Jeopardy / Tropes P to Z

You can view the main page HERE!

Tropes A-D HERE!

Tropes E-O HERE!

---

P

• Painting the Medium:
  • March 9, 2005: A clue about fonts read "Bauhaus or Arial, for example", with the words "Bauhaus" and "Arial" written in those respective fonts.
  • November 30, 2022: A clue about John Hancock ("Massachusetts elected its first governor in 1780—this man") had the last two words larger than the rest of the text, as a reference to Hancock's signature on the Declaration of Independence.
  • February 8, 2023: As an extra hint, this clue about E. E. Cummings was rendered in lowercase.
  • October 2, 2023: A clue about the space in punctuation removed it entirely, creating long chains of letters that appeared on screen.
• Pants-Free: Alex Trebek, at the beginning of this Tournament of Champions show.
• Person as Verb: In the Cheers episode "What Is... Cliff Clavin?", postman Cliff Clavin appears on the show and racks up an insurmountable lead, but loses after he gets Final Jeopardy! wrong and wagers everything. Making such a wager is often called "pulling a Clavin".
• Pilot: There have been several over time.
  • 1963-64: The original run-through used a board with ten categories containing ten clues each, which filled nearly all of the stage and jutted into the audience area. Seeing how problematic such a board was (and could be), Merv Griffin cut it down to the far more manageable six-by-five for each round.
  • March 6, 1977: Used a revolving gameboard and a timed Super Jeopardy!, but otherwise faithful to the eventual series. This pilot was originally prepared for CBS.
  • September 18, 1983: Alex Trebek with the 1978-79 set layout and music, now themed like a personal computer. Final Jeopardy! was reinstated, and Jay Stewart was the announcer.
  • Early 1984: Similar to the eventual series, except 1) the dollar amounts were halved ($50-$250/$100-$500), 2) the contestant podiums had nameplates along with each contestant's personal signature, 3) the Jeopardy! logo on the board was very basic, 4) the theme music was a slightly different arrangement of what it would eventually become, and 5) Alex's podium looked remarkably like the "clicker podiums" (with the Jeopardy! logo on top) seen in various Home Game adaptations.
• Player Elimination: While most games see all three players last the whole game, any player who does not have a positive balance by Final Jeopardy is eliminated at that point, as they have nothing to wager.
  • Also utilized in the short-lived 1978 version. The lowest scorer at the end of the Jeopardy round was eliminated, regardless of whether their score was positive or negative, leaving just two to battle it out in Double Jeopardy for the right to play the bonus round.
• Player Nudge:
  • If a contestant hits a Daily Double, Alex will sometimes remind them of their score in comparison to their opponents — for instance, "You have exactly half of X's total", which pretty much translates to "I really hope you make it a true Daily Double". He sometimes gives similar score-related nudges going into Final Jeopardy!
  • Sometimes subverted for laughs if a player with a significant lead hits a Daily Double, and Alex jokingly suggests that they make it a true Daily Double.
  • Increasingly so in the 2000s, this is baked right into the clues themselves; where the game originally had straight-forward "answers" (ex. "He was the 40th president"), a bulk of the clues now give contextual hints in order to give players a hand (ex. "He was the 40th president, much to Doc Brown's disbelief 30 years earlier").
  • If someone gives a response that doesn't fit the theme of the category the clue is in, and there are further clues to be played in that category, Alex will usually remind the players of it.
• Politician Guest-Star: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director (and former Ohio Attorney General) Richard Cordray returned to Jeopardy! 27 years after his original 5 day championship reign and 1987 TOC semifinal run to compete in the Battle of the Decades tournament in 2014. However, he couldn't accept the opening round's $5,000 runner-up prize after losing his game, due to his appointment to the CFPB director post by President Obama. Cordray, however, did pay for the trip to Los Angeles to compete out of his own pocket.
  • A handful of politicians have competed on Jeopardy! during their four Power Players Weeks, including former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman, Minnesota Senator Al Franken, former RNC chairman Michael Steele, and multiple Congress members and White House Press Secretaries. As well, then-Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings competed during a regular Celebrity Jeopardy! week in 2006.
  • During the Washington, D.C. tapings in season 32, Jeopardy! had two political figures read Final Jeopardy! clues live in studio: Dr. Jill Biden (wife of then-Vice President Joe Biden) in the first Teachers Tournament semifinal, and Washington, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser in the last Power Players Week game.
• Popcultural Osmosis: You know this has happened when your once-niche favorite is a subject on Jeopardy!
  • Leeroy Jenkins!
  • On November 22, 2006, there was a category featuring words from UrbanDictionary.
  • "I Can Has Cheezburger?" was a category on November 18, 2009, but the category had to do with cheeseburgers, not LOLCats.
  • In a category about MMORPGs, EVE Online, of all games, was one of them.
  • The College Championship quarterfinal game on February 4, 2010, featured the category "Internet Favorites" with clues about The Evolution of Dance, Keyboard Cat, "I'm On A Boat", and Charlie the Unicorn.
  • 4chan was part of a clue on February 23, 2010. No, seriously.
  • There was also an episode where all the categories were named after "Weird Al" Yankovic songs.
  • Fallout: New Vegas was the subject of a clue on February 24, 2011.
  • Failblog was the subject of a clue on March 14, 2011. Ironically, nobody got it right... and a video of the clue appeared on Failblog the very next day.
  • Tumblr was the answer to a clue on December 16, 2011.
  • A clue about planking was on February 2, 2012.
  • A "Viral Videos" category was on February 13, 2012's episode (the first game of the 2012 Teen Tournament finals). There were clues about "Leave Britney Alone", "Double Rainbow", "Charlie Bit My Finger", and "Numa Numa".
  • The categories in the Jeopardy! Round on February 6, 2013 (a Teen Tournament episode) were as follows:
    • Hey, I Just Met You
    • This is Crazy
    • But Here's My Number
    • So Call Me...
    • May "B"
    • Yeah, We Went There
  • Minecraft was the subject of a clue on February 5, 2013 (5th quarterfinal game of the 2013 Teen Tournament).
  • "Sus" was the correct response to a clue on April 7, 2022.
• Precision F-Strike: Thrice, each getting beeped.
  • On a Celebrity episode, Penn Jillette did this when calling for the category "Bull ____" (where every correct response would have "bull" in it): "I'll take Bullshit for $200."
  • Contestant Vincent Valenzuela on July 13, 2018, trying to give the response "known associates", blanks on the word and says "What are known... shit!"
  • Ken does this in the exhibition game among Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio, and Mattea Roach in the 2022 Tournament of Champions. He revealed the gimmick (namely, that all the correct answers were the lengths of all four of their winning streaks - 23, 37, 40, and 74) for that game’s "Number Please" category, not realizing that there was still a clue left in that category.
• Prisoner's Dilemma: Formerly invoked if contestants were tied for first going into Final Jeopardy! — their only logical bets are All or Nothing, depending on how much each trusts the other to bet $0. In the best-case scenario, both bet $0 and are declared co-champions regardless of whether they get Final Jeopardy! right or wrong; worst-case scenario is that they both zero out on an incorrect response and the third contestant wins (unless they too bet everything). To take this to the extreme, there have been instances where the two contestants were tied for first while the other player did not qualify for the Final Jeopardy! round^note (including June 12, 1998 and January 13, 2000), and there is also one known instance of a three-way tie for first.
  • Since ties for first place (and hence the co-champion rule) were abolished at the start of Season 31, this can no longer be achieved without leading to a Tiebreaker clue.
• Product Placement: In addition to the retired consolation prizes, some categories are sponsored by a company to either promote products or because the theme is relevant.^examplesuch as an airline or tourism board sponsoring a trip for on-location shooting of video clues For example, the July 31, 2012 Kids Week episode had a category on The Wizarding World of Harry Potter sponsored by Universal Studios, where each answer about the franchise was directly tied to a feature or ride at the park.
• Progressive Jackpot:
  • Late in the original Fleming run, one was awarded to the first contestant to sweep a category. The jackpot started at $500 and increased by that amount each day until it was claimed.
  • A somewhat unusual variant was part of the 1978 Super Jeopardy! endgame- $5,000 would be the amount for winning the first time, plus $2,500 per trip, up to $15,000 for the fifth (total of $50,000)- and it grew regardless of whether or not the contestant won that round.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "This! Is! Jeopardy!" Also qualifies as a Title Scream.
  • Amusingly, this got lampshaded on the February 22, 2012 episode, which had a category where Johnny Gilbert delivered various "This is X" phrases in the style of the intro. Naturally, one of them was "This! Is! SPARTA!"
• Pyrrhic Victory: Since consolation prizes were eliminated, a challenger who beats the champion with a final score of less than $2,000 actually ends up taking home the least money for the day (second place gets $3,000, third gets $2,000, and the champ keeps whatever he/she has already won). However, they do get to come back for another game to try and win more. One notable example was 9 day champion Dan Pawson's 7th game from January 2008, where he won with just $200 after everyone wagered big and missed Final Jeopardy! (which he made up with back to back $7,000 Daily Doubles the next day).
  • This also happened to Christine Black and Anna Rodriguez, who had very low winning totals on their first games ($600 and $799, respectively), then finished third on their second games, thus meaning they won less money than the second-placers they defeated.

R

• Ratings Stunt:
  • The Celebrity Editions and the "IBM Challenge" (Ken Jennings vs. Brad Rutter vs. the IBM Watson supercomputer, the first-ever nonhuman to play a live game of Jeopardy!). Truth be told, it's a legitimate method of research testing.
  • Arguably, any of Jeopardy!'s reunion tournaments could be considered this, given the big cash prizes and popular past champions involved in them.
• Reaction Shot: First used on Nancy Zerg when Ken Jennings came down to earth, it was dubbed the "Zerg Cam" by fans, and referred to as such by Trebek during a repeat showing of Ken's losing game.
• Read the Freaking Manual:
  • 1988 Seniors Tournament competitor D.J. Smith was abruptly disqualified from the event prior to the semifinals, after Jeopardy! producers discovered that he'd competed on Wheel of Fortune a few months prior, a violation of the show's eligibility requirements. Though D.J. had mentioned his Wheel appearance in his application forms, it somehow got by the show's staff until he'd already played in the quarterfinals, forcing producers to withhold his guaranteed $5,000 semifinal purse and replace him with the next-highest earning quarterfinal loser. Had he known about the rules regarding prior game show appearances, who knows how he'd have done as a contestant later on.
  • Barbara Lowe may count here as well, but given her reputation as a professional contestant who competed under aliases, it's more likely that she disregarded the manual.
• Rearrange the Song: Though they kept the original 1964 "Think!" recording for Final Jeopardy!, that same melody was used as the main theme once the 1984 version started up. At first, the main theme was performed with synthesizer and saxophone leads. The intro was truncated in 1991, and bongos were dubbed in a year later. Starting in 1997, both the main theme and the "Think!" music have received multiple orchestral re-arrangements. Rock & Roll Jeopardy! used an electric guitar remix of the theme, and Sports Jeopardy! a more marching band-styled one. The main show used the Rock & Roll Jeopardy! theme for many years during college tournaments, but switched to using the Sports Jeopardy! version in 2020.
• Retired Game Show Element:
  • In the Fleming era, all players kept their cash total at the end of the game with consolation prizes for those finishing with $0 or a negative score. When the show returned in 1984, the rule was changed to allow only the winner to keep the money they won. Merchandise prizes were awarded to contestants who finished in second and third. On May 16, 2002, the show replaced these with $1,000 for third place and $2,000 for second place. On April 10, 2024, these were updated to $2,000 and $3,000, respectively.
  • Many tournaments and special weeks have been held throughout the years.
    • The Seniors Tournament. Held annually from Season 3 through Season 12, this was open to people at least 50 years of age. It was originally held in May, but it moved to July in Season 5 to accommodate the College Championship. The last Seniors Tournament was held in December 1995.
    • "Back to School" weeks or other weeks where children aged 10-12 competed. The bulk of the material was elementary/early middle school academics and tween pop culture. The first one was held in 1999, and they were done twice a year in most of the Turn of the Millennium. Jeopardy! stopped doing them after a couple of sportsmanship incidents in the mid-2010s.
    • International Tournaments where contestants from foreign countries competed to test their wits. Three were held: two in the mid-90s and the third in 2001.
    • Celebrity shows, on the syndicated version at least. Special weeks were done annually in The '90s with several one-offs scattered late in the decade. They were sporadically done in the Turn of the Millennium, culminating in a special $1,000,000 tournament in Season 26. The last celebrity week was held in Season 31, and none have been held since. ABC started hosting primetime tournaments in 2022.
    • Power Players weeks, where the participants were journalists, politicians or other well-known figures in current events. Four were held from 1997-2016.
    • 2019 saw a radically different kind of tournament in the All-Star Games. Eighteen super-champs played in teams of three with one playing the Jeopardy! round, the second playing Double Jeopardy! and the third playing Final. This tournament had two play-in matches with the third berth being decided among three of the top wildcard teams. Needless to say, this didn't go over so well. During the brief period where Mike Richards was executive producer, he planned on introducing a second tournament with this format. It got scrapped when he was let go.
    • The Teen Tournament which was held on a rotational basis from 1986-2019. Prior to 2001, the Teen Tournament winner was guaranteed a spot in the Tournament of Champions. While no official Teen Tournaments have been held since the coronavirus pandemic cut Season 36 short, a High School Reunion Tournament was held in Season 39. This event was composed of 27 past Teen Tournament players with $100,000 and a Tournament of Champions berth for the winner.
    • A similar fate seems to have befallen the Teachers' Tournaments which were hosted from 2011-2020. A Professors' Tournament was held in Season 38, but no others have been done since.
  • From 1985-2021, every two-week tournament with the exceptions of the above events played out the same way. It began with five quarterfinal matches with the winners advancing to the semifinals. The remaining four spots went to the highest scoring non-winners. After the three semifinals, the three winners faced off in a two-game final. After 2021, wildcards were removed from tournament play.
    • A new tournament format was tested for the National College Championship. 12 quarterfinal matches were followed by four semifinals. The two-game final consisted of the three highest scoring winners of the semifinals. With the outcry that followed the inevitability of a semifinalist winning a game and not qualifying for the finals, it's unlikely that this format will ever be used again. Thankfully, the show allowed the eliminated semifinalist to compete in a Second Chance Tournament.
    • The Tournament of Champions received an overhaul in Season 39. The qualifying field now consists of 21 entrants with the three who had the longest streaks since the last tournament receiving semifinal byes. The remaining 18 contestants play six quarterfinal games. After the semifinals, the three finalists play until someone wins three matches. The Season 40 Tournament of Champions removed the byes in favor of nine quarterfinal matches for the semifinal spots.
  • During Season 14 (1997-1998), the show briefly tried "bonus" categories — clues with two correct responses. If a contestant gave one response, s/he could try for the second response for the same amount of money, or leave the second one free for another contestant to ring in. It only lasted from December 1997 to February 1998, and even then was used in only three games.
  • At about the same time, the show used categories where, because of some sort of narrative used by the category, the clues were required to be chosen in order (as if they wouldn't be taken in order anyway). These also faded out of fashion in a few weeks.
  • From Season 14 through Season 19, any undefeated five-day champ won a new car.
  • In 2003 (Season 20), the five-day limit for champions was lifted as well...just in time for Ken Jennings to make his legendary 75-game run.
  • In the Fleming version and the first 30 years of the Trebek run, players who finished in a non-zero tie for the lead were declared co-champions and played again on the next show. Since November 2014, ties have been decided by tiebreaker clues. The winner becomes the returning champion on the next show, and the loser is given the $3,000 prize for second place.
  • For the entire Fleming run and for season 1 of the Trebek version, contestants ringing in had their podium light up, followed by a buzzer noise. Trebek found the noise distracting, so it was eliminated starting in season 2. Some international versions of the program continued having the buzzer noise with ringing in.
  • Prior to the show beginning, Alex Trebek would "put the board in motion," which was followed by the famous "swooshing" noise and the dollar values "popping" into place. As time constraints became an issue, this was modified and now a shorter version of this happens with a new, modern "popping" noise and no board "going into motion" action.
  • The Clue Crew, used from 2001-2022.
• Rouge Angles of Satin:
  • Sometimes shows up in Final Jeopardy!: so long as the misspelling does not alter the pronunciation, it will be accepted. This was invoked in the notorious "What is the Emanciptation [sic] Proclamation?" during a Kids' Week.
  • On March 14, 2012, the category "They Go by Their First Initial" had "Their" misspelled as "Thier".
  • The opening graphics for Season 34, which show a bunch of handwritten responses and appropriate graphics, had "What is the Declaration of Independance?" for the first week. This was quickly corrected.
• Rule of Three: This is used in closed captioning to distinguish between when time runs out to answer a question ("(Beep)") and when time runs out to complete the Jeopardy or Double Jeopardy rounds ("(Beep beep beep)").
• The Runner-Up Takes It All:
  • Though Brad Rutter defeated Ken Jennings in both of the final rounds of their million dollar reunion tournaments, Ken is still far more recognizable from both his Jeopardy! run (74 wins > 5 wins) and from his post-show career, with Brad's acting and producing credits not as recognizable as Ken's work as a best-selling author.
  • Though not out-earned in later events, 1990 Super Jeopardy! winner Bruce Seymour has absolutely been overshadowed since, as he's never returned for later reunion tournaments, whereas numerous losing competitors in that tournament have returned, with Bob Blake, Frank Spangenberg, and Eric Newhouse all winning later Jeopardy! tournaments despite not even making the Super Jeopardy! finals.
  • 1990 Tournament of Champions winner Bob Blake was the winningest Jeopardy! contestant in career earnings throughout the 1990s, but fan favourite champion Frank Spangenberg (a losing semifinalist that year) has been far more recognizable since, with the transit cop appearing in all 5 of the show's reunion tournaments (winning the 10th Anniversary Championship in 1993) compared to just 2 for Bob.
  • Jim Scott won 1991's Tournament of Champions, but Leslie Frates (who he defeated in the semifinals) has proven to be the favourite contestant from season 7, appearing in all of the show's later reunion tournaments, where she became the only woman to make the finals of one during 1993's Tenth Anniversary Tournament.
  • Leszek Pawlowicz handily defeated Jerome Vered in 1992's Tournament of Champions, and made it two rounds further than him in 2014's Battle of the Decades, but Jerome leads for career earnings, having won well over $300,000 during his finals run in 2005's massive Ultimate Tournament of Champions (where Leszek didn't advance out of the first round).
  • Despite Dan Melia's impressive Tournament of Champions run in 1998, losing finalists Bob Harris and Kim Worth (coincidentally, both comedians) stole the show with their witty and self-deprecating remarks during the finals, especially in game 2 after Bob's all-in Final response didn't work out. By the time of 2002's Million Dollar Masters tournament, Bob and fellow 1998 TOC fan favourite Claudia Perry both made the field, even though Dan defeated both in 1998.
  • Michael Falk may have won 2006's Tournament of Champions, but it's hard to overshadow 19 day champion David Madden, who defeated Falk in the quarterfinals. When David declined his Battle of the Decades invite due to conflict of interest concerns, it warranted an acknowledgement on-air by Alex Trebek, which definitely says something.
• Running Gag:
  • The various derogatory names given to the opera categories ("Uh-Oh, Opera", "Oh No, It's Opera!", "The Dreaded Opera Category") count.
  • "Potent Potables", a category dedicated to alcohol. On the original series, Art Fleming regularly said it was Don Pardo's favorite category.
  • "Those Darn Etruscans" was another early recurring category on the Trebek version.
  • "The Dreaded Spelling Category" wherein you have to spell the response, usually in Teen Tournaments.
  • "Stupid Answers": The correct response is in the clue, although sometimes not as obviously as you might think (e.g., "Now named for James Brady, this room in the White House is where the briefing of the press takes place." What is the Briefing Room?).
  • "Rhyme Time", a category where the correct response has two words that rhyme. Wheel adopted this category eventually.
  • "In Other Words". This category takes a notable saying or title and the displayed clue is a reworded version of that saying/title, with the contestant needing to provide the original. One notable example from a fake Disney memo regarding The Great Mouse Detective: The Girl With The See-Through Shoes. Correct response: What is Cinderella?
  • "Before and After" and "Before, During, and After"; see "Shout-Out", below.
  • Season 17 of Jeopardy! in 2000/2001 had a Running Gag in the form of a season-exclusive category called "Jeopardy! Place", where the clues were written in a soap opera style. Later "episodes" of the category had Johnny narrate the clues like a soap opera. The last episode with the category had it worded as "Jeopardy! Place: The Final Episode".

S

• Schmuck Bait:
  • Frequently, a clue is written so that it may hint at one answer but then throws in a key word at the last second to negate what would seem like the more sensible answer. For example, "His efforts to hold the Union together were ineffectual; 7 states seceded on his watch." Luckily, the contestant avoided the Schmuck Bait response and gave the correct one (James Buchanan, not Abe Lincoln).
  • There's no way the writers didn't expect someone to say it, but there's almost no way they expected Ken Jennings to say "What's a ho[e]?" to "This term for a long-handled gardening tool can also mean an immoral pleasure seeker." (The correct response, "rake", was given by another contestant.) Judging by Ken's massive grin and how ridiculously far ahead he was at the time, he likely threw the question intentionally just to be funny.
  • An example from July 20, 2005 had eventual 19 day champion David Madden win after trailing $200 at the end of Double Jeopardy! because he didn't fall for the Schmuck Bait in Final Jeopardy. The clue alluded to the "Ode to Joy" in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, but the use of "70-minute work" meant that the correct response specifically meant the entire symphony. The player in the lead put "Ode to Joy" and wagered to cover if David doubled up, costing her the game.
  • Clues related to The Legend of Zelda will typically try to bait contestants into using the short-hand "Zelda" instead of "The Legend of Zelda" by steering them in the direction of the princess's name. It is common in fanspeak to simply shorten the series name to "Zelda", but "Zelda" can also ambiguously refer to the character Princess Zelda, hence creating a technicality in which the exact full title must be given if the clue is referring to the series name, as done in one Final Jeopardy:
    Clue: The title princess of this game, which launched a best-selling franchise, was named for F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife.
  • An excellent one on June 18, 1987 that happened entirely by accident. The clue in "South Africa" for $500 read, "Of go in or go elsewhere, what to do when you see a restroom marked 'Here'." Marty rings in and says "What is go elsewhere?" which is ruled wrong. Kathleen then rings in and says "What is go in?", which is also ruled wrong. A confused Bob Verini doesn't ring in, at which point Alex reveals that "Here" means "men", so either Bob or Marty would've been ruled right for saying "go in", and Kathleen right for "go elsewhere". Former clue-writer Carlo Panno later revealed in an interview with Ken Jennings that this was one of his favorite clues.
  • On January 13, 2000, there was a category called Nymph-O-Rama. It only seemed natural that someone would misread it as "Nymph-O-Mania", and that's exactly what happened.
• Season Finale: Very literally taken for the first nine seasons, as the last game of each season (in June until 1986, July afterward) was also the last game to qualify for that year's Tournament of Champions in November of the next season (which later recurred in season 30 due to the 2014 TOC's scheduling delay). With qualifying periods now running between TOCs, new seasons just continue the existing timeline in the lead-up to the next event.
  • The last games of a Jeopardy! season are usually regular games, but from 1989-1995, the season always ended with the annual Seniors Tournament, before being moved to December for its last installment. Since then, the only season-ending special events have been two Teen Tournaments, two Kids Weeks, and 1996's Olympic Games Tournament (though its four episode run time meant that season 12 ended with a regular Friday episode).
• Self-Deprecation: Alex has occasionally dipped into this.
  • February 19, 1997: Before the episode's Final Jeopardy, Alex remarks about having given incorrect information beforehand.
    Alex: A little while ago, a clue referred to three atoms, and then I come along and give "NH4" as the formula for ammonia. Why would I do that instead of saying "NH3"? Just plain stupid, I guess.
• Serious Business:
  • Many fans who play from home use a scoring system developed by former 2-time champion Karl Coryat, which eliminates wagering, scores Daily Doubles by their clue value only, and doesn't penalize wrong answers on Daily Doubles due to it being a forced guess. What's more, there is a large lexicon of terminology used by the fanbase, including several terms coined by (and named after) former contestants.
  • 2003 College Champion Keith Williams keeps the serious business going on his website The Final Wager, which applies game theory and mathematics to wagering strategy on Final Jeopardy!, breaking down numerous scenarios that contestants should and shouldn't take, and giving colour grades (from green to grey) based on how well they wagered.
  • Averted in most of the Celebrity Edition games. Celebs often insist on Chewing the Scenery, ringing in on clues they obviously didn't know with an "Oh, I know this! What is it?" attitude, and otherwise clowning around. It didn't help that the game threw in unnecessary diversions (such as having a singer perform before a Daily Double!) which led to as few as 14 clues being revealed in each round. Fortunately, the Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational Tournament of the 2009–10 season was taken far more seriously, with more focused (and generally sharper) celebs who treated their games with respect.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Some categories use long words to obfuscate what would be otherwise be a simple clue. This is the whole point of any category that ends with "In Other Words".
  • Exaggerated on the April 1st, 1997 episode (guest hosted by Wheel of Fortune's Pat Sajak), where the Final Jeopardy! category was "Trinidadian Amateur Ichthyologists". Pat added after the category reveal "Don't let it throw you, folks!", but none of the contestants got it right anyway.
• Shout-Out:
  • One recurring category is "Before & After", which works the same way as its Wheel of Fortune counterpart. This category debuted on the April Fools' Day 1997 episode of Jeopardy!, when Pat Sajak hosted.
  • They have further lampshaded this Trope on rare instances since October 2001 with a category called "Before, During, and After", which fuses three ideas together with two linking words. Wheel has yet to adopt this category, even as a joke.
  • Inverted in the late 1990s, when Wheel introduced a category called Rhyme Time based on the Jeopardy! category of the same name.
  • On April 1, 2010, the reigning champion mentioned during his interview, that he considered Pitfall! (another Trebek-hosted game) "the best thing ever" when he was young. Alex couldn't disagree more, pointing out that it was the only time he was ever "stiffed" for his salary.
  • The Simpsons: At the end of his match against IBM's Watson, Ken Jennings paraphrased Kent Brockman by writing under his Final Jeopardy question "I for one welcome our new Computer Overlords".
  • And continuing in that same vein, 2011 9 day champion Jason Keller copied Watson's "What is Toronto?" in his ninth game.
  • The "Wheel of Jeopardy!" category. They show a partially-solved Wheel of Fortune puzzle and give a clue about the answer on the board. And in April 2013, the category "I'd like to solve the puzzle... fast!" had more detailed clues but very few letters revealed in each more difficult puzzle (such as QUETZALCOATL).
  • Some of the categories on the Celebrity Jeopardy! segments of Saturday Night Live have later been used as actual categories on the show, such as "Japan-US Relations" on the June 27, 2006 episode or "I'm Not Wearing Any Pants" on the May 25, 2007 episode.
  • One contestant is obviously a Family Guy fan, as he wrote down "Who is Kebert Xela?" for his Final Jeopardy! response. (Also an example of Off the Rails, since he went into Final Jeopardy! with only $1 thanks to a Daily Double gone wrong.) One category during the 2015 Teacher's Tournament was "Two D's and an F".
  • Likewise, this contestant knows his Cheers.
  • Saturday Night Live: As Jane Curtin builds up a big lead during a Celebrity Jeopardy episode in 1998, Naomi Judd refers to an old SNL Catchphrase of Dan Aykroyd towards Jane...
    Naomi Judd: Well, Jane, I guess you're NOT such an ignorant slut, after all!
  • Several references have been made to the Cheers crossover episode.
  • March 13, 1991: In the category "Reference Books", "Beat the Odds, Music Bingo & Fast Draw are entries in an encyclopedia of these by Schwartz, Ryan, & Wostbrock."^note What are game shows? As a double example, all three of these were hosted by Johnny Gilbert!
  • At least twice, Johnny Gilbert has been the correct response:
    • September 8, 1989: Here's "Johnny" for $100 was "This former nightclub singer is the announcer on 'Jeopardy!'"
    • February 21, 2006: He Was in That? for $200 was "In 1961 this future 'Jeopardy!' announcer hit the big screen in Gidget Goes Hawaiian."
  • The January 14, 2020 episode in the Greatest of All Time event featured a slate of categories referencing ABC shows, with "Modern Family", "The Bachelor", "The Good Doctor" "Blank-'ish'", "Stump Town", and "Knight-line".
  • An episode of the new UK version had the categories "Baby", "Sporty", "Ginger", "Posh", "Sporty", and "Spices (and Herbs)".
• The Show Must Go On: In one episode, a contestant fainted during Final Jeopardy! Alex roused the contestant and asked him to write down his Final Jeopardy! response. Apparently, the contestant was on a crash diet and had not eaten in almost two days. This did not affect the final outcome, as the incumbent champion in this match already had a "lock" game and gave a correct response, while the other player was essentially locked into third place and gave an incorrect response while the fainting contestant got it right.
• Show the Folks at Home: For the 2023 Jeopardy! Masters tournament, the locations of the Daily Doubles were revealed briefly to the viewers at the start of each round.
• The Singing Mute: Sort of referenced/averted in a Final Jeopardy question early in the Trebek era. The question asked how many characters in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs sang "Hi Ho, Hi Ho". All of the contestants answered with seven, but Alex pointed out that the answer was actually six because Dopey couldn't talk.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Trebek can seamlessly jump from a sophisticated, professional tone to offbeat, wry, and often self-deprecating humor, then throw in a timely pop-culture reference just for fun. Announcer Johnny Gilbert also does much the same in categories that require him to speak the category questions... or sing.
• Sore Loser: Kids' Week contestant Thomas Hurley was penalized for misspelling "emancipation"^note which he spelled as emanciptation for his Final Jeopardy! response. He refuses to take part in the post game conversation, angrily looking at the floor with his arms crossed.
• Spin-Off: The 1970s syndicated version, Super Jeopardy!, Jep!, Rock & Roll Jeopardy! and Sports Jeopardy!
• Spoiler: In the era of uncapped winning streaks, inevitably a major winning streak getting snapped will leak to the media (and then social media and everywhere else) before airtime. However, this is actually a positive trope for the show, as it builds an anticipatory buzz for the episode that night that would not have otherwise been there. James Holzhauer's final game in 2019, which was leaked prior to air that he would finally bow out with the second-highest win and cash totals in Jeopardy! history, was watched by 14.5 million viewers, the best viewership since Ken Jennings finished up his record run in 2004, with 18 million viewers.
  • Tournaments are usually immune to this, as the audience for those is by invitation only. With James Holzhauer competing in the 2019 Tournament of Champions, the producers took extra measures to defy this trope by having the audience members sign NDAs, an unprecedented precaution (usually they're just asked to keep quiet). Holzhauer eventually won the tournament.
  • The first three quarterfinal winners of the first ABC season of Celebrity Jeopardy! were spoiled when the first semifinal was added to TV listings and the title had the names of the three participants, as they do with the quarterfinals. The names were eventually removed, but not before some fans saw it and already knew the first three winners before any of their episodes aired.
• Status Quo Game Show: A few games have ended in a three-way tie at $0, due to all three players wagering everything on Final Jeopardy! and getting it wrong. The first time it happened in Trebek's tenure was his second episode.
• Stopped Numbering Sequels: A variant. Partway through Ken Jennings' run, Johnny Gilbert stopped declaring how many days he had been champion at the start of each episode, believed to be a result of the date of Ken's last game being leaked online, so that viewers would have a harder time knowing that day's result. For his 75th and last game, they announced his 74 day reign again like normal at the show's beginning.
• Sublime Rhyme: The June 12, 1998 show had 12 of the 13 categories ending in "-ation(s)". The only exception was the Double Jeopardy! category "Crustaceans", though that is still a homonym of the other clues. The pattern may have cursed the contestants though, as it was a rare game with no contestants finishing Final Jeopardy! with money.
• Subverted Catchphrase: A few contestants have said "I'd like to solve the puzzle" or "I'd like to buy a vowel" on a Daily Double, often to Trebek's amusement and mock derision.
• Synchro-Vox: Done on the February 18, 2003 episode with the category "History Speaks!". It involved portraits of historic people with superimposed lips to make it look like they were talking.

T

• Talk About the Weather: Was the name of a category on weather phenomena on the June 17, 2013, show.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Averted in the Teen Tournament finals on February 12, 2013. Wild card finalist Leonard Cooper wrote "Who is some guy in Normandy, but I just won $75,000!" despite not having a "lock" tournament.^note Similar to a "lock" game in that neither trailing contestant can cover a wager of $0 by the leading contestant.^note  In this case, finalist Nilai Sarda made a $7,000 wager, and a correct response would have given Nilai a higher 2-day total than Leonard. Because finalist Nilai Sarda gave an incorrect response, Leonard did win the $75,000.
  • In a reverse example from the deciding game of the 2007 Teen Tournament, finalist Ben Schenkel noted in his Final Jeopardy! response "Who is ATLAS (congrats, David!!)", essentially conceding the tournament to David Walter, who gave the same response and won the tournament. However, Ben actually led going into Final after finishing with $40,000 the previous game, and would still have won the tournament had David missed Final.
  • During the 2013 Kids' Week, 12-year-old Kentuckian Skyler Homback wagered a $30,000 (of his $36,600) on a "Civil War" Final Jeopardy! clue. This wager was even more dangerous when you take into considering his nearest opponent had $9,600, so a wager of anything $17,399 or lower would have secure a win. Fortunately, Skyler was not caught off-guard with the final, and he ended up winning a kids' record of $66,600.
• That One Level: Sports categories are typically loathed by contestants, and in many episodes where they are featured, it's obvious that contestants avoid them and reluctantly pick answers from the category when there is no other choice. Alex Trebek has teased contestants in the past when sports categories are featured, as he knows they are not popular categories on the show. It is not unusual for all five answers in the entire category to result in a "triple stumper."
• That's What She Said: A category on the March 16, 2011 game.
• Theme Naming: Sometimes done with the categories, where two or more may play off each other. These most commonly are clustered to the right side of the board; one case is a series of categories named "Hook", "Line", and "Sinker". In very rare cases, the entire set will follow Theme Naming, such as an episode from January 31, 2001 that named every single category in the first round after other game shows.
• Think Music: The 30-second melody used during Final Jeopardy (which is actually called "Think!") may be the best known example in the genre. TV Guide called it "the Beethoven's Fifth of game show music." It was so popular it became a Bootstrapped Theme, as seen below.
• Those Two Guys: Alex Trebek and Ken Jennings regularly played off each other, with several recurring "bits".
  • The two trying to figure out what to discuss in Ken's interview. By about the 25th or so episode they were getting into more obscure facets of Ken's life; by the end, the two just had small, random conversations.
  • Whenever Ken Jennings hit a Daily Double, Alex would try to "read Ken's mind" and anticipate what he would wager; Ken would sometimes switch it up and bid a few dollars more or less.
  • Alex's various monologues at the top of each show referred to Ken's winning streak; once, he walked out and stated that, since Ken had been returning champion for so long, he was essentially working at the show — and held up one of the show's timecards with Ken's name written on it.
  • Ken himself lampshaded this in his book, where he said that the end of his streak surely broke the hearts of countless Alex/Ken Shippers.
  • Also seen with Dan Patrick and 2015-16 superchamp Vinny Varadarajan, who increasingly bantered during the interview portion, joked about how long Vinny's been on, held a staring contest, and by his thirteenth win, traded places so Vinny could ask Dan questions. Dan's opening monologues also saw gentle ribbing of Vinny for his shirts and his replies cutting into Dan's airtime.
  • Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer also developed a bit of a rapport/banter between each other, that started during their appearances in Jeopardy! tournaments and continued on social media, as well as on The Chase. Jennings in a later interview said that he and Holzhauer became good friends and he also stated that when he was promoted to be full-time co-host with Mayim Bialik, that he was discouraged by producers from being too friendly with contestants, past or present.
• Tick Tock Tune: The Final Jeopardy! music.
• Tiebreaker Round: If Final Jeopardy! ends in a tie for first place, an additional clue is played between the tied contestants, and giving a correct response wins the game. This was previously the case only in tournaments, but it also became the rule for regular games in 2014.
• Title Drop: In the first season, Alex would "caution [the players] about the Jeopardy!" — i.e., that they would lose money on an incorrect response.
• Tournament Arc: Seen annually (more or less) with the Tournament of Champions, College Championship, and the Teen, Teachers, and (formerly) Seniors Tournaments. Regular gameplay stops while these tournaments occur, with contestants competing for big cash prizes, and utilizing strategies not seen in regular games in order to secure wild card semifinal berths, and stockpile cash in the two-day, total point finals.
  • Becoming more common in the post-Trebek era, such as the Second Chance Tournament (mostly players who got crushed by one of the mega-champs but still made a good showing) or the High School Reunion Tournament (Teen Tournament participants from 3-4 years earlier).
• Transatlantic Equivalent:
  • Numerous, which led the American version to host three one-week International Jeopardy! tournaments in 1996, 1997, and 2001, and even travel to Sweden to tape the second on that version's set. Each featured English-fluent champions from 8 or 9 different international versions of the show. Swedish champion Ulf Jensen won the first international tournament in 1996 (defeating American champ Ryan Holznagel along the way), while the other two were won by champions of the American version: Canada's Michael Daunt and the U.S.A.'s Robin Carroll.
  • Among other countries, the UK had three different versions between 1983 and 1996, none lasting more than three seasons. Though the last version produced the 1996 international tournament's runner up (Mandi Hale), none of them really caught on domestically. In contrast to Germans Love David Hasselhoffinvoked, Britons are aware of Jeopardy!, but are mostly nonplussed by how mainstream its influence is on American culture and stock phrases. A fourth attempt launched in 2024, hosted by Stephen Fry.
  • Averted in Canada, aside from a short lived French-language version filmed in Quebec in the early 1990s. Though there's no English language domestic version of Jeopardy!, Canadian viewers can easily watch the US version on American over-the-air channels and on some local Canadian networks. With the exception of the 2016 exclusion of Canadians from the online test due to new domestic internet privacy laws, Canadians are welcome to compete on the American Jeopardy!, with notable examples including 1990 Tournament of Champions winner Bob Blake, TOC finalists Bruce Fauman, Michael Daunt, and Doug Hicton, and 5 day champions Barbara-Anne Eddy, Robert Slaven, Lan Djang, and Andrew Haringer.
• Troll: The writers sometimes like to troll the contestants with misleading clues or gimmicks, such as a category where every clue except the last has the same response (e.g., "Treaties" on October 25, 2006).
• Truck Driver's Gear Change: The "Think!" music used in Final Jeopardy! has always gone up a minor third in the second verse. Also, every variation of the current version's theme tune has used several key changes; the 1984 version in particular was all over the place.

U-Z

• Un-person:
  • Not only do players who finish Double Jeopardy! with no money not stick around for Final Jeopardy!, they don't always get to participate in the credits sequence of the players chatting with Alex.
  • 5 day champions Barbara Lowe and Jerry Slowik became these, the former for violating contestant eligibility requirements^note She appeared on another game show during the probationary period where contestants are not allowed to do so, and the latter for being arrested on sexual abuse charges^note He later pleaded guilty. Neither was invited to their respective Tournament of Champions, and in Lowe's case, her games have never been rerun. (Even GSN skipped them when they aired season 2.) Lowe's winnings and reign aren't even listed on official Jeopardy! records, and no tapes of her games circulated until late 2022.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: James Holzhauer was particularly fond of this, to the point where it rubbed both Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings the wrong way in the Greatest of All Time tournament. James slipped in a "Ha-ha!" when he beat Brad to a clue about his home city, to which Brad shot back with "No need to rub it in!"
• Uranus Is Showing: Stealth example by contestant Lawrence "Indy" Indyk on the May 28, 2012, show (6 day champion Joel Pool's last victory) in the category "It'll End with 'Us'":
  Alex: It takes 84 Earth years for it to go around the sun.
  Indy: What is Uranus?
  Alex: Yes, the planet.
• Urban Legend: The 1978-79 version was supposedly canned because Merv, returning from a vacation in Europe, saw the format changes and demanded that NBC cancel the show immediately (and only hastened its demise, as NBC was already planning to cancel it). The legend falls apart because the first pilot for this version, with a slightly different format, was taped on March 6, 1977... followed by another in mid-1978.
• Vacation Episode: From seasons 13-25, Jeopardy! held at least one week of shows a year on the road, starting with the 1997 International Tournament in Sweden, though all later road tapings were within the United States. With the exception of a 1998 week of regular shows from Boston and a 2004 Kids Week in Washington, all of the road trip shows were tied with celebrity games and/or a tournament (including the Million Dollar Masters and the 2000 and 2009 Tournaments of Champions), while all but one College Championship from 1998-2008 was held on the road, typically at college campuses. Though no longer an annual occurrence, Jeopardy has hosted road games at D.A.R. Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. during the 2004, 2012, and 2016 election years, always including a Power Players Week and at least one week of tournament play.
• Vampire Vords:
  • If the correct response was Dracula, Trebek could be counted on to say his name in this fashion.
  • In a 1996 episode, Alex read "Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire" in one clue as "Vim Venders' Vings of Desire".
• Vetinari Job Security: Following Alex Trebek's death, the show struggled for nearly a year to find a permanent replacement. Once Mike Richards stepped down from the program after one unspectacular week in August 2021, hosting duties ended up being shared between Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik until the latter was fired in December 2023.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: One of the main reasons that game shows are popular is because they allow people to "play along" from home. But considering the vast amount of sometimes-obscure clues that are given every day...
• Violation of Common Sense: Some wagering situations in Final Jeopardy! are not immediately intuitive. There are situations where it's actually advantageous for a player who's behind to bet nothing^note If the second-place player has between 2/3 and 3/4 of the first-place player's dollar amount; the J-Archive fan site explains the logic. or, in a related situation, the first-place player does not bet to cover the second-place player's largest possible wager.
• Visual Pun:
  • July 13, 2012: A clue about the Luxor pyramid◊ has a pyramidal shape.
  • October 22, 2012: The entire category "They Drive On The Left In..." had all of its clues formatted left-justified.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties:
  • Happened during the 2012 Teen Tournament semifinals on a video clue about the MVP of the Super Bowl XLVI. The home audience saw the picture of the MVP ^note  Who was Eli Manning?, but there was a technical glitch during the game which resulted with the contestants not seeing the picture of the MVP. Contestant Kevin Yang got it wrong, but after the break, Alex decided that it wasn't his fault, seeing how there was technical glitches, and the penalty was redacted.
  • Another glitch interfered with a playing of Final Jeopardy!; the light pen of one of the contestants wasn't writing properly. The contestant held up the pen to indicate this, and he was granted a card to write his answer in with a regular pen. The contestant won the game (and the partially-written answer on the light board seemed to indicate that he knew the correct answer all along, and that there actually was a problem with the pen), but because of the special treatment, both he and the second-place contestant for that game appeared in the next game. The marker and card are now standard equipment for all players.
  • Averted in the 2015 Tournament of Champions quarterfinals, where 5 day champion (and eventual wild card semifinalist) John Schultz accidentally broke his signaling device early in the Jeopardy! round (a tale he recounted on Twitter). Once brought to attention, his signaling device was replaced, the clues where John couldn't ring in were re-shot, and the final episode aired as if nothing happened.
  • In July 2018, the in-studio display for the Final Jeopardy! clue omitted the initial letter, turning it from "This slang term for an environmentalist..." to "His slang term for an environmentalist...." One contestant changed his answer from the correct answer ("tree-hugger") to respond to the clue as displayed with "What is Carl Sagan?" He was invited back in the next season because of the error.
• Wham Line: 11/30/2004. Nancy Zerg has just delivered the correct response "What is H & R Block?" to the Final Jeopardy question to take a one dollar lead over Ken Jennings. His response to Final Jeopardy?
  Jennings: What is FedEx? [the entire audience gasps and Nancy covers her mouth in shock as everyone realizes Jennings' 74-game winning streak is finally dead]
  • Alex's cancer announcement in 2019, as well as Mike Richards reporting his death a year later.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: Though uncommon, this is how Alex tends to react whenever the writers are getting a little too clever. Case in point, the "Irish People?" category from March 27, 2019:
  Alex: These are not real Irish people. Let me give you an example: "Irish cigarette salesman." "Who is Nick O'Tine?" {Alex pauses for a few seconds, then looks to the camera) Yeah.
• Written Roar: On September 24, 2007, a contestant who had only $400 to wager wrote "Who is AARGHH!!!" as his Final Jeopardy! response.
• "YEAH!" Shot: One promo for the Teacher's Tournament ended with a shot of the contestants raising their hands.
• You Answered Your Own Question: The occasional Stupid Answers category.
• You Go, Girl!: Male contestants tend to outnumber women on Jeopardy!, especially in earlier seasons, but there have been a number of high profile female contestants, such as Tournament of Champions winners Rachael Schwartz, Robin Carroll, and Celeste Dinucci, 10th Anniversary Tournament finalist Leslie Frates, high-earning regular play contestants like Julia Collins, Larissa Kelly, and Amy Fine, four-time Jeopardy! tournament semifinalist Pam Mueller, and record-setting champion dethroners Nancy Zerg (Ken Jennings) and Emma Boettcher (James Holzhauer), among others.
  • The 1993 Tournament of Champions was notable for having 7 women players, with all 4 wildcard spots going to 4 of them, and featuring two female finalists, Bev Schwartzberg and Seniors Tournament winner Marilyn Kneeland. However, both lost to Tom Nosek, and Jeopardy! had to wait another year for a woman (Rachael Schwartz) to win the whole thing.
• Younger and Hipper:
  • Jep!, the 1997-1998 GSN spinoff of Jeopardy! for kids, and a companion to Wheel 2000 (though that show also aired on CBS and is better remembered today). Elements including randomized clue amounts, stuff falling on contestants missing three questions, and "radical" category names like "Super Jep!" and "Hyper Jep!" didn't add up to a long running hit series in this case.
  • Averted with Jeopardy!'s annual Kids Weeks (a.k.a. Back to School Weeks) from 1999-2014, which featured contestants of the same age range and clue difficulty, but otherwise doing so on the regular set with the regular rules and staff. It may not be "radical" or "hip", but it had a lot more success and staying power than Jep! had.
  • Rock & Roll Jeopardy! and Sports Jeopardy! can also be seen as this, given their more informal and casual nature and generally less-serious clue content.
• Your Mom: "Your Momma" was a category on December 16, 2010. Of course, the first thing out of the contestant's mouth was "I'll take Your Momma for $400, Alex."