A Conan O'Brien sidekick and a "Desperate Housewives" actress blitzed CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer in "Celebrity Jeopardy" last month. He ended up with an embarrassing negative $4,600 while Andy Richter pulled in $68,000. Dana Delaney came in second with $9,300, according to a snarky piece in The New York Post.
According to an archive that tracked the game, Blitzer fell behind early, with $1,400 after the first round, though at least he got three questions right and none wrong. But things fell apart in the second round.
He missed three $400 questions. He said “Who is Julia Childs,” not “Child” for ” ‘If you can read, you can cook,’ she wrote in the introduction to her classic ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking.’ ” He said Bethlehem instead of Jerusalem for “King David & Jesus both hailed from this town.” And he said 1950s instead of ’40s for the first decade Baby Boomers were born. He said “defendant” instead of ‘defense” for a question involving three “e’s.” (Tough break there.)
He missed a tough $1,600 question: “The name of this pasta, similar to penne, means “little mustaches”–doesn’t sound so tasty now.” It’s mostaccioli but he said fettucini.
Blitzer ended the two rounds with a negative $4,600. He did get the final Jeopardy question correct and got $25,000 for American Cancer Society. In the end, he got five questions right, six wrong. Richter, in comparison, got 22 right and 2 wrong.
More recently on a show that aired October 15, CNN's Soledad O'Brien (of late promoting "Latino in America") did better but still came in third behind an NBA legend and a former star of "Laverne & Shirley." Michael McKean (also known as part of "Spinal Tap") took home $24,800, followed by $8,800 for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. O'Brien pulled in $6,200. You can see all the questions and answeres here.
In the first round, O’Brien got questions about Jennifer Aniston and the attorney general correct. She said heptathlon instead of decathlon on an Olympics question. And she got a tennis question wrong on Tennis magazine’s top female tennis player from 1965 to 2005. (She said Venus Williams. It’s Martina Navratilova.) She ended the first round with -$200 but came back in the second round when she got six questions right and only one wrong. She missed the final Jeopardy question. Her charity the Soledad O’Brien and Brad Raymond Family Foundation received $25,000.
In the end, O’Brien got nine right, three wrong. McKean? 23 right, two wrong.a
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