WWTBAM Bored

As Bob Shore knows, the Jeopardy message board has a tradition of delving into the process of determining the best strategy for specific unusual situations, and positing new approaches for achieving the best possible outcome. If that strategy catches on among contestants and fans, they often name it after the first person who proposed it. With that in mind, I propose:
Switch The Expert

Let's say you're a contestant who has been in the green room all day, waiting for your turn in the hot seat. They finally bring you out to tape the last show of the day, after the carryover contestant completes her turn. You get into the hot seat with about 15 minutes left, chat with Meredith, then sail through the first five questions. At this point, Meredith reveals who your Expert will be for the middle and upper tier of questions. Much to your horror, it is Paris Hilton (or some equally clueless person). This is when the Switch The Expert strategy kicks in. You realize that if you can just stretch the game out for a few more minutes, you'll carry over to the next week's episodes and get a different Expert, who would undoubtedly be smarter than Paris Hilton. So you do whatever it takes to get to the end of the episode without using the Expert lifeline. This might mean trying to banter with Meredith, taking the absolute maximum time allowable to answer questions, using your other remaining lifelines based partly on how much time they will consume, etc. Then if you're lucky, you might come back the next day and discover that the Expert for the next five episodes is Ken Jennings (or Ogi Ogas, or some other proven know-it-all).

A corollary to this strategy applies when you discover that the Expert is Ken Jennings, Ogi Ogas, or some other renowned game show veteran. In this situation, you'll want to rush your answers on every question to optimize the chances of having a top notch Expert available when needed, instead of risking that your new Expert assigned to next week's episodes will be Paris Hilton.

To a much lesser extent, this principle has applied since 1999 with respect to the Ask The Audience lifeline. It's far more likely that one sub-par Expert will affect the outcome of the game than a sub-par audience of about 200 people, but the theory still holds. Especially if there are large groups involved. One taping session might be full of smart kids who are in town for a national quiz bowl tournament, while the next taping session might have filled seats by going out into the streets and paying vagrants to attend. I'm not saying that such a thing would ever happen, but still...

With a strict time limit on the questions, it could be very hard to Switch the Expert. You'd have to rely on dragging out the bantering, alone. And what's in it for the experts (not counting the former contestants who love the game and want to pay it forward)? The Paris Hiltons, or third-tier celebrity equivalents, will be waiting around somewhere near their webcam, waiting impatiently for somebody they've never met to ask for their help, just so they can get their little snippets of air time. If a contestant drags out the end of the day, might there be pressure from TPTB to have Meredith cut the banter short, just to fit in one more celebrity expert appearance?

Of all the possible new lifelines that might have been considered, I think Michael Davies picked a stinker.

Maybe this was discussed somewhere else, but if you can start using the Ask the Expert after the first five questions, is there a new lifeline after the tenth question, like there was before?

Under the conditions you describe, Ed, that sounds like a pretty good strategy. Imagine if you knew that the next day Ken Jennings would be the expert... who wouldn't do everything they could to delay the game to be able to hit Ken up as expert.

Of course, you've have to know who the next Expert was going to be, and there's no guarantee that TPTB would provide that info.

But the strategy you describe wouldn't need to be so dramatic as delaying the show... you could simply decide to use the Ask the Expert last out of all your lifelines, if your current Expert was a bonehead. That is, use your PAF now, use the ATA now, save the Expert for the next show.

Though you're probably right, delaying tactics might help.

Then again, since contestants can no longer watch earlier shows from the green room, they probably won't have a good notion about whether their current Expert is proficient or not.

On the other hand -- after the new season's aired for a while, future contestants will probably start having a sense of which kinds of Experts are good, and which aren't, and then might use them accordingly. If they can just manage to stay calm and use good judgment under the pressure of the Hot Seat, which of course is always the hardest part!

Seems to me if your expert was a bonehead, you'd want to use him first (on the easier questions). You wouldn't want a bonehead helping you on the $250,000 question!

Thousandaire wrote:Seems to me if your expert was a bonehead, you'd want to use him first (on the easier questions). You wouldn't want a bonehead helping you on the $250,000 question!

That's probably true in most cases. My proposal applies only in the special circumstance when you're almost at the end of the taping day, and would get a different Expert the next taping day if you're the carryover.

It has been reported that the next contestant watches the current contestant from a special seat in the audience, so they would get a preview of how good the Expert seems to be (unless the current contestant misses a question before asking the Expert).