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Yeah, it definitely wasn't as impressive as it seemed on the surface. A much better test of Watson's performance would have been QuizBowl, where contestants can buzz in while the question is still being read.

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They also restricted the clues compared to what they would normally have - no audio/video Daily Doubles. I think there might have been some other restrictions, but I don't recall the exact rules. I think they didn't allow any of the "special" categories they sometimes have.

They also did some other tricks, like giving Watson a parsed ASCII stream of the clue, rather than making it see the screen and parse it out. I think it also got an electronic feed of the "you can buzz in now signal" rather than making it parse out the same light the contestants see.

So, to be fair, they should have added a delay to the "you can buzz in now signal" to match the slowness of the human visual processing system. Without that, if all players knew the answer Watson won every time.

Also, the ASCII feed should have matched human reading speed.

Some detailed info about the timing and the buzzers: http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-buzzer-factor-did-watson-have-...

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