Exploring the Fun World of Jeopardy Questions

The best Jeopardy questions often provide information about topics like world wars and American presidents. But what constitutes a memorable response?

What makes a question memorable is, of course, subjective but nonetheless interesting. This article shows you how to create the best Jeopardy questions.

How to Write the Best Jeopardy Questions

The Jeopardy Ultimate Game is a test of not only smartness but also memory, which is why many people love watching it on TV.

The great thing about games on Jeopardy is that the game environment is designed to provide contestants with the answers they need. But they’re not always as obvious as you might think.

The big question is how they create the questions. If you’ve always been fascinated by how they create the questions asked on the show, this section shows you how.

Step 1

Select a category you know quite a lot about. Jeopardy questions usually fall into different categories. The categories include trivia, academics, people, entertainment, wordplay and lifestyle.

Step 2

The second step is to determine the answer to your questions. This means you have to reverse the question-answer order to bring the answer before the question. Your first question should be easy so that anyone with a decent knowledge of the field would know.

Step 3

The third step is to write a statement that describes the answer easily. For instance, you can have a statement like “Second largest river in North America” if your answer is River Mississippi.

Step 4

Follow the first three steps again to write four more questions. Make sure the difficulty increases proportionately to the worth of the question.

One trick here is to turn seemingly simple questions into tough ones using obscure facts as your answer. Dig deeper and find less well-known facts about your answer to up the ante.

Examples of Jeopardy Questions

The largest land carnivore in the world (Kodiak bear).
This is the bone broken most frequently in the human body (collar bone).
The planet that the Greeks knew as Phosphorous (Venus).
Pumping your own gas is outlawed in these two states. (Oregon and New Jersey)
Two great lakes meet at Niagara Falls. (Erie and Ontario).
Stories that got their collective title because little Josephine Kipling insisted they be told exactly the same way each time (Just So Stories).
The highest goal-scoring goalkeeper in soccer history (Rogerio Ceni).
Coined in the 1860s and sounds a bit like “energy,” the word denotes an irreversible dispersion of energy (Entropy).
One of the first-ever races in this sport took place in 1752—four miles from Buttevant Church to St. Mary’s Doneraile (Steeplechase).
The year that marked the end of World War I and the beginning of the Finnish Civil War (1918).
First Capital of the United States, home to the Federal Reserve Bank with the largest gold reserve in the world (New York City).

Conclusion

Contestants playing Jeopardy games know what they are up against, and they hope to win by deciphering the clue given. The key to writing the perfect Jeopardy question is understanding the show’s format.

You’re looking for questions that make the show more entertaining. Thus, having a thorough understanding of the show’s structure will help you come up with a variety of questions that work well.