By now this game show nut is weary unto death of the Jeopardy Watson hype. I feel like booze-fueled party animals have suddenly overrun a pleasant park. Those animals come from the media zoo, and they've unleashed themselves on the peaceful precincts of the game show world. Many media folks – thank heavens - ignore that world. They consider it a dreary land of ancient demos and even more ancient shows dating from, like, the 1980s...eek!
But before the gate-crashers move on to the next media atrocity, they should read Ken Jennings' reflections on his distant second-place finish to Watson. Jennings keeps things light in his post-mortem, or at least as light as a loser's post-mortem can be. Most importantly, he makes the key (if obvious) point that control of the buzzer is everything in high-level Jeopardy play. And a machine can control the buzzer a lot better than mere humans.
Jennings also takes a bit of evil joy in finally beating Brad Rutter, and confesses that he felt isolated behind enemy lines on the IBM campus. But I don't know about his assertion that top-ranked Jeopardy players have never known the touch of a woman. Ken has a couple kids, I think.
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