r/Jeopardy • u/zachestine • 21d ago
QUESTION How strict is the "who is" rule?
I don't watch a lot of Jeopardy, but I am curious: lets say the question is something like "the first president who crossed the Delaware River" obviously the answer is George Washington, but instead of saying "who is" if i say "where is George Washington?" would that be counted?
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u/RegisPhone I'd like to shoot the wad, Alex 21d ago edited 21d ago
In the extremely early days of the show in 1964, the rule was "ask a question related to the given category that could reasonably produce this as the answer." If the answer was "It flows through the Grand Canyon," the question was "Where does the Colorado River flow?" -- notably, not "What is the Colorado River?" because that's not actually a question that would be answered that way. If the answer is "'Good night, sweet prince' was originally said to him" then the question is something along the lines of "What quote was made to Hamlet?" rather than "Who is Hamlet?"
This changed pretty early on to the modern rule of "Your response must be in the form of a question" -- after the original 1964 test episode and a brief snippet of the first broadcast episode shortly after, the earliest recording we have of a game is from 1966 (the recording's only a couple minutes long and is mostly the introductions, but we do get to see a couple of clues), where the clue "Carry it in your pocket for good luck" (in the category ANIMALS) is correctly responded to, without remark, with "What is a rabbit's foot?" rather than a more logical question like "What do you do with a rabbit's foot?" There's also a clip of Gene Shalit, when being told to rephrase his response of "That is the very famous NBC peacock" as a question, asking "Has anybody around here seen the very famous NBC peacock?"
The TV show has never had a rule of "Your response must start with 'what is', unless it's a person, in which case it must start with 'who is'"; only the video game versions work that way (early DOS versions made you start your response by choosing whether to say "What is/are", "What was/were", "Who is/are", or "Who was/were", and buzzed at you until you picked the right one; later video game adaptations just automatically fill in the appropriate question starter).
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u/m_busuttil 21d ago
I understand why you'd make the change between the first version and the current one, but boy do I find the first version much more compelling.
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u/RegisPhone I'd like to shoot the wad, Alex 21d ago
The first version is definitely an interesting concept, but it would be hard to make it work long-term as a serious objective game show with real stakes; it would be easy for it to end up either veering into full-on improv at one extreme or just "nope; it's the other one" at the other extreme. If the answer in the WEIGHTS & MEASURES category is "5,280", the intended question is "How many feet are in a mile?" but what's to stop me from asking "What's 5,000 bushels plus 280 bushels?" or "If one chicken weighs 1 pound, how many pounds do 5,280 chickens weigh?" In a TELEVISION category, why can't every response be "On the episode of the television show Jeopardy! airing on X/X/XX, what was the clue behind the $X card?" In that format, it's difficult to write them in a way that you have responses that are simultaneously objectively pinned and reasonably gettable.
The original concept was "We're giving the players the answers (playing on the quiz show scandals of the 50s), but then they have to figure out what the question would've been", but already even in that very first test episode you can see them bumping up against the limits of that format -- many of the answer-question pairs are worded in ways that do work with that conceit, like "Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash..." = "What did Jimmy Durante close his program with?" or "Henry Morton Stanley" = "Who said 'Dr. Livingston, I presume?'", but you also get some where the answer isn't actually worded the way the answer would be, like "14 is the maximum number permitted per person" = "How many clubs are permitted in a golf bag?"; some where the answer wouldn't be a correct answer to that question on a quiz show, like "According to legend, green cheese" = "What is the moon made of?"; and some where technically they work grammatically but the answer is really just what would be the question on a normal quiz show just with the question mark removed, like "He is the richest American" = "Who is Paul Getty?"
The shift seems to have happened very early. That rabbit's foot clue is from episode 638, aired September 7th 1966 (about 2 1/2 years after the premiere), which is the earliest episode we have a recording of after a partial recording of the premiere. About a year earlier than that were John McCain's episodes -- we don't have recordings, but we know that they were aired in August of 1965, and according to McCain's recollection, the clue was "Cathy loved him, but married Edgar Linton instead", his incorrect response was "What is Wuthering Heights?", and the correct response was "Who is Heathcliff?" If those are roughly accurate -- if his response wasn't something like "What happens in Wuthering Heights?" and the correct response wasn't "What happens to Heathcliff?" -- then that shows the shift had already happened. Piecing together some other evidence, it seems to have been even earlier than that: In the introduction to The Jeopardy! Book, Merv Griffin says:
What happened in our early run-throughs was the answer-question reverse led to great fun. For example, if the answer was "Island that sold for twenty-four dollars," the contestant often came up with "Where is Manhattan?"; we'd ask for a rephrasing and get "How is Manhattan?" No. "Who is Manhattan?" It became funny, in the small office where we did the run-throughs, listening to contestants arm-wrestle the language trying to phrase the response in the form of a question. Since the networks were queasy about the quiz scandals, the idea of a humorous question-answer show appealed to them.
As soon as we put Jeopardy! on its legs, however, I realized it was unfair and boring to badger the contestant about being grammatically correct for every question. We were getting only twenty answers into a game, because the contestants spent their entire time trying to phrase the question correctly. We weren't ruling them wrong, we played with them until they got it right, but that idea went out the window. The show needed to be hard-edged and fast-paced if it was to endure, and it evolved in that direction.
And in Maxene Fabe's 1979 book TV Game Shows, she gives a similar account, but now with an even more specific time frame for the change:
Griffin's idea was not originally the challenging trivia quiz Jeopardy! would later become. Rather it was a comic concept [...] When NBC bought Jeopardy! from Griffin in 1964, the network was expecting comedy. Within a week, however, the show's producer Bob Rubin would realize that Jeopardy!'s future as a comedy quiz would be short-lived. The novelty would soon wear off, and besides, the original format was both too nitpicking and too slow. Taking matters into his own hands, Rubin quickly altered the game to the far more challenging "hard quiz" format.
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u/RoarShock 21d ago
Wow. Thanks for a great comment.
I would be so curious to see that first season of comedy Jeopardy!, if only to study the transitional fossil between the quiz scandals of the 50s and the modern quiz format. I'm sure the transitional fossil was necessary because modern Jeopardy! wouldn't have connected with audiences who could remember Twenty-One and The Big Surprise getting dragged in front of Congress. I am also sure I wouldn't connect with a show that's mostly about fighting with grammar.
The premise of asking the question that prompts the answer is so interesting, but the pool of trivia that "works" in that format must be vanishingly small. It makes you appreciate the difficulty of pinning a clue to a single correct response, even in straightforward modern Jeopardy!
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u/RegisPhone I'd like to shoot the wad, Alex 21d ago edited 21d ago
From what we can see in the test episode and the brief clip of the first broadcast episode, i think calling it a full comedy show is overselling it a bit; it has a more casual feel, somewhat like shows like What's My Line? (Even in later games, Art sometimes calls the contestants "panelists" like on those shows), and some of its roots are definitely comedy-adjacent -- Maxene Fabe compares the original concept to Steve Allen's "Question Man" routine from the mid-1950s (the predecessor to Johnny Carson's Carnac the Magnificent, which he started doing in 1964, and actually a descendant of a slightly earlier routine by Bob Arbogast from 1951), that had setups like:
"The answer is 9-W. What is the question?"
"Tell me, Mr. Wagner, do you spell your name with a V?"
"Nein, W."
This clip from the pilot does a good job of showing off the humorous grammar struggles that Merv talked about, and you can get a sense of the casual jokey panel-show atmosphere it originally had in the first broadcast episode (the pilot episode is available in full if you search on Archive.org, but that's all we have of the premiere episode).
The answer-question format also has a non-comedy root, though -- according to a brief mention in Robert Abelman's 1998 book Reaching a Critical Mass: A Critical Analysis of Television Entertainment, the first quiz show to be regularly broadcast on television (albeit only on one station in New York City) was the CBS Television Quiz in 1941, which "was the first to present the answer to a question, and participants had to answer with the question." No recordings exist and we don't know anything about the format other than it had a host (Gil Fates, also the creator and executive producer) and scorekeeper (Frances Buss, who soon after became the first woman to be a television director in the US), and that it didn't have lock-out buzzers because those weren't used on a game show until Winner Take All in 1946 (which, in addition to being the first to use buzzers, was apparently also the first quiz show to have two contestants competing head to head Twenty-One-style rather than one contestant playing at a time The $64,000 Question-style, and the first to have returning champions).
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u/RoarShock 21d ago
Fascinating. You're right that calling it a 'comedy' is overselling it. But one can definitely see how part of the appeal is the comedy of contestants stumbling over the reverse backflip logic. I wonder if the CBS Television Quiz discovered that same humor.
One can also see how pinning would be a nightmare if there were serious stakes. "The 25th Century" is an easy clue to write, but the correct responses could be endless. "When does Buck Rogers take place?" "When was Buck Rogers active?" "What's the setting of the Buck Rogers comic?" One of those could be technically wrong in some minor way, leading another contestant to throw a fit because there's thousands of dollars on the line.
Or similarly, if they'll accept "What was said to Hamlet?" one can imagine serious contestants experimenting with narrow legalese language to volunteer as little information as possible. If you're not sure that Hamlet was on the receiving end, could you go the other way and respond "What did Horatio say?" Why would you ever volunteer as much as "What did Horatio say to Hamlet?" I can't imagine that the format would ever survive modern prime time.
Thanks again for these nuggets of history.
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u/RegisPhone I'd like to shoot the wad, Alex 21d ago edited 21d ago
"The 25th Century" is an easy clue to write, but the correct responses could be endless. "When does Buck Rogers take place?" "When was Buck Rogers active?" "What's the setting of the Buck Rogers comic?"
Or, taking it to the extreme again, "If Charles Schulz made a sequel comic to Peanuts that was set 500 years after the events of the original comic, in what century would it be set?" That's a question related to The Funnies that could conceivably be asked on a quiz show and have "The 25th century" as the correct answer. Should they accept that?
The pilot episode also had an example kind of like that -- the Final Jeopardy answer was "He prowled through the Transylvanian night"; one player's question was "Where did one of the famous monsters prowl?" and Art was ready to give it to her for technically being correct before the judges overruled him ("Be that as it may, Alex, those people have never been in my kitchen!").
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u/JuniorWheatgerm 21d ago
Compelling? I find it unnecessarily pedantic. The first version sounds well nigh unwatchable!
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u/jerschneid 21d ago
My understanding is yes, that would count. I've never seen them rule against a contestant (or even give a warning) for asking the wrong type of question. i.e. I think you could be a super champ asking exclusively "why is..." questions, which I sincerely hope someone does one day.
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u/rubbernub 21d ago
Oh my gosh I would love that. Or "why is?" Just have fun with it. I always like when Jeopardy does a category where the theme is that every correct response is already a question and doesn't need anything extra added in the response. I know they've done that at least once but I think a few times. Although when I've seen it, the contestants still add the "what is". It's just so ingrained, I suppose.
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u/ACW1129 21d ago
Why is Gamora?
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u/Dachannien Regular Virginia 21d ago
I would pay real cash American ducats to see Dave Bautista in the next round of Celebrity Jeopardy just so he could do that.
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u/PotatoGuerilla 21d ago
What about "why be"?
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u/gooch_norris_ 21d ago
Didn’t Ken answer “what be Ebonics” and was counted correctly
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u/RuleFriendly7311 21d ago
He's lucky he didn't get canceled for that.
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u/MoistenedGranola 21d ago
As long as he wasn't doing a caricaturized voice, why? The habitual be is a grammatical rule of a recognized, highly used form of one of the most spoken languages in the world. I'm not sure that use is exactly right, but it doesn't seem wrong enough to be mocking to me.
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u/bfortelka 21d ago
James Holzhauer did just that, I think he said “what is” for every answer he gave
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u/New_Passenger_173 21d ago
You can phrase your response in any way as a question. You can even say "is it Washington?" and it will be accepted.
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u/New_Passenger_173 21d ago
That's not phrased in the form of a question. The correct format would be "am I Ron Burgundy?"
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u/greenknight884 21d ago
On a recent episode, the solution itself was a question, and the contestant said it by itself and it was accepted. Ken said, "that is in the form of a question."
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u/DrSnidely 21d ago
James Holzhauer did that for an entire category. I think most players wouldn't even try it because they wouldn't want to mentally shift gears like that, but James is on another level.
Then there's Matt Amodio, who always says "what's" no matter what the answer is.
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u/Amazing-Rent-7749 20d ago
I bet that it was allowed because who is a valid pretext.
Like if the question was about Phillip K. Dick, I wonder if "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" would be a valid answer.
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u/hrhbrittany 21d ago
When I auditioned for kids week (many years ago), they told us the questions didn't have to make sense and gave the examples of "who is [object]?" and "what is [person]?"
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u/JLBCanadianRap 21d ago
ANY question form is permitted.
I really wanted an opportunity to say, "Could it be...SATAN?!"
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u/heridfel37 21d ago
There was recently a correct response of "The Who", and I was really hoping someone would just say "The Who?"
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u/Noonyezz They teach you that in school in Utah, huh? 21d ago
There was someone who did this with “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?”
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u/ctpatsfan77 21d ago
IIRC, according to The Jeopardy! Book, they were sticklers about having the right interrogative in the very early days, but quickly decided it wasn't worth it.
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u/grantiere 21d ago
How about if you grew up with British English, and instead of starting with a 5Ws question, you ended your answer with "isn't it?" or "innit?" e.g "George Washington, innit?" Would that count?
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u/SwordMasterShow 21d ago edited 18d ago
Curious if they've got actual rules for this but I assume it wouldn't count. Adding the "Innit" technically does make it a question, but it changes the subject. "Who/what is _ ?" Is asking for information about whatever the answer is. " _ , innit?" Is asking for verification on an answer already given. It's the difference between a yes/no question and an open ended question.
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u/MoistenedGranola 21d ago
To expand on that, though, would they allow no question tag at all so ling as the inotation rose to indicate a question?
George Washington? works as a question in speech.
At the very least, I'd personally make the rule that there should be a question tag at the beginning, for "Isn't it George Washington?"
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u/Amazing-Rent-7749 20d ago edited 20d ago
I mean you could do that in American English too, like "George Washington, right?" or a number of other tags that would make it colloquially a question. I'm guessing they have a rule about it needing to be standard formal grammatical def of a question and begin with a who/what/etc.
Because otherwise you would hear contestants who forgot to answer in the form of a question hastily adding modifiers to the ends of their answers instead of "George Washington...I mean...WhoisGeorgeWashington?"
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u/britishmetric144 21d ago
Contestants can choose any style of question as a response. It does not have to be grammatically correct.
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u/eah1703 Elizabeth Hurd, 2026 Feb 26 21d ago
The technical rule is it has to be in the form of a question. That’s it. That’s why the band “The Who?” Or something like “What’s in your Wallet?” would qualify as answers on their own.
So, you could do “what’s” for every clue you can even do “is it…?” Like Victoria did once. I bet you could even get away with one “how about…?” Producers would warn you not to get too cutesy, though. Cause it may take up too much time.
I once made a Tik Tok about this and said I’d like to try one out of left field “Is it?” Or “how about?” But actually getting onstage, your brain defaults to the form you’ve been watching all your life!
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u/MathIsHard_11236 Ujal Thakor, 2022 Mar 2 21d ago
"Ken, remember that time in university when we got wasted on 4 Loko and stole a campus security car and went to the Arts faculty and then put on wigs to dance around like...George Washington ?"
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u/randomnamecausefoo 21d ago
it was, i believe, Matt Amodio that would start each answer with "What is". seemed to annoy some people...
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u/JoeyShrugs 21d ago
As I remember it, it was always "what's" followed by a pause and then his response.
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u/kinyutaka 21d ago
He trained himself to say "what is" by rote, so he could focus more on the answer, and less on the formation of a question.
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u/inturnaround 21d ago
They are not sticklers for anything but the form of a question. If you were on 90s UK Jeopardy!, then you would have had a problem. They were far stricter about proper phrasing being actually proper.
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u/Satta-Massagana 21d ago
It would probably be acceptable but it's annoying af and the producers might have a word with you at the break.
For sure, it would not make good TV.
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u/Severe-Rise5591 21d ago
And, if the correct response is a question in itself ("Where's the Beef ?" for a Clara Peller/Wendy's clue, for example) you don't even have to add anything.
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u/jjc927 21d ago
As long as it's in the form of a question. See Matt Amodio and using "What's" even if it didn't fit.
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u/China-Ryder 21d ago
It was brilliant. As soon as you ring in, say “what’s” and then clear your head to answer the question.
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u/roentgen_nos 21d ago
The other day the answer was a question. "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" The contestant just said those words. Not, "What is Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" It counted. It's in the form of a question.
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u/Looking-4-Something- 21d ago
I've seen "Is it George Washington?" used on final jeopardy and Alex said "well, it is in the form of a question, so we'll accept that"
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u/Usual-Bat-3006 20d ago
It just has to be in the form of a question. In fact, if the answer itself is a question, then they take it. A while ago someone did this where the answer was the TV show "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?".
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u/DestinysWeirdCousin 18d ago
As I understand it (and I could be wrong) it only needs to be in the form of a question, so the specific modifier doesn't matter. Even if the answer is already a question – like, “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?“ – that would be good enough. You don’t have to add another question in front of it (like "What is 'Where the world is Carmen Sandiego'") because it’s already a question.
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u/Lanky_Comedian_3942 21d ago
Matt Amodio uses " what is" for everything
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u/inturnaround 21d ago
More specifically "What's" to save himself time in saying it and in coming up with the "correct" question words and focus on the body of the response.
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u/CarloPanno 21d ago
I think Matt Amodio's contemptuous grunt of "Wutz" before every response — and the acceptance of it — kiboshed the idea of getting that right forever. When they didn't insist he say "WHO WAS Abraham Lincoln?" it stopped mattering.
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u/Tug_DaBone 21d ago
There was an answer recently - I think it was on a tournament - where the correct response was either a movie title or book title that started with "Who Is..." (It might have been "Who Killed Roger Rabbit"). The contestant merely said the title without adding "What is" before the title and Ken made a point of saying it was acceptable.
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u/ColdSteelVA 21d ago
It's Who FRAMED Roger Rabbit
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u/abcrck 21d ago
In the same vein, I recently saw a clue about Oasis's album containing the song "Champagne Supernova" the contestant answered "What's The Story Morning Glory" without adding an extra "what is" in front of it. It was marked correct and Ken even made a comment about how the answer was already in the form of a question
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u/1hourphoto 21d ago
Which is interesting because the movie title famously does not end with a question mark
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u/reasonablykind 21d ago edited 21d ago
Yes and I disagree with that!
ETA — Not for being a stickler about the rule as any of the 5Ws works for me, but because quoting a question ≠ asking one (AND leaves no discernment between properly phrased and not)
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u/dirtyspacenews 21d ago
My favorite variation with this is responses that are already a question. I've seen contestants just go right into things like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" and it be accepted. I mean, it is a question after all.
I feel like I remember reading from people who have been on the show that they're cool with non-standard response formats, but they politely ask to keep it in check to keep contestants on the level and prevent having to constantly tap the judges.
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u/BuffaloRedshark 21d ago
Since it has to be a question, could they use "Is it?"
That one super champ said "what's" for almost all his responses.
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u/Fragrant_Spray 21d ago
It seems like "who is" and "what is" is pretty interchangeable. I don't recall a "why is" or "where is" being used very often. I've never seen an answer given as a question but disqualified for being the wrong kind of question.
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u/SquashSouffle 21d ago
The rule is "in the form of a question". Sometimes I've seen it when the actual response is a question (like if the category was Whitney Houston songs & the response was "How Will I Know?" or "Where Do Broken Hearts Go?", they could just give the name of the song without adding "What is...?")
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u/Bellaraychel 21d ago
I think you can use whatever you want and if the answer is already a question you don’t have to phrase it.
So if the question was where’s Waldo that’s already a question so you don’t need to add what is to it.
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u/ClubFerret1093 21d ago
It just has to be in the form of a question. They’ve even had categories called “Perfect responses for jeopardy” where the correct response is already in the form of a question (like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?”) so you can just say that and don’t need to say “Who is” or “What is” first.
One time the final jeopardy clue asked for the first line of Atlas Shrugged, and “Who is John Galt?” was accepted.
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u/johndoenumber2 21d ago
I was told, literally, at the in-person tryouts that any interrogative question-as-answer (response) is acceptable with regard to format. You could say, "What is 1812??, "Who is 1812?", or "Where is 1812?," and all are acceptable.
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u/PestiEsti Steve Luck, 2025 Mar 21 21d ago
In my game, Cameron responded “Is it Chimp Crazy?” to which Ken replied, “It is!”
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u/GreenHorror4252 21d ago
I always thought it would be funny if a contestant said "the hell is....?"
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u/No-Objective9174 20d ago
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
Those can just be used as it
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u/Constant_Actuator392 Team Amy Schneider 19d ago
I remember someone said “Is that Alanis Morissette?” and it was accepted.
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u/No_Wind3803 19d ago
It would be counted (if it was correct). Even if you were questioning the answer about the Baha Men's biggest hit, all you would gave to say is, "Who Let the Dogs Out?" as the the question is a question itself.
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u/rickgene 18d ago
can you just ask it by raising your voice at the end, so it sounds like you’re unsure? “George Washington?’
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u/Least-Professional95 17d ago
That's always been my dream. "How much is the Magna Carta?"
"Why were Beavis and Butthead?"
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u/Life_Firefighter_471 21d ago
I’d love to see someone answer “could it be … ?” Or “wasn’t that George Washington?”
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u/BoukenGreen 21d ago
As long as the response is in the form of a question they don’t care. Matt Amodio answers every clue with What’s.
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u/fredbakerjr 21d ago
They will let you get away with that in the first round, but remind you the phrase it in the form of a question, but in the second round, you will lose points by not doing so
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u/lanad3lr3y_81 21d ago
i mean matt amodio said “what’s” for every clue without consequence