Claire McNear - Answers in the Form of Questions

by Ken Jennings

Jeopardy! is a magic trick.

Its been performed over eight thousand times, every weeknight for the last three and a half decades. But the trick goes off so smoothly every time that you never see the strings. Youre probably not even aware that youre watching magic.

The show appears simple, effortlesseven mundane, at this point. Its vast audience loves it for its straightforwardness, its utter lack of surprise. They get exactly what they expect every night: Alex Trebek, three contestants, roughly sixty answers and sixty questions.

But at home, youre seeing only a tiny part of the trick. It takes months of complicated preparation and a small army of people to produce a single half hour of Jeopardy! A lot of hard work goes into making television look this easy.

Let me warn you right now: In this book, youre about to see how the trick is done. Claire McNear is going to show you the strings. Youll time-travel back to the 1960s to be present at the shows creation. Youll be in the room with Alex Trebek at the crack of dawn as he spends hours poring over the days games and clues. Youll follow the months of exhaustive nationwide searching that finds each set of three contestants. Youll marvel at the bizarre training regimens to which the contestants may have subjected themselves, and learn what a surreal pressure cooker Jeopardy! gameplay is from the other side of the TV screen. (I still have flashbacks.)

If Jeopardy! is a sausageand friends, I firmly believe that it is not!you are about to find out how the sausage is made.

But heres the thing: The backstage Jeopardy! in this book is fascinating, but it isnt the real Jeopardy! Ive noticed that the Jeopardy! diehards online sometimes forget that. They talk about the show as if it exists mostly to service superfans like themselves who know all the insider secretsand who may very well be contestants themselves, either past or prospective. Its sometimes easy for me to forget as well, having not exactly been a Jeopardy! civilian myself for over fifteen years now.

But for the most part, all the behind-the-scenes trivia is beside the point. The real Jeopardy! is not the machine. Its the show, the thirty minutes of pleasant syndicated reassurance that the machine produces five times a week. Jeopardy! isnt in a chilly California soundstage; its in your home, as you yell answers at the TV screen or furrow your brow during a tense Daily Double. Nine million people will enjoy it tonight, even if they have no idea that the show tapes five shows in a single afternoon, or what the Jeopardy! theme music is called, or what a Coryat score is. All that is gilding the lily. The real Jeopardy! is the illusion of simplicity: Alex Trebek, three contestants, roughly sixty answers and sixty questions.

The real Jeopardy! is the magic trick.