Endgame

In which the Blob calls a brief timeout in the Sportsball festivities to talk about Final Jeopardy.

Final, that is, for one James Holzhauer, aka Jeopardy James, who captivated an easily captivated nation by reeling off 32 straight wins and piling up almost $2.5 million in a run second only to the peerless Ken Jennings, but infinitely more impactful.

This is because Jeopardy James did one of two things:

1. He didn't play fair.

2. He shifted the paradigm, thought outside the box and a bunch of other corporatespeak that all amounts to the same thing: He played the game in a way no one had thought of before.

The Blob votes for No. 2.

This is because it was fascinating to watch Jeopardy James strategize his way to victory after victory, using an approach so obvious you wondered why no one had come up with it before. What he did was, he went for all the big-money answers on the board first. He bet huge on the Daily Doubles. And he averaged nearly $77,000 in winnings per game, an astounding figure. By the time he finally lost the other night, he owned all ten of the top ten single-game money games in Jeopardy history.

Of course, it also helped that he knew a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, and was way quicker on the buzzer than the poor schlubs he was up against. It's why he had 11 games in his run in which he never missed a question, and was correct 97 percent of the time.

He also made "Jeopardy!" appointment viewing, which is saying something in a world in which everyone has live streaming of 500 channels now. People rushed through dinner at restaurants so they could get home in time to watch Jeopardy James beat another couple of dimwits bloody with his mighty brain. It was like watching the Yankees tool up on Fenstermacher Dairy from the Dirt Clod, Nebraska, Little League.

Many of us have often imagined we could do what Holzauer did, on account of we've watched "Jeopardy!" a million times and beaten the TV contestants to the punch time and again. Of course, we couldn't.

 For one thing, it's highly unlikely we'd get exactly the right categories; sure, we'd clean up in Lines From Monty Python's Holy Grail, Indianapolis 500 Winners and Generals Of The Civil War. But then we'd get Name That Impressionist Painter or Albanian Documentaries About The Existential Agonies Of Man, and we'd be toast.

OK. So I'd be toast.

Also, sitting on your living room couch firing off answers is not the same as sitting in front of TV cameras doing it. Most of us (again: me) would choke big-time when that little red light went on. Even if the category were Name Your Name.

So here's to ya, Jeopardy James. You cracked the code with innovation and creativty. And never mind those people who didn't think you played fair.

It's their Daily Double loss.