Trivia

Alex Trebek died of pancreatic cancer on November 8, 2020. His final episodes were taped Thursday October 29, and broadcast in the first week of January 2021 (note: he had hosted 8,244 episodes in his 37 seasons on the show).

On March 16, 2007, for the first time ever, the final question resulted in a three-way tie among the contestants (Jamey Kirby, Anders Martinson and Scott Weiss). They each won $16,000 after correctly identifying Bonnie Parker, of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde, to a question regarding women of the '30s. The odds of a three-way tie were calculated as being 1 in 25 million. Despite the odds, the current champion admitted that he bet so that a tie could occur, drastically diminishing the odds. In 2014, ties were officially cancelled and, as of 2018, result in a tiebreaker clue to determine the winner of the game played that day.

Ken Jennings holds the title for most wins on the show. He won 74 times in a row, winning $2,522,700 until losing to Nancy Zerg. However, the record for the most money won belongs to Brad Rutter with $4,938,436.

This version of Jeopardy debut with the rule from the original Jeopardy! (1964) intact that permitted contestants to ring in the moment the clue was exposed. However, this began causing no end of problems. First, the sound was distracting to the viewers. The show started getting complaints from viewers and stations that the buzzing was irritating them. Second, once a contestant rings in a five second timer is activated. Often, contestants rang in so quickly that by the time host Alex Trebek finished reading the entire clue, their five seconds had expired, and another contestant rung in. Viewers were baffled that Trebek wasn't allowing the first person to ring an attempt to supply the correct question, but there was no time to stop during the show and explain that their time had expired. One day there was a contestant who continually pressed the buzzer with such fever and physicality that not only did he ring in first every time but his opponents were so distracted by his gyrations that they basically threw in the towel. Consequently, the show decided to install a lockout device that requires a few tenths of a second in between depressions of the buzzer for the system to reset itself; this prevents one contestant from dominating the system. Then to start the second season, the show further changed the rules to allow contestants to ring in when Trebek finished reading the clue, rather than upon it's exposure. The show had to make the change because the constant ringing had become such an irritant to the home viewer. Also to improve the home viewers involvement, the show started cutting away from the game board just before Trebek finishes reading the clue, so that the home viewers can view the three contestants, see who rings in first, and gauge their own speed against that of the people playing in the studio.

In 1986, host Alex Trebek realized that in his three years of hosting the show, he'd only seen one contestant over sixty win a game. This bothered him on two levels. People past the age of fifty do not lose their intelligence, and they knew there was a huge audience out there who wanted to root for someone their own age, someone they could identify with. The reason so-called senior citizens were not winning on Jeopardy! was simple reflexes. Trebek in his book about the show, says that one problem they had in the beginning was that contestants not only had to know the right answers to win, but they had to buzz in before any of the other players. They quickly discovered that this gave a decided advantage to younger players with faster reflexes and that when a 25 year old competed with a 55 year old, although the two of them might know the right answers to the same number of questions, the 25 year old would always win because he could buzz in faster than the older player. As a result, they decided to try a Seniors Tournament, open to anyone over the age of fifty. Trebek started getting angry letters from viewers saying "How dare you refer to people over fifty as seniors?" His response was that senior is a relative term.