MOULTRIE, Ga. — On occasion I watch “Jeopardy” on television. And sometimes, I can answer a few questions.

 I’ve never understood why on Jeopardy one is required to answer a statement with a question. Why not just ask a straightforward question and expect a straightforward answer? Maybe the producers of this show grew up around our nation’s capital where the word “straightforward” always has an asterisk by it.

The show also requires one to answer quickly. You’ve got to beat the other two contestants to the buzzer.

 Now the other night I answered six questions correctly during the entire episode. Yet I don’t feel intimidated. I accept that the contestants are very smart. But I’m not sure how important it is to have memorized how long it took to build any one of the great pyramids of Egypt. I do think it’s important to know where I can go to get that information should I need it.

Right off hand I can tell you that the pyramids are in the desert. There are dead Egyptian rulers buried in them. And they were already constructed when Moses came onto the scene. All of that can go on a post-it note. Meanwhile, Google has the details.

These contestants are well read and well traveled. I would bet that none of them believe Bigfoot is real, and all of them agree that man has walked on the moon.

But it has occurred to me that I may know some things that they don’t know.

For instance, I doubt any of them would know how many rollers there are in an old-fashioned sugar cane grinder. There are two answers. One style had two rollers and one had three.

How many of them would know the color rhyme that tells you if it’s a king snake or a coral snake?

And the answer is: “Red on yellow kills a fellow. Red on black is happy Jack.”

 But relative to that knowledge, it would be good to know the difference between “anecdote” and “antidote.” I’m sure all of those contestants know that. You don’t sit around and tell funny stories to someone who has been snake bitten.

And I doubt seriously that any of them would know the temperature required to get a coal when rubbing two sticks together to build a friction fire. The answer is 800 degrees.

Also, which most common wood seems to work best in this endeavor? The answer is willow.  

It’s always been my position that memorizing a lot of facts is not the best use of one’s time unless there is a basis for practical application of that stored information. Simply put, knowledge is relevant.

Now I’ve often thought it would be fun to put Jeopardy’s host, Alex Trebek, as a contestant. Trebek asks the questions and of course has all the answers right there before him. Sometimes he smirks as if to say, “You silly moron, a third grader would have known that one.” But then he doesn’t get paid to answer. He gets paid to question. And that takes us back to knowledge being relevant.

I may not watch Jeopardy again for several weeks. I’m far from being addicted to it. Mostly I surf the many channels looking for entertainment or enlightenment.  Sometimes that leaves me sitting on the back porch late at night listening to the bullfrogs in the pond behind my house. Quite often a chorus of deep baritones will start all at once. And they will end just as abruptly. So I wonder if they are talking to each other. “Hey guys, is that a cottonmouth or just a water snake?”

(Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)