Sooooo......first off, I have to say, that Robin and Monica were both the nicest ladies I could have played against.
Tossup one: It's actually funny because we adopted my brother from Romania, which of course. borders Hungary. The hardest thing was not saying Bucharest which is the capital of Romania. From the moment Pat said, okay Michael's got the right idea, Let's get your buzzers ready...Okay Michael's won first the first tossup. Thought it was going to be the start of something glorious and it was just not meant to be.
Tossups 2&3: We all buzzed in at the same time. You could actually see on TU2 that I thought I got in first. On TU3, I knew I didn't get in first. Don't know what took me so long on the tossups. Normally, I'm much quicker on the draw. It almost felt like a basketball player shooting at an away game and not getting familiar with the sightlines at the arena, therefore having a lower shooting percentage. For this very reason, I would have rather had a later game than being 2nd out of 6.
Round 1: I think I knew that one before she called the O. Fairly early on, just waiting for my turn. Even after she solved, I knew there was plenty of game left and that I could recover. All I needed was to get something positive going in Round 2.
Round 2: First spin: Bankrupt. Oh come on!!! I calmed down, realized that it will probably get back to me at some point, it usually does. Monica never gives up control and solves it. I remember knowing this one during the middle of the round as well, earlier than R1. I'm a geography guy so THE CZECH REPUBLIC came to me fairly quickly and the A's of course gave me BANANA.
Round 3/Prize Puzzle: This is the round I was upset about. I knew this one so early on, I believe after the N's were called. Then she called a Q. I thought for sure I was done, she knew the puzzle, and that I lost the game. Then she's calling vowels, I think there might be hope yet, maybe she'll call a T, L, something (She told me later on that she only knew UNIQUE). Then, I don't know if it seemed like it to you guys, but it felt like it took her 3 eternities to call the R. I'm actually looking over to the side where they have the countdown clock and I saw it was at 4, 3. I'm thinking to myself are you kidding me? I thinking it's going to be at 0 or 1. I get that she was going for her 2nd half of the car but come on.
Round 4/Speed-up: I was pretty defeated at this point, being down $43k with no hope of winning. I realized the puzzle as soon as she called the E's, which you can see. (There's a reason I gave up playing Poker, I'm quite animated with my facial expressions.)
Bonus Round: While backstage, they showed us a monitor playing the live feed. Monica wasn't able to solve the puzzle, I solved it fairly quickly. I don't think I RSTLNE'd it. I think I needed the H's. That said, I think it might have hurt more than helped in a sense because of the common -GHT ending as
tenpoundhammer also stated.
I would have done well had I actually gotten a chance to play, but when the person before you never gets a letter wrong, never gets LaT, never gets a Bankrupt, there's not much you can do really. I still am upset about the amount of time she got to call the R in the PP Round though. That completely changed the game. After PP, the scores were $5K-$44K-$1K. Had they buzzed her out, the scores would have been $5K-$17K-$12K. Maybe I'm wrong and she didn't exhaust her all of her time, but it sure felt like it. I was smiling on the outside alright, but crying and dying on the inside, just to think your dream is going to come true only to have it come crashing down, hard.
