Make Jeopardy Questions

Premiering on NBC in 1964 and in syndication in 1984, the game show "Jeopardy!" is noted for its distinctive answer-and-question style. This style is more than phrasing its clues in the form of answers and requiring players to give their responses in question form; clues relate to the game's categories and often include in-jokes based on the subject of the clue. While the show employs a staff of 9 writers and 5 researchers, you can make Jeopardy! questions yourself by following the steps below.

Steps

The Game Structure

  1. Familiarize yourself with the "Jeopardy!" format. Jeopardy!" is divided into 3 rounds: the Jeopardy! and Double Jeopardy! rounds each consist of 6 categories with 5 answer clues each in ascending dollar amounts, while the Final Jeopardy! round consists of a single answer clue in a particular category.
    • In addition, the Jeopardy! and Double Jeopardy! rounds feature 1 and 2 Daily Doubles, respectively, in which the player who chooses the clue the Daily Double is connected to may risk a portion or all of his or her score at that point on a correct response.

Naming Categories

  1. Study how the show assigns categories to its games. "Jeopardy!" is intended as a test of general knowledge. Except for specialized versions of the game, such as "Rock and Roll Jeopardy!" and "Jep!" (a version of "Jeopardy!" for preteens), the categories selected for each round of the game should cover a broad range of knowledge without overlapping with one another.
  2. Be aware of the show's category gimmicks. Even though "Jeopardy!" is a test of general knowledge, the show is creative with its category names and how it pairs categories in its games. Some of the methods are described below:
    • Theme boards. On a number of occasions, the 6 categories have names that suggest a common theme. For example, the Jeopardy! round of a game that aired in 2004 had a Shakespearean theme, with categories "Richard III" (about the king, not the play), "Much Ado About Nothing" (questions related to nothingness), "Measure for Measure" (covering units of measure), "Hamlets" (related to small towns), "The 'Temp'-ist" (all correct responses included words with the letters "temp"), and "Shakespearean Actors."
    • Paired categories. When an entire board is not devoted to a single theme, categories may be paired creatively, such as a category named "St. Paul" about the apostle, followed by a category "Minnesota" about the state of Minnesota. On occasion, the same or a very similar category name may be used in the Jeopardy! and Double Jeopardy! rounds to cover different subjects, such as "Notions" used in the Jeopardy! round for a category about ideas and in the Double Jeopardy! round for a category on sewing items.
    • Gimmick categories. In recent years, "Jeopardy!" has developed a few gimmick categories that test players' knowledge beyond simple recall. In "Stupid Answers," the key word of the correct response appears somewhere in the clue. (For example, "While Billy Batson says 'Shazam!' to become Captain Marvel, Freddy Freeman says these words to become Captain Marvel, Jr." "What is 'Captain Marvel'?") In "Rhyme Time," the correct response must include a pair of rhyming words. (For example, "What is a green bean?") In "Before and After," the correct response is a name or phrase composed of 2 parts made into a portmanteau. (For example, "Longtime host of 'American Bandstand' who is secretly Superman." "Who is Dick Clark Kent?")
    • Traditional category names. "Jeopardy!" has established traditional names for some of its categories, such as "Name's The Same" for 2 or more items with the same name, "Unreal Estate" for fictional places, and both "Potpourri" and "Hodgepodge" for general knowledge. Category names that include quotation marks about part of the name indicate that correct responses will include the letters or word enclosed in the quotes.
    • Category name puns. "Jeopardy!" category names frequently are plays on words, such as "See What the CAT Scan Dragged In" or "I'll Be Your Waiter," about people who waited for something. The show has frequently punned its "Potpourri" category name with such categories as "Poe-Pourri" (about Edgar Allan Poe), "Pope-Pourri" (about popes), and "Pan and Pot-Pourri" (about cooking).

Writing the Questions

  1. Define your questions properly. Asking for the "second largest" of the Great Lakes is not enough, you need to define whether you mean second largest by volume (Lake Michigan) or by surface area (Lake Huron). Defining what information you're looking for precisely will help you research, and expressing what you mean precisely will help avoid ambiguity on the contestants' part.
    • Even so, "Jeopardy!" has sometimes mis-defined its questions. On a January 2013 show, to indicate a scalene triangle, in which none of the sides are of equal length, the graphic image in the clue showed a triangle with dimensions of 6, 8, and 10. Because these measurements are a Pythagorean triple (6 squared plus 8 squared equals 10 squared), a contestant answered, "What is a right triangle?" � which was correct given the clue, but not the answer the show was looking for.
  2. Use the best information sources you can find. While the staff of "Jeopardy!" has access to paid research sources such as Gale Research, you'll have to use less prestigious sources. Reputable encyclopedias, either in book form or online, are one possible source, as are specialized reference books and websites.
    • When reading, look for qualifiers such as "according to," "allegedly," "reputedly," or "reportedly" and consider information following these words to be suspect.
    • To further vet a website, read the write-up under "About" or "About Us" about the person or organization behind the website. If the write-up indicates a personal agenda or bias, consider the "factual" information presented on the site as suspect.
  3. Verify that your information is still current before using it to write the question. Many websites include a date of posting; news websites often include a note about how current an article is when covering breaking news. Also be aware that sports records can be and often are broken during an athletic competition or season, and entertainment records can be similarly broken with the release of a new movie or recording.
    • In general, questions involving records should be about the record holder rather than about the record itself. While some fans are amateur statisticians, most aren't.
  4. Consider your audience. Choose the subject matter, difficulty, and vocabulary of your questions so that players and spectators can, on average, get 2/3 to 3/4 of your clues right. However, don't be afraid to occasionally stretch your audience; the best "Jeopardy!" players are those who are curious about many things.
    • You can get a sense of what subjects are commonly used on "Jeopardy!" by watching the show regularly. The 1992 book "Secrets of the Jeopardy! Champions" by former champions Chuck Forrest and Mark Lowenthal covers a number of the subjects used for the show up to that time, but be aware that in recent years, the show has featured more pop culture material than previously.
  5. Phrase the clue in an interesting way. "Jeopardy!" clues are distinctive not just for being formatted as answers but for providing information to help the contestants figure out the correct question. This is done in one of several ways:
    • Factual information. A fact can be the focus of an answer clue, as in "Mary Ann Evans' pen name" for the correct question of "Who is George Eliot?" It can also be a fact subordinate to the primary fact of the question, as in "This Man in Black scored a minor 1984 hit with the country novelty song 'Chicken in Black'" for the correct question "Who is Johnny Cash?" by incorporating Cash's nickname.
    • Irony. Some clues juxtapose facts of contradictory natures, as in a January 2013 Final Jeopardy! of "The first of Jane Austen's 6 novels to be published in her lifetime, its title is last alphabetically" for the correct question of "What is 'Sense and Sensibility'?"
    • Style mimicry. Some "Jeopardy!" clues have been done to copy the style of text messages or personal ads, as in "King good at solving riddles wants girl just like the girl who married dear old Dad" for "Who is Oedipus?"
    • Inside jokes. Just as "Jeopardy!" sometimes uses clever names for its categories, it also uses puns and inside jokes in its clues, such as "Frank Zappa named his band this out of necessity" for "What is the Mothers of Invention?" based on the adage "Necessity is the mother of invention."

Tips

  • If a question has multiple forms of the correct answer, provide all acceptable forms to the host for reference.
  • The "Jeopardy!" staff writers normally write 6 questions for each category they plan to use and then choose the best 5 for its use in an actual game. You may want to use a similar brainstorming technique when writing your own questions.
  • Develop a judging standard for contestant responses before writing your questions. On the show, last names are generally sufficient unless a full name is necessary to distinguish people with the same occupation (John Adams vs. John Quincy Adams, for example). Pronunciations that fit the correct spelling of the answer are usually accepted during the first 2 rounds, and spellings that fit the correct pronunciation are usually accepted for Final Jeopardy!
  • On air, "Jeopardy!" clues are limited to a maximum of 200 characters to fit into the video display. If you're writing clues that won't be displayed, you're not bound by this limit.

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