Transcript 10/05/10 -- Sean Pollock

[BBTranscriptTeam]

Sean Pollock
New York, NY

Sean and his partner, who's in the relationship seat, need a new flat-screen TV.

Topic Tree (unrandomized)
Tut's Treasures
Chemistry 101
Food Town
What Ted Said
The Odd Couple
Governor's Mansions
World Leaders
Highly Competitive
Milk It
Famous Last Words

Topic Tree (randomized)
What Ted Said
Milk It
Food Town
Famous Last Words
Governor's Mansions
The Odd Couple
Highly Competitive
Chemistry 101
Tut's Treasures
World Leaders

Question 1 * World Leaders
A souvenir statuette of Milan's Duomo cathedral was used as a weapon in a 2009 assault that broke the nose of what world leader?

A: Gordon Brown B: Hugo Chávez
C: Dmitry Medvedev D: Silvio Berlusconi

Meredith repeats, twice, that it's a souvenir statue of Milan's Duomo cathedral. Sean jumps the question.

Answer/value/bank

D: Silvio Berlusconi
Question value: $7,000
Bank: $0

Question 2 * Tut's Treasures
Found in King Tut's tomb, a senet board is an ancient type of what?

A: Board game B: Counting device
C: Dart board D: Musical instrument

It's not a

Spoiler

musical instrument

-- Sean's going to go with

Spoiler

board game

.

Answer/value/bank

A: Board game
Question value: $15,000
Bank: $15,000

Question 3 * Chemistry 101
N2O is the chemical formula for what?

A: Ozone B: Laughing gas
C: Ammonia D: Propane

N2O would be nitrous oxide which is

Spoiler

laughing gas

.

Answer/value/bank

B: Laughing gas
Question value: $3,000
Bank: $18,000

Question 4 * Highly Competitive
Show jumping, Dressage and Eventing are the three disciplines of what Olympic sport?

A: Fencing B: Archery
C: Equestrian D: Wrestling

Sean knows this answer.

Answer/value/bank

C: Equestrian
Question value: $1,000
Bank: $19,000

Question 5 * The Odd Couple
In June 2010, Elton John shocked supporters by performing at what conservative pundit's wedding?

A: Bill O'Reilly B: Rush Limbaugh
C: Sean Hannity D: Glenn Beck

Sean knows it's not

Spoiler

Sean Hannity

or

Spoiler

Glenn Beck

. He's going to go with

Spoiler

Rush Limbaugh

. Meredith cautions the audience against premature applause, but Sean's answer proves to be correct.

Commercial break

Answer/value/bank

B: Rush Limbaugh
Question value: $10,000
Bank: $29,000

Question 6 * Governor's Mansions
What U.S. state's governor uses two official residences: one in Lansing and one on Mackinac Island?

A: Michigan B: Louisiana
C: South Carolina D: Washington

Sean's gonna say

Spoiler

Michigan

.

Answer/value/bank

A: Michigan
Question value: $25,000
Bank: $54,000

Question 7 * Famous Last Words
What body part is the final word of the chorus in the folk song "Oh! Susanna"?

A: Elbow B: Chin
C: Ear D: Knee

Sean hesitates a moment, then sings the last line of the song.

Answer/value/bank

D: Knee
Question value: $2,000
Bank: $56,000

Question 8 * Food Town
Which of these cities has never hosted a full season of the hit reality series "Top Chef"?

A: Dallas B: Las Vegas
C: Miami D: San Francisco

Sean needs a flat-screen TV but he does have a TV. Unfortunately, although he knows the show just won an Emmy, he doesn't watch it. He's going to ATA.

ATA results

A: 70%
B: 8%
C: 11%
D: 11%

That's a very good percentage. Sean goes with the audience.

Answer/value/bank

A: Dallas
Question value: $500
Bank: $56,500

Commercial break

Sean is a film producer. He's a busy guy -- he's also been writing a play in his spare time, and is working on a documentary. He could use the money for all of that.

Question 9 * Milk It
Celebrated annually on June 1st, World Milk Day uses a logo that depicts what animal part hanging at the bottom of the Earth?

A: Tail B: Udder
C: Hoof D: Horns

Sean thinks one answer makes sense.

Answer/value/bank

B: Udder
Question value: $100
Bank: $56,600

Question 10 * What Ted Said
Claiming to be "the most important patriotic statement since the Constitution," "Ted, White, and Blue" is a 2008 book written by whom?

A: Ted Turner B: Ted Kennedy
C: Ted Nugent D: Ted Koppel

This has to be someone with a major ego and someone who's wearing the red, white, and blue all the time. Sean's going to go with

Spoiler

Ted Nugent

. Meredith would have gone with

Spoiler

Ted Turner

.

Answer/value/bank

C: Ted Nugent
Question value: $5,000
Bank: $61,600

Ted has reached Round 2. It is time to play Classic Millionaire.

$100,000
If a bug got comfortable in an open cavity of a rock, it would be accurate to say the insect was snug as a bug in a what?

A: Yug B: Sug
C: Vug D: Cug

Spoiler

Vug

sounds correct but Sean is going to jump the question.

Answer

C: Vug

Commercial break

This question was worth $100,000 in 2009.
In the 1984 movie "Gremlins," which of the following is not one of the three rules for taking care of the creature Mogwai?
A: Don't get him wet B: Keep him out of bright light
C: Never feed him after midnight D: Don't let him sleep too much

Answer

D: Don't let him sleep too much

$250,000
The letters "VDB" -- the initials of artist Victor David Brenner -- are etched in tiny print at the bottom of the portrait on what U.S. coin?
A: Penny B: Nickel
C: Dime D: Quarter

Sean thinks it's too much money to risk. He's going to walk with the money he has.

Answer

A: Penny

Sean leaves with $61,600.

End-of-show chime

[Bob78164]

Chavez was written with an accent over the "a," but I don't know how to do that, at least on a Mac. --Bob

[Estonut]

Chavez was written with an accent over the "a," but I don't know how to do that, at least on a Mac. --Bob

I don't know about Macs, but you could try:
alt + 0225
or
alt + 160
or
google Hugo Chavez, find a blurb that uses the accent, copy & paste the character

[MarleysGh0st]

Well, now that a regular contestant has joined Peter Gallagher at having taken a peek at Round Two, the question is who will be the first to actually answer a Round Two question?

I'd have ATA'd the Top Chef question, as Sean did, then jumped the Ted Nugent and Vug questions. VBD was an instaget for me, so I'd get to see what they offered for $500K.

[MarleysGh0st]

Question 5 * The Odd Couple
In June 2010, Elton John shocked supporters by performing at what conservative pundit's wedding?

A: Bill O'Reilly B: Rush Limbaugh
C: Sean Hannity D: Glenn Beck

Sean knows it's not

Spoiler

Sean Hannity

or

Spoiler

Glenn Beck

. He's going to go with

Spoiler

Rush Limbaugh

. Meredith cautions the audience against premature applause, but Sean's answer proves to be correct.

Somebody brought the shout-out to Rush's attention!

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/ ... guest.html

RUSH: Rush Limbaugh on the Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Snerdley, what's that look on your face? You're just stunned that it still bothers 'em, right? It still bothers 'em. They still can't figure it out.

[megaaddict]

Sean Pollock
New York, NY

Sean and his partner, who's in the relationship seat, need a new flat-screen TV.

Topic Tree (unrandomized)
Tut's Treasures
Chemistry 101
Food Town
What Ted Said
The Odd Couple
Governor's Mansions
World Leaders
Highly Competitive
Milk It
Famous Last Words

Topic Tree (randomized)
What Ted Said
Milk It
Food Town
Famous Last Words
Governor's Mansions
The Odd Couple
Highly Competitive
Chemistry 101
Tut's Treasures
World Leaders

Question 1 * World Leaders
A souvenir statuette of Milan's Duomo cathedral was used as a weapon in a 2009 assault that broke the nose of what world leader?

A: Gordon Brown B: Hugo Chavez
C: Dmitry Medvedev D: Silvio Berlusconi

Meredith repeats, twice, that it's a souvenir statue of Milan's Duomo cathedral. Sean jumps the question.

Answer/value/bank

D: Silvio Berlusconi
Question value: $7,000
Bank: $0

Sean made a great run, but if he has any regrets they would be for wasting a jump here. Aside from the theory that this is an easy question based on its position in the unrandomized tree, the clue in this question (you know what's coming, but I am serious) hits you over the head. Add that Meredith repeats it repeatedly and you have a wasted lifeline. The cost in this case was a look at the half-million dollar question. Ouch!

[MarleysGh0st]

Sean Pollock
New York, NY

Oh, and it has to be stated for the record: Sean is a film producer.

Where Else/What Else?



Not many details on his IMDB page, though: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1412947/bio

[earendel]

Sean Pollock
New York, NY

Sean and his partner, who's in the relationship seat, need a new flat-screen TV.

He's a WE/WE®.

Question 2 * Tut's Treasures
Found in King Tut's tomb, a senet board is an ancient type of what?

A: Board game B: Counting device
C: Dart board D: Musical instrument

It's not a

Spoiler

musical instrument

-- Sean's going to go with

Spoiler

board game

.

Answer/value/bank

A: Board game
Question value: $15,000
Bank: $15,000

Senet is supposed to be similar to backgammon, IIRC.

Question 4 * Highly Competitive
Show jumping, Dressage and Eventing are the three disciplines of what Olympic sport?

A: Fencing B: Archery
C: Equestrian D: Wrestling

Sean knows this answer.

Answer/value/bank

C: Equestrian
Question value: $1,000
Bank: $19,000

Kentucky is hosting the World Equestrian Games, so there's been a lot of news about these events lately. Plus I was in a singing group that as a fund-raiser helped with a horse show that featured show-jumping (we had to replace the knocked-down bars or moved obstacles).

Question 8 * Food Town
Which of these cities has never hosted a full season of the hit reality series "Top Chef"?

A: Dallas B: Las Vegas
C: Miami D: San Francisco

Sean needs a flat-screen TV but he does have a TV. Unfortunately, although he knows the show just won an Emmy, he doesn't watch it. He's going to ATA.

ATA results

A: 70%
B: 8%
C: 11%
D: 11%

That's a very good percentage. Sean goes with the audience.

Answer/value/bank

A: Dallas
Question value: $500
Bank: $56,500

I'd be using ATA also. I watch some cooking shows but not this one.

Question 10 * What Ted Said
Claiming to be "the most important patriotic statement since the Constitution," "Ted, White, and Blue" is a 2008 book written by whom?

A: Ted Turner B: Ted Kennedy
C: Ted Nugent D: Ted Koppel

This has to be someone with a major ego and someone who's wearing the red, white, and blue all the time. Sean's going to go with

Spoiler

Ted Nugent

. Meredith would have gone with

Spoiler

Ted Turner

.

Answer/value/bank

C: Ted Nugent
Question value: $5,000
Bank: $61,600

My reasoning was the same as Sean's.

$100,000
If a bug got comfortable in an open cavity of a rock, it would be accurate to say the insect was snug as a bug in a what?

A: Yug B: Sug
C: Vug D: Cug

Spoiler

Vug

sounds correct but Sean is going to jump the question.

Answer

C: Vug

Thanks to lots of crossword puzzles this one was a gimme.

$250,000
The letters "VDB" -- the initials of artist Victor David Brenner -- are etched in tiny print at the bottom of the portrait on what U.S. coin?
A: Penny B: Nickel
C: Dime D: Quarter

Sean thinks it's too much money to risk. He's going to walk with the money he has.

Answer

A: Penny

No idea, but since I have two JTQs, I'll use one.

It was nice to see some upper-tier questions. I believe this makes Sean the biggest money-winner of the season so far.

[tanstaafl2]

Well, now that a regular contestant has joined Peter Gallagher at having taken a peek at Round Two, the question is who will be the first to actually answer a Round Two question?

I'd have ATA'd the Top Chef question, as Sean did, then jumped the Ted Nugent and Vug questions. VBD was an instaget for me, so I'd get to see what they offered for $500K.

A good run in general especially by an apparent wewe but another example where a person goes down on a question that I think most hard core trivia players would know easily and probably known to many more casual trivia players as well.

[goongas]

A good run in general especially by an apparent wewe but another example where a person goes down on a question that I think most hard core trivia players would know easily and probably known to many more casual trivia players as well.

I am a hard core trivia player (three nights a week playing pub trivia along with watching J! and BAM daily, etc.) and I have never heard that fact about the penny.

[MarleysGh0st]

A good run in general especially by an apparent wewe but another example where a person goes down on a question that I think most hard core trivia players would know easily and probably known to many more casual trivia players as well.

I am a hard core trivia player (three nights a week playing pub trivia along with watching J! and BAM daily, etc.) and I have never heard that fact about the penny.

It helps to have been a coin collector when you were a kid. The 1909 S-VDB pennies are especially valuable.

[goongas]

It helps to have been a coin collector when you were a kid. The 1909 S-VDB pennies are especially valuable.

Similar to how I knew the Beanie Baby 250K question we saw this season because I used to collect them, but I wouldn't expect many to know the original 9 beanie babies. As Regis used to say, it is only easy if you know it.

[Bob Juch]

A good run in general especially by an apparent wewe but another example where a person goes down on a question that I think most hard core trivia players would know easily and probably known to many more casual trivia players as well.

I am a hard core trivia player (three nights a week playing pub trivia along with watching J! and BAM daily, etc.) and I have never heard that fact about the penny.

I do too but have never had a question about it. I knew the answer however. Now if I had recalled who wrote "You Can't Take It With You" last night...

[silvercamaro]

It helps to have been a coin collector when you were a kid. The 1909 S-VDB pennies are especially valuable.

Similar to how I knew the Beanie Baby 250K question we saw this season because I used to collect them, but I wouldn't expect many to know the original 9 beanie babies. As Regis used to say, it is only easy if you know it.

I was prepared to say that this was not a question that required anybody to be a coin collector. When the question came up, I thought it was the easiest $250K question to date. To me, the answer required nothing more than simple observation of objects that passed through our hands on an almost daily basis.

I retract all that. I just looked at the pennies in my purse, and they do not have the VDB. Perhaps I collected pennies for a day-and-a-half in 1961, or my observational skills were much greater (during a previous life) back in 1909.

[MarleysGh0st]

I retract all that. I just looked at the pennies in my purse, and they do not have the VDB. Perhaps I collected pennies for a day-and-a-half in 1961, or my observational skills were much greater (during a previous life) back in 1909.

It depends on the mint year. Recent pennies have the VDB, in extremely small print at the bottom of Lincoln's shoulder. One would have to strain one's eyes to notice.

Correction: Maybe it doesn't depend on the year (aside from the 1909 coins), it's just that the initials are so small that they can become illegible if the coin is at all worn.

[ulysses5019]

It helps to have been a coin collector when you were a kid. The 1909 S-VDB pennies are especially valuable.

Similar to how I knew the Beanie Baby 250K question we saw this season because I used to collect them, but I wouldn't expect many to know the original 9 beanie babies. As Regis used to say, it is only easy if you know it.

I was prepared to say that this was not a question that required anybody to be a coin collector. When the question came up, I thought it was the easiest $250K question to date. To me, the answer required nothing more than simple observation of objects that passed through our hands on an almost daily basis.

I retract all that. I just looked at the pennies in my purse, and they do not have the VDB. Perhaps I collected pennies for a day-and-a-half in 1961, or my observational skills were much greater (during a previous life) back in 1909.

So you knew Victor David Brenner? I think he got funnier when he dropped his first name.

[goongas]

I stand corrected then.

[plasticene]

Senet was the game that Jacob and the Man in Black found on the beach in the final episode of Lost. I'm sure that's how it came to the writers' attention.

I knew what a vug was from playing Scrabble. The only one of the other choices that's a word at all is "yug", which doesn't appear in our North American word list, but is valid in international play.

This was a pretty nice stack for me. I would have asked the audience on the same Elton John question as he did; I might not have had the guts to answer Ted Nugent, even though the other choices didn't seem very apt; and I definitely would have jumped the coin question.

[SportsFan68]

A good run in general especially by an apparent wewe but another example where a person goes down on a question that I think most hard core trivia players would know easily and probably known to many more casual trivia players as well.

I am a hard core trivia player (three nights a week playing pub trivia along with watching J! and BAM daily, etc.) and I have never heard that fact about the penny.

It helps to have been a coin collector when you were a kid. The 1909 S-VDB pennies are especially valuable.

Yep, it was our dream to find one. When we quit and Mom sold off the collection, it was one of the very few holes.

[wintergreen48]

It helps to have been a coin collector when you were a kid. The 1909 S-VDB pennies are especially valuable.

Similar to how I knew the Beanie Baby 250K question we saw this season because I used to collect them, but I wouldn't expect many to know the original 9 beanie babies. As Regis used to say, it is only easy if you know it.

I was prepared to say that this was not a question that required anybody to be a coin collector. When the question came up, I thought it was the easiest $250K question to date. To me, the answer required nothing more than simple observation of objects that passed through our hands on an almost daily basis.

I retract all that. I just looked at the pennies in my purse, and they do not have the VDB. Perhaps I collected pennies for a day-and-a-half in 1961, or my observational skills were much greater (during a previous life) back in 1909.

The first ones minted in 1909 have VDB in very large type on the back of the coin, at the bottom, and it caused a bit of a scandal, because up until that time most US coins were designed in house by mint employees who usually omitted their initials entirely, or just used one letter, and concealed it. They coin was redesigned that year (hence the rarity of coins from San Francisco that have the initials), and the initials were removed entirely for almost ten years. In 1918 they brought them back, but the VDB is now in teensy tiny type at the base of Lincoln's shoulder.

Lincoln cents are good for a lot of trivia questions: the front design (Lincoln's bust) is the longest-running design EVER (101 years now); it was the first regular issue coin to portray a US President, or any real person for that matter; it is the only coin on which the President faces to your right; from 1959 to 2009, it was the only US coin on which the President appears twice (there is a teeny tiny view of Lincoln's statue in the Lincoln Memorial on the back in the coins from 1959 to 2008, and in 2009 there were a series of coins that showed views of Lincoln at different stages of his career); it's the only regular issue coin to show a guy with a beard; and it is the only US coin ever minted using steel (in 1943 they removed the copper, a vital war material, and made the coins out of zinc coated steel).

[MarleysGh0st]

Lincoln cents are good for a lot of trivia questions: the front design (Lincoln's bust) is the longest-running design EVER (101 years now); it was the first regular issue coin to portray a US President, or any real person for that matter; it is the only coin on which the President faces to your right; from 1959 to 2009, it was the only US coin on which the President appears twice (there is a teeny tiny view of Lincoln's statue in the Lincoln Memorial on the back in the coins from 1959 to 2008, and in 2009 there were a series of coins that showed views of Lincoln at different stages of his career); it's the only regular issue coin to show a guy with a beard; and it is the only US coin ever minted using steel (in 1943 they removed the copper, a vital war material, and made the coins out of zinc coated steel).

The new coin designs are spoiling your trivia. One of the new nickel designs has Jefferson facing to the right.



And another has his body facing right while his head is facing (mostly) forward.