Yo, Alex!

Oh my aching ears. I knew it was going to be bad when Jeopardy! had an entire category of "Russian" but ... someone please tell Alex he can't pronounce Russian for beans.

Nohvoh Ohgarayvoh, he says for Ново Огарево, Novo Ogarevo. And yes there are four O's there, but Russians pronounce unstressed O's like ah, not oh. And it's trickier than that, because you can spell it like this: Ново-Огарёво, and that diaresis tells you to pronounce that E like Yo. So it's nova ahgarYOvah. (It's the same sound they tried to catch when they transliterated идёт снег as idyot snyekh (идёт снег, idet sneg (meaning 'it's snowing')) (and that's not a KH there, btw, it's a devoiced G meaning plain old K) - which Alex pronounced like "ideeoht"... argh). (Were there enough parentheses there? :-) )

It didn't please me that the contestant answered "What is a dakha?" either. That's a CH, just like in English. Dacha cha-cha-cha!

And oh yeah: contestants? What the hell? The Kray twins and Rudolf Hess imprisoned in Alcatraz? Are you serious?

(Although it was kind of interesting that Alex told the first one who said "Alcatraz" that "No,, remember Alcatraz was already used as a clue." Remember that if you're on Jeopardy! some day!)