For fun I’ve been keeping track of the times Hammett or something to do with Hammett (i.e. Sam Spade or Lillian Hellman) popped up on the game show Jeopardy!
Kind of a marker of the cultural zeitgeist.
Now that the classic Alex Trebek era is over, maybe I’ll stop (or won’t feel a twinge of remorse if I miss one), because you can access and search all their archives.
I had my Jeopardy! research team comb those archives and under Hammett were located no less than 68 mentions of Hammett in the clews or responses, plus 2 in the Final Jeopardy shoot-out for a total of 70.
For mentions of Sam Spade — on his own, no ref to Hammett — no less than 42, plus 1 in the Final.
Total Hammett or Sam Spade: 110 + 3 Final (113 total).
But also (not counted in the 113 total):
10 times Hammett was the wrong answer.
8 times (including one Final) Sam Spade was the wrong answer.
And among the flood tide of Hammett-related items of course you’ll find the one about me and the tour in San Francisco, which I’ve mentioned in various editions of the Hammett Tour book — I never saw that episode, only had people tell me roughly what was said. You’ll find that one at the bottom of the Double Jeopardy round, on the left.
