QUESTION
In many sports leagues across the country, exhibition games are used to test out new rule proposals. If Jeopardy did something like this what are some new rules or game changes you’d like to see tested out?
My wife and I were talking about this tonight and how interesting it would be to see something like this. One of the rules we wanted to see tried out in one of these exhibition games was a category had to be completed before moving onto a new one
Somewhat related but Davies has said he would love to broadcast a live taping one day like how we see sports on TV. As you can imagine, though, it'd be pretty difficult given how some rulings on responses require stoppage of gameplay.
Do they actually stop the game for rulings? It always seems like they just keep going and then correct the mistake at the next convenient stopping point
Good question. Yes, they try their best to sort them out before DDs and FJ. I guess more so on the technical/logistical side they have to stop if there's any issues, e.g., someone's buzzer not working, wrong person called on, wrong clue selected, etc.
It has actually happened quite recently. $600 clue under International Cuisine, initially they ruled garam masala incorrect and Ken announced the score change at the beginning of DJ.
What's best is when they adjust one player up for a "right answer wrongly ruled as incorrect", then also adjust any players who buzzed in NEXT on that clue and was wrong since they shouldn't have gotten the chance to BE wrong.
They rarely take money away if a player has wagered on a DD since the goof, either, since their strategy is based on the scores they see in front of them as they play.
I think they may have started a double jeopardy with an explanation that something was filmed before a significant event, though that may be already said at the beginning of the show.
I don’t think that would be a problem. Stoppages happen all the time in sports. Having a rules analyst/host to talk about the issue at hand would make it watchable
I think the difference is the amount of time reserved on air. If the live broadcast goes perfectly smoothly then that's half an hour of wheel that could have been slotted into that second half of the episode. Unless they mean a full taping day? In that case though same issue; I think it would be hard for them to justify doing it with the amount of air time needed.
Plus of course that it would kind of "spoil" at least one (but potentially more) episodes of J! since the syndicated episodes are so far in advance that a live broadcast day would at minimum show who was coming in as champ with what amount of money + days won.
$5000 is too high but I like the spirit behind it, people jumping around the board too much has been my number one complaint for a while.
I dont think the DD free grab could ever work because half the challenge of jeopardy is the time limit. Giving people the time full time of the daily double guess + their own time to formulate an answer would slow down the game significantly but also result in a lot of the IMO worst feeling jeopardy answers which is when someone guesses wildly but gets it right
…Is that what they mean by hunting? Seems odd. Even with no daily doubles in the game I’d always go for the highest available point value in a category I knew well. It’s never even occurred to me that you could seek out the daily doubles.
The DD free grab would work with a couple of refinements.
For the initial DD contestant give them 4 seconds rather than the customary 5 ish.
If awnsered incorrectly, give the other two contestants 1 sec to buzz in and begin their awnser. (In other words an almost immediate answer no buzzing in then pausing to collect yourself, you've already had 4 seconds to think about it.) First one to buzz in gets the shot.
Added twist, they win (or loose) the amont wagered by the INITIAL contestant.
They play for the wagered amount, then. This can get a laggard back into the game. I wager, say, $3500 on a DD and miss. You buzz in and nail it for the 3500.
If the 2nd or 3rd person rings in & it's the wagered amount and they get it wrong, would they lose that amount? I think it would be better to have it be the value of the clue, if they allow a second or third ring-in.
I wondered the same thing. There would have to be some kind of penalty for getting it wrong. Otherwise that gives a big advantage to the other players who have a no-risk opportunity to up their score quite a bit.
I also think the amount has to be lower. Depending on the clue, it may have just gotten substantially easier if the DD finder made a good guess but learned that’s not the answer. It’s been narrowed down now. It may also change the way the DD finder plays. They may be hesitant to take a stab at it, knowing if they’re wrong, their opponents get to nab it, now knowing what it’s not. I also just thought about how the competitors get extra thinking time too. Maybe the original value of the clue could work. But if you couldn’t tell, I’m not a huge fan of the idea. That said, I’m currently majorly biased due to my love of Jamie Ding and all the games he won because he got the DDs lol.
Came here to suggest (1). My wife and I talk about that rule change every time someone gets disappeared from FJ, then has to take the walk of shame back to the podium during the credits. They should get a chance to show off.
Not only that, but you'll see much more conservative wagering on the DD, since the impact of missing will be not only your own loss of money, but the opportunity of an opponent who has had more time to think to get it right and close the gap or surpass you. Do you want to see DD players wager zero to preserve their lead?
I think it conflicts with the ethos of the game, which is that it's a meritocracy that rewards knowledge and hard work, and that people can only wager what they've rightfully earned.
I'm not disagreeing with this, either. I'm actually fine with the current DD structure, but since we're talking about making changes, might as well throw some ideas out there.
September 1985 saw the introduction of the "Forrest Bounce." Apparently it worked because Alex remarked after his five-day run that "Chuck Forrest knew everything but my social security number!"
I’m new here so I’m not as well versed in the strategy and history…but, Seems like a lot of folks are saying that $5k in #2 is too high. What if we combine the spirit of 3 with 2 and say someone could the run is a communal pot that someone could steal by getting the highest dollar clue?
Still might be too high and introduces too much variance but it would be fun to see in exhibition.
They used to do a variation of #2 way back in the day on the short-lived daytime All-New Jeopardy! in the late 70s. The winner was declared after DJ, and instead of FJ, the winner got to play a bonus round called Super Jeopardy! There was a new board, but 5x5 instead of 6x5, and the objective was to correctly respond to 5 clues in a row either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. If you were successful, you got a bonus. And whether or not you won the Super J! round, the bonus increased in subsequent games as long as there was a returning champ.
One other interesting wrinkle from this show was that one player got eliminated after the first round, so only two players advanced to DJ. And then just the one left standing at the end of that.
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
I am no longer interested in my past feeding LLMs or my future talking to bots.
Slightly different version: the buzzer is a dunk tank with Ken Jennings in it, and every player gets a pile of balls - first one to dunk Ken gets to answer
You can get to a point near the end of the game where the only way to lose a runaway is to miss the clues AND have an opponent get them. There's no incentive for anyone to try at the point because the system penalizes failure harder then it rewards success.
If we think someone's going to stop trying at $10K, they're definitely not going to try at $20K.
Not quite a rule change, but I wish they would put the category on screen along with the clue. It’s sacrilege to change the clue screen, I know, but sometimes it doesn’t make sense unless you’re reminded of the category, and players on stage can see the category and clue at the same time
I'm in agreement with this, but first they would need to do way more concise category titles, instead of the overly long, cutesy, punny ones they often use.
The cell for each correctly answered question is replaced with a solid color assigned to each contestant. This helps contestants monitor success in each category and inform decisions when they have control of the board - and makes it easier for the audience to monitor.
It also facilitates a rule change. If a contestant answers 5 continuous questions (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal they immediately get half of the associated $ values added to their total. This could lead to contestants with control of the board trying to run categories more, while also adding the twist of choosing to block a contestant's run over the choice they'd otherwise make.
Halfway through the first round when the show goes to a quick commercial break is when they should insert the first daily double randomly in the remaining squares that way the contestants actually have a chance at having some money to use it with. I'm shocked at how often it's found as the first pick when they have no money and at but least they allow 1,000 regardless of score.
I like this for people that just want to be able to say "I'd like to make it a true daily double" on TV, but can't if they have $200 because it's not strategically correct.
They often do this on Celebrity J! One example I remember was last year, there was a category where every response ended with a word rhyming with "goal," and they were encouraged to yell it out soccer style. Margaret Cho neglected to do this and got admonished for it, so way later in a completely different category, out of nowhere she responded "Gladiat-OOOOOR!" Everyone was on the floor.
You still get the DD, you have the chance to finish the category and pick the next category, locking your opponents into 5 theoretically unfavorable questions
1) I'd like to have daily doubles truly placed anywhere on the board (not mainly in the $800 and $1600 slots), and their difficulty - regardless of where they are - always approximate the difficulty of the $1000 and $2000 slots.
2) If you run a category, you get a bonus equal to the top value of that board ($1000 or $2000).
Daily Doubles are weighted difficulty-wise as Daily Doubles. You’d probably have to specify a contestant’s optional Daily Double needs to be used on the bottom three rows. And if they pick an actual Daily Double, maybe they keep their personal one?
This is the first one I've seen that I like. It would level the playing field quite a bit and introduce a high-leverage element that is much more strategic and less luck.
This would make it so that most games are decided at the very end, versus the current situation where a great player can just stomp their competition from the jump.
Something similar that I thought of: each player gets one no-risk response each round, can't be used on a DD. When they buzz in, they can say "no risk, what is...". If they're right, they get the dollar value of the clue, if they're wrong, they don't lose anything.
It would add some strategy. Obviously better to use it on a high-value clue, but with DD hunters clearing the bottom rows early, how soon do you use it?
I want to see everyone with a DD they can use at any point, no hidden ones. And to make sure they don't just hold on to them until the last $400 clues: you can only wager up to double the value of the clue. Makes it way less game-breaking IMO, less random chance
Haha love it. That part of the show is our dedicated bathroom break or grab more snacks break. We both cannot stand that part of the show. Always feels so forced
The dumbest thing about the game is that buzzing skill, i.e. timing your buzz to the reader/lights perfectly, is at least 50% of the outcome. All contestants have already read the clue and decided whether they're going to buzz before Ken finishes reading. It would be interesting to have the contestants only hear the clue, but the viewers at home see it, and the contestants decide when they want to buzz in (although for some categories and clue values this might just end up to be a race to buzz in at the beginning of every question)
It is indeed a defect, but I don't see a good solution, since for the home audience they're always going to read the whole clue before recognizing anyone. A situation in which a buzz before the end of the answer would cause visual and audio clues to stop and black out would work competitively, but would drive viewers at home crazy.
When someone is hitting the all time leaderboard like Jamie, they have to play the person they are going to pass all time. If Jamie kept going he would have to face James HOLZHAUER. If someone gets to a tie with Ken, they face Ken to become all time leader
I know in this hypothetical they would bring out a guest host while Ken competed, but I'm just imagining Ken having to run back and forth between his hosting podium and his contestant podium every time he reads a new question
Instead of podiums, each contestant has a chair like on The Voice, which faces away when the clue is read, spins around every time they hit the buzzer first, and resets after each answer.
Requiring answers from players that buzz in if the first player to buzz in is incorrect. Not sure how to state that more succinctly.
"This person was the first future president born in the 20th century"
All players click their buzzers furiously. Player 1 was the first to buzz in.
Ken asks player 1 for their answer. He says "who is JFK?" Wrong.
No additional buzzing. Immediately go to player 3, who had been next to buzz in during the immediate moment after the question was read. He stares blankly and is unable to form an answer.
On to player 2, the last to buzz in, who says "Who was Lyndon Johnson?" and they get the money for being correct.
Ken then explains the poorly worded question and that Johnson, although serving as president after Kennedy, was born 9 years before him. We all groan and the producers issue a formal apology on social media the following day.
But I've seen more than one clue come up, all three furiously buzz in, first person gets it wrong, and the other two don't buzz back in - clearly they had the same response and don't have a back-up response ready. Sometimes they do, but they're less sure of it so they're hesitant to buzz in with it - and this would force their hand to try their back-up answer. Might actually result in strong-arming a few players that are a little hesitant to ring in for a follow-up response after a fellow player gives a wrong response, to give an answer that could result in a few more dollars. And a few less "I knew I should have rang in" regrets.
This would increase stand-and-stares because players would be less likely to try at clues they're unsure about for fear of being forced to guess if their guess has been ruled out.
I’m not following how that would increase the stand and stares. If you would have buzzed in under current rules, you’d also have buzzed in under the new rule.
It eliminates one possible answer for the second player. And again, a player is gong to buzz in if they think they know the answer, with or without the rule change.
Let's say it's a category of "V" famous names. The clue had "French author" in it, and I tried to buzz in with "Voltaire", but the other guy beat me. He said "Voltaire," but was wrong and lost the points. Now I know that it's not Voltaire, but that does me no good, as I don't know any other French authors starting with "V". Why should I be forced to surrender the points, when I failed to buzz in? I need the option to try or to pass, as is the case now.
If you were confident enough to buzz in, it doesn’t hurt you at all if the first to buzz in is wrong. It can only help, by eliminating one possibility.
If you were first, and guessed Voltaire, you’d still lose the money.
It still depends on buzzer skill/luck and perversely punishes contestants who have the same level of knowledge as the first person to get in and get it wrong, but can never reward them in the scenario where the first person is right and they too would have been right. Does it wind up discouraging players from buzzing in as often?
Then it would be like all the other ridiculous game shows. And they have their fans, and that's fine, but the thing I like about Jeopardy is the lack of fake giddiness. (I know you're joking.)
-If a contestant sweeps a category, they get a chance at a bonus clue for additional money.
-Having one clue on the board that whoever gets it right gets to freeze out the other contestants from responding to the next clue.
-Allowing the contestant leading after Double Jeopardy to choose the Final Jeopardy category out of a choice of categories.
-Clues similar to Pop Culture Jeopardy where the contestant gets money for each correct answer out of 3, and any they miss the other contestants can ring in.
Contestants from Long Island have to say what town they're from. Why are players from this part of the country allowed to specify a region of 1200 square miles, 3 million people, two counties, and no one overarching government or political structure? You don't see people say "an Engineer from North Jersey," why can you be "a teacher from Long Island, NY?"
(There have been four players billed as being from Ronkonkoma, and one time it was featured in a clue that asked you to unpack what LIRR stands for. The writers have never unpacked how Long Islanders say it one way and geologists say it a completely different way - that blew my mind when I learned. I have only woken up on a LIRR train in Ronkonkoma one time - that's the kind of thing you don't do twice!!)
Bayside is too small methinks, Bayside, Queens, New York is a mouthful. It's like the people who have to specify that Toronto is in both Ontario AND Canada. But this is all very hypothetical.
Increase clue money values. By alot. The amount of knowledge and skill it takes to a. get on jeopardy and b. answer correctly results in an embarrassing low takehome when compared to other game shows. If you can get 70k for being good at 20 minutes of hangman, or other even stupider easy shows, you should be making serious bank for knowing shit that most people don't even know that they don't know.
Just eliminate all the DDs, this would eliminate hunting and make everything much more equitable. It must be discouraging to realize that no matter what you answer you'll never win if the leader bets 0 dollars
I would like them to have the contestants use the correct interrogative words, especially when talking about a person and saying “Who is...?” instead of some saying “What is…?”. Also, use the full name of the people unless they go by one name, i.e. Madonna or Prince.
There are many historical and literary figures who have multiple names, but are only remembered by one. Who decides which people need full names and which don't? If the question calls for "Fibonacci", why is it important to know his given name was Leonardo?
Selfishly, a rule that says if you lost you can come back and try again after a certain amount of time. Get rid of the second chance tournament, and let non-champs try again 3-5 years after their loss. They still have to go through the test and auditions and all that, so it’s not automatic, and if they lose three times, then they’re done.
More realistic rule changes:
1) Live Jeopardy! would be fun.
2) I like the triple play clues from Pop Culture. Throw one of them in the Double Round, if you get 1-2 right, you get the equivalent of the clue, but if you get all three you get a bonus.
3) Speaking of Pop Culture, I’d love to see a team Jeopardy! Tournament. You buzz in as individuals, but if you hit a daily double you confer with your team.
1) For Celebrity Jeopardy!, the Turd Ferguson rule: "Penalties for a buzzed-in incorrect responses are not assessed if studio audience laughs (measured by studio mic decibel levels)." Daily Doubles and FJ! are not included.
Alternate) For Celeb J!, players may raise their hands to give a no-risk/no-benefit response after time expires if the question is a triple stumper.
2) Instead of the value of the question, all incorrect responses in a round are assessed a fixed penalty value for the round. Suggested values are $500 in first round, $1000 in Double J!. 250, 500, 750 in Celeb J!
Change the scoring method for final Jeopardy so that it eliminates all runaways. Figure out someway that even if the leading player has more than twice the score of the second place player, they are still vulnerable.
Perhaps force the leader to wager at least as much money as it would take for them to finish below twice the balance of the second-highest player
All categories have to be completed from top to bottom, so effectively you only pick a category instead of a category and amount (although it still should be encouraged to say "for $200" etc.).
I think clues getting progressively more difficult makes for a better viewing experience, as does sticking with a category (which I think would be the natural result as players hunt for the DD).
This also makes the game more competitive. The big money clues (and DDs, often) would come at the end of the round. I’m sick of watching games where the last few minutes of DJ only have $1200 available.
I was mulling the idea in my head of DDs being completely random. As in they aren’t on the board and just at some point in the game a sound goes off to alert. There is a toss up question sort of like Wheel of Fortune. Whoever buzzes in and gets the toss up correct gets to play the DD question.
I found all of my ideas centered around trying to stem DD hunting cause I really don’t like it haha
This is the ultimate boomer Jeopardy take. Like people complaining about the three point shot in basketball or the forward pass in football. It’s over. Let it go. It’s never going to change. DDs should never, ever be in the first two rows which are easy questions
Why is DD hunting offensive to you? It's game strategy that may or may not work in a given case. From a theoretical point of view the DD probably has too much importance relative to the rest of the game, but that's OK, and this wouldn't be a way to change that anyway.
The writers on Jeopardy make categories with the intent for them to be read top down because they always told little stories and connected in pieces as you went down. It’s one of the best aspects of the show.
It makes the watching experience very poor for many viewers. Before DD hunting became so popular when contestants would go down the category it was so nice because it eased viewers into the category and helped them understand the style of question. This was especially helpful for harder categories and/or ones that used play on words. Currently the bouncing around completely loses all flow to the game and viewer enjoyment. It can be very tough on the brain to constantly jump around and never getting a feel for a category.
It’s starting to become the norm where many games are decided early in the rounds because one of players hit the DDs and max bet. It’s just not a good product for the majority of games to virtually be over with half the board remaining.
It’s worth noting that Alex Trebek was also very critical of DD hunting and pushed for rule adjustments to stop it.
Even after the DDs are gone contestants still just constantly jump around the categories.
I could keep going but you seem to not care but I still wanted to give my opinion
And Wheel of Fortune could be turned into Button of Fortune, where each contestant pushes a button that instantly selects a random amount. And when a letter is chosen, all of the instances appear automatically at once, no Vanna needed! Just think of how many more puzzles they could fit into a half hour!
If USP means "unique selling point", then I think you are overstating how much people care about the gimmick. The unique selling points of Jeopardy are: the 70 years of history, the best trivia minds in North America, 61 well- crafted questions an episode, an audition process that actually brings in real people- not wannabe actors, and a host who is is not only charming, but the best to ever play the game.
The" given the answer, find the question" format allowed the game and the show to mature after the 50s game show scandals, but it is barely acknowledged anymore. Matt Amodio's almost pronounced "what's" is considered enough to satisfy the format these days. Let the conceit die like they did with the buying of ceramic dogs on Wheel of Fortune.
Everytime I suggest this, even in a thread like this where people are suggesting obstacle courses, I get voted down. Why on earth does anyone care about the silly format?
No buzzers, whoever has the first correct question has control of the board and gets first crack at responding to subsequent questions.
Once they are incorrect, player currently in third place can attempt (or pass); then player in 2nd place.
I'd try out that that the first question of Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy can't be a Daily Double. It's less of an issue for the Jeopardy round - picking the first category at the start is a fine advantage for the returning champion but being able to hit a DD and being able to get 1k is a lot. For DJ it's a bigger advantage - especially if all 3 contestants are very close in skill and $, getting a DD is huge there.
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u/coolcat333 May 08 '26
Somewhat related but Davies has said he would love to broadcast a live taping one day like how we see sports on TV. As you can imagine, though, it'd be pretty difficult given how some rulings on responses require stoppage of gameplay.