The logic behind the worst answer ever
The short clip went viral Wednesday, of a young woman on the Jeopardy! College Tournament giving just the dumbest answer ever to a baseball question. Did you see it? Did you? Because if you haven’t, you aren’t ready for the sheer magnitude of dumb.
Even if you don’t know anything at all about baseball, think about what you do know. There are a few major points that are important to history. It’s obligatory to know a few small points. And this clip covers two of them, albeit two that have no business being connected in the way they are connected here.
Yep. Poor Xiaoke guessed that Babe Ruth was the baseball player who broke the color barrier. The same Babe Ruth who was dead about a year after Jackie Robinson entered the league.
The thing is, though, that her answer? Wasn’t even in the neighborhood of as dumb as it sounds.
Okay, so nobody can know everything about everything. You have gaps in your knowledge. If you’re prepping for a Jeopardy! appearance, your first strategy should be to know as much as you can about everything. Great. But your second strategy needs to be filling in your gaps in knowledge with likely answers.
(Gonna try out for Jeopardy! some day? Read my audition advice.)
When Jayson Stark was with ESPN, he used to do regular trivia questions, either in his columns or as a unique piece. And ridiculously often, when the question called for active hitters who have done X thing, the answer included Todd Helton; when the question called for active pitchers, the answer included Roy Oswalt. Those two had both had long, successful careers, during which they had done a lot. Eventually, when he’d ask a question, someone would toss out one of those two just as the default guess. And they were right a lot.
If there’s a Jeopardy! question about a baseball player — not a full category, just a one-off question — they aren’t going deep. Without knowing literally anything about baseball, a question like that is going to have an answer of Babe Ruth, Cy Young, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, or Pete Rose. There are about four or five other names that might pop up. But you don’t need to know baseball to answer those questions. Not really. You need to know one of the options and guess it, and maybe you’re right!
When I was on the academic team in high school, Supreme Court cases were my bugaboo. I didn’t devote the time to knowing them as often as I should have. But I came to realize in time that there were only a few cases that ever really popped up in those quiz games, so I started just guessed Marbury v. Madison any time one came up and I didn’t know. And you would not believe how often that paid off. Like, stupidly often. To this day, I don’t really remember what that case was about, but it was the question writers’ favorite court case of all time.
Obviously, you’d like to have a little bit of knowledge on the subject. Maybe, you know, be aware that Babe Ruth is super-duper white. But Xiaoke is a college nerd (she’s on the biggest showcase for college smart kids in the world, I’m callin’ her a nerd). There are some of those who know all about sports, to be sure, but there are plenty who have ignored sports altogether over their lives. Add in her race and gender (as unfair as doing so may be), and there’s every chance that she only knows baseball from her last-minute pre-show studying. That means she knew to pick one of those names out at random and hope to land on the right one. That her wrong answer was so wrong as to make her go viral for dumbness is unfortunate, but not inexplicable.
Xiaoke is far smarter than most of us. And the thing about Jeopardy! is that sometimes the questions are designed for us sports doofuses to feel smart at the expense of these super-smart folks. Xiaoke went on to win her game. But for just a moment, she was the moron who thought Babe Ruth was black. And for just that moment, we could feel superior to someone who is definitely smarter than us.
And really, isn’t that what it’s all about?