A 'Jeopardy!' for the Forgetful - Jeff Greenfield

For millions of Americans, watching Joe Biden and Donald Trump confusing the homelands or the mortality of world leaders brought a familiar sense of recognition—or the lack of it. We are a nation where nearly 60 million of us are 65 and older; 37 million are over 70. The youngest baby boomer will turn 60 this year, and with age comes an increasing inability to stick the landing on just who we are talking about. (I recently sat down to write about California politics, and discovered that no matter how many times I looked up the name of a former Republican senator, I managed repeatedly to turn Thomas Kuchel into Lee Iacocca, the automobile magnate who certainly never served in the Senate).

This phenomenon of the names of things, people or places feeling just out of reach is called anomia. As Wikipedia reassuringly describes it, people experiencing anomia “can often describe an object in detail and maybe even use hand gestures to demonstrate how the object is used, but cannot find the appropriate word to name the object”—though they retain their grammar, comprehension and general fluency.

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What we need is a visible means of respecting, even celebrating the growing constituency of Anomic Americans. Fortunately, the answer is in front of us on a near-daily basis.

It’s “Jeopardy!”

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But “Anomic Jeopardy” will be very different. It honors not the dreary “correct” answer, but the response that demonstrates the most creative version of the right answer—one where it’s clear what is meant without using the name. For instance, if the clue is: “He was prime minister of Great Britain in World War II” the answer is not Winston Churchill. The Anomic Jeopardy answer is: Who was the fat bald guy who smoked cigars and made a “V” sign with his fingers?

If the clue is: “He starred in many movies with Katharine Hepburn,” we’re not looking for “Spencer Tracy.” A winning response is: Who’s that likable actor with the same last name as that detective in the comics? If the category is “state capitals,” and the clue is “Delaware,” contestants will be deemed correct not by answering “Dover,” but rather What’s the place with the white cliffs my wife and I saw on that cruise where I got seasick?

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https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/a-jeopardy-for-the-forgetful-0ff0b9bc?st=2dwjotz4pwl00yo&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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