Jeopardy!

The US show is currently hosted by Alex Trebek. The current version debuted on September 17, 1984, and perenially ranks second to Wheel in the Nielsen ratings of syndicated programs. Art Fleming hosted the original version, which ran from March 30, 1964, to January 3, 1975 on NBC. He also hosted a short-lived NBC revival, The All-New Jeopardy!, from October 2, 1978, to March 2, 1979.

Table of contents

1 Game play 2 Tournaments 3 Auditions 4 Miscellaneous trivia 5 ''Jeopardy!'\' in popular culture 6 Merchandising 7 See also 8 External links

Game play

Each day, there are three contestants, one of whom is the winner from the previous show.

The second round, Double Jeopardy! (a pun on double jeopardy), works like the first round, with the following exceptions:

• The categories are different.
• The value of each clue is double what it was in the first round:
  • 1963-1975: $20, $40, $60, $80, $100
  • 1978-1979: $50, $100, $150, $200, $250
  • 1984-2001: $200, $400, $600, $800, $1000
  • 2001-now: $400, $800, $1200, $1600, $2000
• The contestant with the lowest amount of money at the end of the first round picks first in the second round.

Some spots on the board conceal Daily Doubles. There is one such spot in the Jeopardy! round and two in the Double Jeopardy! round. Only the contestant who selects a Daily Double is allowed to respond to its clue. They can wager as much as the maximum amount of a clue on the board or as much as they have accumulated, whichever is greater. The minimum wager is $5. In the first "Jeopardy!" round, if a player has less than $50, $125, $500, or $1000 (depending on the era), they may risk up to that amount. In "Double Jeopardy!" if a player has less than $100, $250, $1000, or $2000, they may risk up to that amount. A player may also indicate that they wish to make it a True Daily Double, meaning that they are wagering all the money that they have up to this point.

The third round is Final Jeopardy!. Contestants with zero or negative scores are not allowed to participate in Final Jeopardy! and automatically win the third-place (or possibly second-place) prize. Alex first announces the category, and the contestants risk as little as $0 or as much money as they have accumulated, by writing it on a card (before 1979) or electronic drawing board (since 1984). Then the clue is revealed. Contestants have 30 seconds to write a response on a card/electronic drawing board, again phrased in the form of a question.

The contestant who wins the most money is the day's champion and usually returns the next day. Before 1979, all contestants won their winnings in cash; since 1984, only the champion wins the amount of money accumulated on the show, and the other two contestants win consolation prizes. If more than one contestant ties for first place, they all win the money and come back. If there is a tie in a tournament, a tiebreaker question is played, but this has only ever happened on a few occasions.

The most it is theoretically possible to win on the show in one day is $566,400 with the clues at their present value. However, that would involve getting each question correct, picking the daily doubles last in each round, having all the Daily Doubles be under the lowest-valued spaces (which they almost never are), wagering everything for each Daily Double, and again wagering everything in Final Jeopardy!.

In previous seasons, a contestant who won five days in a row would be retired undefeated, with a guaranteed spot in the next Tournament of Champions. In the later years of this era, an undefeated champion would also be awarded an automobile. Since late 2003, there is no winnings limit, so a contestant keeps coming back as long as that contestant keeps winning. This led to the remarkable winning streak of Ken Jennings, who currently holds several records on the show, including most money won cumulatively and number of appearances.

Tournaments

Various tournaments are held each season, including the Teen Tournament, featuring high-school students; the college Tournament, featuring college students; and the Tournament of Champions (ToC), featuring all 5-time undefeated champions, the college champion, and the highest money winners who were not undefeated. (Before 2001, the Teen champion was invited to the ToC.) Since the 5-day rule was lifted in 2003, spots in the next ToC will be alloted in order of wins, with total winnings serving as the tiebreaker. All of the tournaments follow this format:

The tournament lasts 2 weeks (10 shows), and 15 contestants are invited. In the first week, there are 5 games. The 5 winners advance along with the 4 next highest non-winning totals (wild cards). In the event of a tie for first place in a game, tiebreaker questions are asked until one person correctly answers; a tie for a wild card spot is resolved by the highest score entering Final Jeopardy!. (In the 2003 Tournament of Champions, 6 contenstants scored $0 in the first round, causing this tiebreaker to be applied. If any of those contestants had saved $1, they would have advanced, but they wagered everything hoping for a wildcard spot.) In the second week, there are 3 semifinal games, and those three winners play a 2-day final, with the highest combined score being the winner. The winner receives a guaranteed amount ($250,000 for the 2003 ToC, $50,000 for the 2003 College Championship, and $75,000 for the 2004 Teen Tournament) or his 2-day score, whichever is higher. The other participants receive an amount based on their finishing position, and even first-round losers receive an appearance fee.

Auditions

The Jeopardy! staff regularly offer auditions for potential contestants. Tryouts take place regularly at the Los Angeles Jeopardy! studio, and occasionally in other locations. In order to try out, you must be at least 18 years of age, unless you are auditioning for one of the "special" programs, such as the Teen Tournament and Kids' Week. (For latest audition news, visit the Jeopardy! website, www.jeopardy.com, or call (310) 244-5367.)

Tryouts are given to many people at one time. There are two parts to the auditioning process. In the first section, fifty Jeopardy!-style clues in fifty different categories are displayed on a big screen at the front of the room and read aloud by Johnny Gilbert, the show's announcer. You have eight seconds to write down your response (no need to phrase in the form of a question here) before the next clue is read. At the end of the fifty questions, the contestant coordinators take the completed answer sheets and grade them. A score of 35 is considered passing; you will not know your exact score, only if you passed or not. Those who did not pass the test are dismissed, and those who did pass the test remain for the second phase of the audition.

Part two involves a mock Jeopardy! competition. A game board is presented, and potential contestants are placed in groups of three to play the game. The emphasis is not on scoring points, or even having correct answers; the contestant coordinators know that you possess the knowledge to compete on the show, as you have already passed the test, and are looking for TV-compatible qualities. Having a lot of energy and using a loud, confident voice are considered to be huge advantages. After playing a few clues, you will be interviewed by the contestant coordinators in front of the rest of the group with various questions, such as, "How would you spend the money?" After the end of the tryout, those who passed are placed into the "contestant pool" and eligible to be called to compete for the next year.

You must wait one year after taking the contestant exam before you can try out again.

Miscellaneous trivia

The , which was composed by Merv Griffin, served as the "think music" of the Final Jeopardy! countdown, and is also the melody for the current theme. It has insinuated itself into everyday communication; the song applies to any situation in which someone is waiting for another to answer a question or make a decision. For example, the theme is often heard at baseball stadiums when the manager goes to the pitcher's mound to discuss a replacement.

The main theme song to the original 1960s version is called Take Ten and was composed by Merv Griffin's wife, Julann.

Celebrity weeks are held every so often, featuring well-known people playing the game for charity.

There are also special "Kids Week"s during which contestants of 10, 11, and 12 years old compete, with age-appropriate questions.

There are versions of Jeopardy! in many languages and countries around the world, as well as board games and computer games.

In October 1999, a blind contestant named Eddie Timanus was a five-day undefeated champion, winning $69,700 and two cars. He finished second in the Tournament of Champions that season.

When a player answers every question in a particular category correctly, it is said that he "ran the category". The audience usually applauds when that occurs.

The reason that only the winner gets to keep his money in the current version actually has an interesting story behind it. The second pilot episode for the new version had already been taped, with dollar values from $50-$250 in the first round, and $100-$500 in the second, with everyone keeping their money at the end, as had been done for years prior. Afterward, somebody (probably Merv) suggested that the values should be double that even, going from $100-$500 in the first round and $200-$1000 in the second. The producer said that that would be way too much for them to afford; even when taking into account the rate of inflation, that would be triple what the values had been on the original series. Merv wanted it done, though. Someone else piped in and suggested that only the winner should keep his winnings. It wasn't a popular idea at first, but was eventually accepted as a good compromise.

Another interesting story involves tournaments on Jeopardy!: The first one was held in 1985, after the first season, because the producers wanted to have a special ratings-grabber for sweeps. Alex Trebek, who was also the executive producer those first few seasons, devised the tournament format himself. The reason he made it like that is because that first season, there were exactly fifteen five-time champions. Once they decided to make the ToC an annual event, for each tournament, they invited all the five-time champs, and then the four-time champs in order of amount won to make exactly fifteen participants. There were never again more than fifteen five-timers, but it can be assumed that if there were, they would take the top fifteen in order of amount won. The ToC format was later applied to the Teen, College, and Seniors tournaments. Tournaments continue to work well as ratings-grabbers during sweeps weeks.

''Jeopardy!'\' in popular culture

• A notable portrayal was on the sitcom Cheers, in which the character Cliff Clavin (a noted trivia buff), makes it onto the show; he does very well, but in Final Jeopardy!, is forced to give an embarassingly inexact response and lose the game. Clavin actually would have won if he had wagered nothing in Final Jeopardy! because he had been in a "runaway" situation (having more than twice his nearest opponent's total, making it impossible for them to catch him). Instead, he wagered everything and lost. After this episode of Cheers aired, Trebek made several references on the show to the possibility that a contestant in a runaway situation might "pull a Cliff Clavin."
• Jay Leno often hosts parodies on The Tonight Show.
• Saturday Night Live has done several parodies of the show. One version, aired in 1976, posited a futuristic "Jeopardy! 1999", with Steve Martin appearing as the host, named Art F-114 (after Art Fleming). The series also aired numerous sketches based on Celebrity Jeopardy, with Alex Trebek played by Will Ferrell and featuring contestants such as Sean Connery, Burt Reynolds, and French Stewart being very stupid.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic wrote and performed a song called "I Lost on Jeopardy", a parody of "Jeopardy" by the Greg Kihn Band. The original was a love song unrelated to the show ("Our love's in jeopardy, baby"). The parody details Al's purported appearance on the Art Fleming edition of the show, including his extraordinarily poor performance and the resulting embarrassment. Don Pardo, the original announcer for the show, provided a voiceover explaining what Al didn't win.
• The plot of the movie White Men Can't Jump revolved in part on the character played by Rosie Perez trying out for Jeopardy! and eventually winning.
• In the attraction "Ellen's Energy Adventure" at Epcot (in Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida), Ellen Degeneres dreams that she is a contestant on an episode of Jeopardy! where all the categories are about sources of energy. Ellen's co-contestants are Jamie Lee Curtis and Albert Einstein. After she gets trounced in the first round, Bill Nye intervenes and takes her on a tour of many different sources of energy while explaining their benefits and drawbacks, allowing her to rally in the second half of the game.
• David Foster Wallace's short story Little Expressionless Animals revolves around a woman who wins Jeopardy! every day in succession for an entire year.
• Animaniacs had a gameshow segment called Gyp-parody, in which the final question was to list all fifty US states, and their capitals. Wakko responds with Wakko's America (sung to the tune of "Turkey in the Straw"), but loses in the end, as it is not in the form of a question.

• There have been Jeopardy! video games made by Atari on almost every popular platform including Super Nintendo, Playstation, DreamCast and Microsoft Windows.
• Several board game versions of the game have been produced by Pressman Toys, including a Simpsons version.

• Ken Jennings, current all-time high-scorer

• Jeopardy! webpage
• A History of Jeopardy!
• JEOPARCHIVE!: Full recaps of all 20th season episodes