November 12, 2022 News and Notes

• Of the three seeded players given byes into the semifinals of the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, only Amy Schneider made the Grand Final.  Mattea Roach was defeated on Friday.
• Schneider will face Sam Buttrey, the Professors' Champion, and Andrew He, the five-time champion Schneider defeated to take his place and start her reign.
• Per analyst Andy Saunders, it appears that, by several years, Buttrey is the oldest person (and the first in his 60s) to actually make the Grand Final of a Tournament of Champions on any version of the show:  Trebek, Jennings, or Fleming.
• The Grand Final starts Monday, and lasts as long as needed until someone wins three games -- a modified version of The Greatest Of All Time's format, which Jennings (now the host) won.
• In an ironic twist, the champion who will now have been off over a month of regular shows (between this tournament and the Second Chance Tournament) is an 11-time ultrachampion who averaged over $30,000 a win!  Chris Pannullo has $356,702.
• The Democrats are now within one seat of tiebreaker control in the Senate -- Mark Kelly has been projected as the winner of the Arizona seat.  A win in either Nevada or the Georgia runoff gets tiebreaker control, both wins full control.
• And, about 6:15 PM PST, NBC News projects they got it:  Projection is now that Catherine Cortez Masto (D) has won back her seat in Nevada, with a comeback win after the day of election (which, of course, will field more steal squealing from the Q-Anon bots) over Adam Laxalt (R), the 50th Democrat in the new Senate.
• House projections have stalled, but it is still believed that the Republicans will get control of that chamber, but only by a small margin.  Latest word is that the Republicans MAY, in fact, choose other than Kevin McCarthy of California as the new Speaker.
• The long-stalled Arizona Governor's race is still up in the air.  Katie Hobbs (D) got a shock bump in Maricopa County to increase the lead over Kari Lake (R) to over 30,000 votes - but, three days and nights after the election, there are STILL 400,000 votes to count!
• Inversely, Nevada's governorship has flipped to the Republicans.