🧠 The Final Jeopardy Clue

“The website for this hotel includes mini-biographies of Harold Ross, Edna Ferber & Alexander Woollcott.”

Tonight’s Jeopardy! clue transports us back to the Jazz Age — a time when wit, words, and ideas flowed freely around a famous round table. This isn’t just about a building; it’s about a cultural icon that shaped American literary history.

🏨 A Hotel That Defined an Era

The clue references one of the most storied landmarks in New York City: a hotel that became the unofficial home to a circle of brilliant writers, critics, and humorists during the 1920s. This gathering came to be known as the Algonquin Round Table.

Figures like Harold Ross (founder of The New Yorker), Edna Ferber (Pulitzer Prize–winning author), and Alexander Woollcott (noted critic and radio personality) regularly met here to share conversation, wit, and creative ideas that would ripple through journalism and literature for decades.

Today, the hotel’s website preserves their legacy with short biographies, offering a window into one of the most influential salons in American cultural history.

🖋️ The Legacy of the Algonquin Round Table

In 1919, a group of New York writers and journalists began meeting for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel, quickly earning a reputation as the city’s sharpest conversationalists. They gathered daily to trade quips, critique each other’s work, and shape literary opinion.

The group’s influence spread beyond the walls of the hotel. They helped launch publications, plays, and movements that shaped modern American culture. Many of the jokes and quotes attributed to this group still circulate today.

Decades later, the Algonquin remains more than just a hotel — it’s a living monument to an era when language itself was a form of art.