"Palindromic Dates" (ToC Quarterfinal 2)
I wouldn't have chosen that category — but the show did, and the clue was fine
That was the category in last night’s Final Jeopardy!, appearing for the first time ever in any round of Jeopardy!. When it cam up, I thought it had the potential to be problematic; indeed not ideal for use at any stage, Tournament of Champions or not. There are many different formats by which a date can be numerically rendered — and the intended correct response may not be palindromic in all of them.
Fortunately, the clue was satisfactory. It specified a “7-digit” date — that explicitly rules out ISO 8601 format (yyyy-mm-dd), and points strongly toward eliminating leading zeroes from the month and day. And after some further thought, I accept that given Jeopardy! is a North American, English language television program, the writers are reasonable to expect contestants to default to m/d/yyyy1 format.
I’ve seen some objections, including from players in this Tournament of Champions and past ToC winners, that the clue is too difficult. I disagree. Though I wasn’t aware of the year in which Handel’s “Water Music” premiered, I do think it justifiable for Jeopardy! to test that piece of knowledge. And especially as we’re in the Tournament of Champions, adding an extra step to reach the correct response from there seems to me entirely fair.
To sum up: the writers made the best of a bad situation they chose to create for themselves. The clue was passable — but this category should have been aborted on the launch pad.
My notation here follows that used in custom date formats in Microsoft Excel. Single “m” and “d” renders the number of the month and day without leading zeroes, “mm” and “dd” with them.