him to the best of his ability at the time, which is why both Ken and Brad won over him in those rounds.

Whatever might have been the case, the episode was a great idea, and made for one of Jeopardy’s highest rated episodes!

You should catch it now, if you missed it by any chance.

Jeopardy is perhaps one of the oldest game shows with a historic broadcast record.

I mean, I remember the time when I used to sit besides my grandfather while he used to watch this game show.

I used to take pride in the fact that my grandfather thought I am inclined to learn new things, and so I never missed to sit with him while watching the show.

The series premiered in the year 1964 with the mastermind Merv Griffin at its helm.

It first aired on March 30, 1964 on NBC Network, and perhaps the creator of this wonderful series had no idea that the series would go on to become one of the most popular game shows in history, and would continue to air for decades.

Whoa!

Had Merv ever dreamt of reaching such a zenith, he would have been really proud of making his dream come true.

Jeopardy, along with being immensely entertaining, is also a great source of alleviating one’s knowledge, as the show touches upon different categories like – World History, World Origins, Literature, Geography, Pop culture, Science, Sports, and many more.

Wow!

I miss my old days, but thankfully I don’t really have to miss the show, since it is still being broadcast with the same vigor as in the yesteryears.

It has always been fun, challenging myself with the quiz round after round, and feeling the exhilarating victory if I ever happened to hit the right answers.

The feeling was almost the same as that of the actual winner on the show, except of course, he got the money, while I watched on empty-handed. LOL!

Even though I no longer intend to challenge myself with the quiz show the way I used to a long time back, but at least I haven’t lost my interest in the series even after years of watching it.

Such is the spell of the mesmerizing show, that I would continue watching Jeopardy episodes for as long as it continues.