{"id":172809,"date":"2026-02-09T12:07:56","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T17:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=172809"},"modified":"2026-02-09T12:26:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T17:26:57","slug":"jeopardy-a-partial-taxonomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/02\/09\/jeopardy-a-partial-taxonomy\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeopardy!<\/em>: A Partial Taxonomy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Screenshot from “Jeffpardy!” clip.<\/p><\/div>\n

Everyone I know is now on Jeopardy!<\/em> As someone who writes about crossword puzzles, constructs puzzles, and teaches courses on writing and games, I have found that my connection to trivia champions is an occupational hazard, since puzzles and Jeopardy!<\/em> share an enthusiastic audience (including the most recent Jeopardy! <\/em>Tournament of Champions winner,\u00a0Paolo Pasco, who also currently holds the trophy for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament). It\u2019s also in my genes: my brother was a Jeopardy! <\/em>champion in 2017; my mom was on the show last summer.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just my own Baader-Meinhof phenomenon of an ever-expanding Jeopaverse. Jeopardy!<\/em> is one of the few legacy media franchises that isn\u2019t in jeopardy. Over the past few years, there have been more iterations of Jeopardy! <\/em>than ever before, well beyond the classic show. The growth is exponential, as though that trademarked exclamation point had taken on the mathematical property of a factorial, multiplying the game into so many more versions than seemed possible. It\u2019s the Cambrian explosion of Jeopardy!<\/em> that nobody asked for. Jeopardy!<\/em> is too good at its brand. TikTok loves Jeopardy!<\/em><\/p>\n

Still a last gasp of nightly cable programming, the show is now also streaming on two major platforms at once, Hulu and Peacock, which is basically unheard of, but Jeopardy!<\/em> transcends the laws of television. This show isn\u2019t a 7 P.M.<\/small>, five-days-a-week dose; it\u2019s much more than that. But Jeopardy!<\/em> being everywhere doesn\u2019t necessarily mean it\u2019s a better show.<\/p>\n

Quiz shows were huge in early television, but in the late fifties, the FCC cracked down on programs like Twenty-One<\/em> and Tic-Tac-Dough<\/em> for feeding certain players the right responses. So the producer Merv Griffin had a brain wave that would leave the authorities with nothing to protest: a show that provided all the contestants with the answers, letting them provide the questions. Jeopardy! <\/em>launched in 1964, and save for a few brief years\u20141975 to 1978, and 1979 to 1983\u2014\u201cAmerica\u2019s Favorite Quiz Show\u201d has aired continually ever since.<\/p>\n

Trivia shows provide an engrossing escape, allowing viewers to experience frustration and triumph in a thoroughly absorbing yet inconsequential space. Other than contestants giving answers in the form of questions, Jeopardy! <\/em>basically follows a standard quiz-show formula, with players earning or losing money as they solve clues, category by category. The \u201canswers\u201d get progressively difficult as they get more expensive. The only moment when Jeopardy! <\/em>steps out of game face is during a few minutes of aggressively awkward banter between host and contestants right after the first commercial break. The host, currently the cherubically snarky Ken Jennings, tees up each contestant to narrate some preplanned anecdote about their lives. The contestants offer anecdotes of awkward banality in these anecdotes (one eats food counterclockwise around the plate! Another once mixed up the sun and the moon in the sky!) that provide moments of pleasantly dull humanity.<\/p>\n

When longtime host Alex Trebek died in 2020, the Jeopaverse firmament shook. The seemingly ageless silver-fox Canadian, who did crosswords at 6 A.M.<\/small> on taping days, and who flirted with something friskier than a G-rating but never crossed into either lecherousness or nerdiness, was the indelible heart and soul of the show. But Jeopardy! <\/em>has stood the test by regenerating itself from within, like an axolotl. The most famous superchamp, Ken Jennings, has become the heir to Trebek. Jeopardy!<\/em> is bigger than us all.<\/p>\n

Jeopardy!<\/em><\/strong>: A Partial Taxonomy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Spinoffs include Rock & Roll Jeopardy!<\/em>; Jep!<\/em>, a children\u2019s version; Sports Jeopardy!<\/em>; and Pop Culture Jeopardy! <\/em>There are special tournaments: Jeopardy! Masters<\/em>, a Champions League\u2013style supergroup competition; Celebrity Jeopardy!<\/em>, in which celebrities compete to raise money for charities, and which used to consist of special episodes within the original season, but graduated into its own series; Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time<\/em>, a gladiatorial showdown between Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter, and James Holzhauer; Jeopardy! College Championship<\/em>; Jeopardy!<\/em> Kids Week<\/em>; and Jeopardy! Teen Tournament<\/em>. Other quiz shows, like The Chase<\/em> and Master Minds<\/em>, feature Jeopardy! <\/em>alums as hosts and marquee contestants.<\/p>\n

Per Jeopardy!<\/em>\u2019s broadcast records, the countries with their own Jeopardies!<\/em>, to date, are the United States, Argentina, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium (Flanders), Canada (Quebec), China, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan. An Arabic-language version, El Mahaq<\/em>, also broadcasts to the Arab world.<\/p>\n

Jeopardy!<\/em> varietals each exaggerate an element of the show to an increasingly absurd degree, and force us to reckon with the age-old, answerless question: What are we really talking about when we\u2019re talking about Jeopardy!<\/em>?<\/p>\n

The Chase<\/em><\/strong> (U.S. version) (2021\u2013present)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Question Difficulty: <\/strong>$200\u2013$800<\/p>\n

Contestant Skill: <\/strong>Solid second place against a Tournament of Champions<\/em> qualifier<\/p>\n

Zen or Pachinko?: <\/strong>Video-poker slot machines (the tall kind, with curved screens)<\/p>\n

The Chase<\/em> perverts superchampions\u2014contestants like Ken Jennings or James Holzhauer, who defeated opponents for several nights in a row\u2014into supervillains, making us root against the very people Jeopardy!<\/em> taught us to revere as folk heroes.<\/p>\n

The Chase<\/em> leans into the showmanship rather than the game, remixing trivia with a simulacrum of suspense by creating a team to fight a common enemy\u2014often someone that viewers will recognize as a Jeopardy! <\/em>winner. Contestants compete individually, but they\u2019re all on the same team. Each contributes to a prize fund split among all the successful contestants. The more winners there are, the more money everyone gets. The team\u2019s playing to beat the Chaser, who is a Mycroft Holmes\u2013meets\u2013Lex Luthor type, both guru and nemesis. The show\u2019s drama comes into play, regardless of whether the contestants know enough questions to put up a fight against the Chaser. If the Chaser happens to get a question wrong, a weird fissure opens.<\/p>\n

The first American version of The Chase<\/em>, in 2013, had a black, all-caps AXE body deodorant, Power Outline aesthetic. Booming lights, a thrumming drumbeat, music that signaled high stakes. A laugh track from a live audience, a little faux back-and-forth with the contestant after they answered a question but before viewers knew the correct answer.<\/p>\n

In this iteration, the Chaser was a Brit of brains and brawn: \u201cThe Beast,\u201d a.k.a. Mark Labbett, a six-foot-six former mathematics and physical education substitute teacher from Salisbury, England. The Beast had been part of a quizzing ensemble on the original UK version of The Chase<\/em>, but got his break on the U.S. series as the sole Chaser for several seasons.<\/p>\n

Unlike Jeopardy!<\/em>\u2019s precisely pinned formula, The Chase<\/em>\u2019s multiple-choice clues played faster, looser, stupider.<\/p>\n

A sample question: You walk in on a chef shaving his pecorino. What\u2019s he doing?<\/p>\n