The Hoboken Five

Jeopardy features five answers about our town in a March 6 airing

OK, some full disclosure here since some of our readers say that I’m more than happy to write about the intimate life experiences of friends and acquaintances for my columns but hardly ever my own:

I watch Jeopardy.

Every night.

Even on Saturdays.

And yes, I DVR the show so I don’t miss an episode.

I find Jeopardy, a challenging quiz program that has been on the air since (wow) 1964, a great massage for the brain. It is a gameshow difficult enough on a nightly basis to make a person feel proud for even getting the question to a $200 answer correct. And if you can pull off the right question to a Final Jeopardy answer (particularly when the three live contestants can’t), well, let’s just say it makes my month.

So it was to my surprise on Thursday, March 6 to see a category titled “The Hoboken Five”. You know a town that is only 1.3 square miles has arrived when it’s a category on such a highly-regarded game show.

So how hard were the answers? Put yourself to the test. Answers can be found by Googling, or you can write me directly at realhoboken@yahoo.com and I’ll be happy to share them.

Needless to say after the $200 answer you’re about to see, they were much more treacherous than expected. Asterisks indicate the ones I got correct:

$200 answer*: In 1998 a park in Hoboken was dedicated to this entertainer, “Hoboken’s Gift to the World”

$400 answer: Predicted by classmates to become a “second Darwin” he became an expert on sexual behavior

$600 answer: For a brief time in the 1850s, this songwriter called Hoboken home–Oh, De Doo-Da Day

$800 answer*: This Hobokenite of Chinese descent turned tennis pro in 1988 when he was just 15

$1000 answer: In 1924 Georgia O’Keefe married this Hoboken-born photographer 23 years her senior

What? No questions about Eli Manning, Beth Mason, the eeeeevil Hoboken Swat team, On the Waterfront, or Colonel John Stevens? I originally felt like I was ready to sweep the category, but some of those answers were brutal.

For the record, none of the contestants got answer #3. One originally got #5 wrong but a second contestant buzzed in correctly.

“The Hoboken Five” also wasn’t a category that any of them exactly jumped at, which is hilarious considering the other ones to choose from were “The Old Testament”, “Awards and Honors”, “Animals Aloft”, “Innocent Popes”, and “Rhyme Time”. In fact, all the other answers in every category were chosen before Hoboken had to be reckoned with.

What would be your five answers if you were a writer on Jeopardy? Feel free to share them on our message boards or write the email address indicated above.

P.S. I got the final Jeopardy question correct. Must have been that Hoboken karma.

Category: 60’s Movies

Answer: The tagline to this movie with a 7-word title was “Everybody who’s ever been funny is in it!”

Question:”It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World!”

Total number of contestants that got it right?

One.

Well two…if you include me.