Jeopardy

Do you ever watch the TV game show Jeopardy? The gimmick is that they don't ask questions and expect answers, they tell you what the answer is and then ask what the question would have been.

They've been doing this for so long that it's become ritualized and stilted. For example, could you imagine a real-life conversation that went like this?

"Who is Ludwig van Beethoven?"

"His 'Für Elise' is one of the most famous piano compositions of all time."

I kind of wish they'd set aside one week when they could go back to the original idea behind the gimmick -- the idea that a person is so well informed that he or she can walk into the middle of a conversation, hear only the most recent comment, and infer what the question had to have been. Except that these would be real questions, not the stock, formulaic ones that they use on the TV show.

Here's what I mean:

Category: Sports
Answer: Sam Bowie
Question: Who was picked between Hakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan in the NBA draft?

Category: Space
Answer: Michael Collins
Question: Who was the only guy on Apollo 11 who DIDN'T walk on the Moon?

Category: Politics
Answer: 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th, but not 2nd
Question: Which amendments in the Bill of Rights has the Bush Administration ripped the living guts out of?