How to Write Jeopardy Game Show Questions
"Jeopardy!" is "America's Favorite Quiz Show." Hosted by Alex Trebek, it's been challenging contestants, along with millions of home viewers, for 25 years with its peculiar format of reverse trivia questions. Questions are phrased as answers and the contestant must supply the answer as a question. (For example, "Q: He was the only person who died during the Civil War to be featured on Confederate currency." "A: Who was Stonewall Jackson?") While you may love shouting out answers while following along in your living room, why not try your hand at writing the questions yourself?
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Things You'll Need
- Pencil and paper or computer word processing program
- References (history books, biographies, encyclopedias, phone numbers of reliable sources, e.g. libraries)
Instructions
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Steps
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1
Choose a category, one you know a lot about already. According to former "Jeopardy!" writer Carlo Panno, questions fall into one of six categories: Entertainment, People, Lifestyles, Trivia, Academic, Wordplay. Among those categories, questions can fall under any heading imaginable, everything from Opera to South Africa to Internet Slang. If you love to travel, you might choose Geography, which would fall under the Academic categories. We'll use this common category for an example.
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Determine the answer to your first question, which should be relatively easy. In the Geography category, a good example would be "A: What is the Potomac river?" At the first level, your answer should be easy to get. Since the Potomac is a major river in the U.S. that anyone with a reasonable knowledge of geography would know, it's a good choice for the first question.
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Write a statement describing the answer easily. (Example: "Q: This river flows through the District of Columbia.") Since this is the most identifying feature of this particular river, it's easy to get and thus a good choice for the first level.
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4
Write four more questions, with the level of difficulty increasing proportionately to the dollar amount each question is worth. Each succeeding level is worth $200 more than the previous one (or in the Double Jeopardy round, $400 more). Often all it takes to turn an easy question into a difficult one is using a more obscure fact for an answer. In the above example of "A: What is the Potomac river?," instead of using the most identifying feature of the river, you might say, "Q: In 1859, the siege of Harper's Ferry took place at the confluence of this and the Susquehanna." Since this is a less well-known fact about the Potomac river, the question becomes more difficult, even though the answer is the same.
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5
Verify your answers. According to former "Jeopardy!" clue writer Carlo Panno, each question requires verification from at least two sources before it can be used on the show. Primary sources are preferred (for example, the autobiography of a famous person or, in the above example, an atlas of Washington, D.C.). Internet sources do not qualify.
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Tips & Warnings
Try to include clues in your questions at higher levels. They make difficult questions easier to get, if contestants are smart enough to pick up on them. For example, the fifth question in the category Extinct Birds is "A: What is a duck?" and the statement reads "Q: After 1875 the Labrador type of this bird was no longer feeling so daffy." Although a contestant may never have heard of the Labrador Duck, he or she may be familiar with Looney Tunes character Daffy Duck. Including the term "daffy" in the question makes the answer easier to get.
Play with contestants' expectations. Carlo Panno points out that the increase in difficulty from one level to the next may not always be linear, as in "You take it away on the fours, you give it back on the fives." Sometimes the fourth clue in a category is tougher than the fifth.
When it comes to "Jeopardy!" clues, cleverness is always valued. Try to turn dull questions into interesting ones by changing the way they're phrased. For example, in the category Phobias, one could write "Q: What a linaphobe is afraid of." But it's much more interesting to write "Q: Fearing this, a linonophobe could never work a yo-yo." (A: What is string?) Interesting phrasing often has the added bonus of including a clue for the contestant.
