Coping with the Trebek Void

 The game show host was quite fond of the term ensconce(Establish or settle someone or something in a comfortable, safe, or secret place) to describe a Jeopardy contestant who had a commanding lead.  For example, Ken Jennings who characterized Alex Trebek as tepidly stern, was ensconced in first place going into Final Jeopardy probably around 50 times in his fabled career as a contestant and briefly as a host on the best game show in television history.

Alex was the best, but had a few flaws. The biggest flaw was costing the players precious time by adding his commentary after each answer or reminding them there was a minute remaining consuming around 7 seconds of that remaining minute.

The first contestant I noticed to aggressively cut off Alex was Arthur Chu. I only mean aggressive in the sense Chu would not let Alex complete his sentence with respect to updates on dollar amounts or adding additional unnecessary commentary to last answer. Alex was great about shutting up in order to NOT HAVE $4000 worth of  lost clues left on the board.

When this happened, not only was that money lost to the hard working players, but the audience was deprived of knowing another brilliantly written and researched Jeopardy answer.

I love you immensely Alex like you are still alive. I sometimes pretend you are not dead by watching Netflix reruns and it really feels like you are still alive during those treasured 30 minute intervals!