At a time of global peril, Jeopardy! is the only thing that can save us — In this column, we deliver hot (and cold) takes on pop culture, judging whether a subject is overrated or underrated.
Updated September 7, 2026 — 10:51am,first published September 5, 2026 — 5:30am
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An adage I’ve long tried to live by, with varying degrees of success, is that it’s better to remain quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Certain situations – being asleep, being underwater, intubated – are easy. Being awake, in a conversation, or watching Jeopardy! – less so.
The long-running US game show, which airs in Australia weeknights on SBS and SBS2, has clues arranged into categories, presented in the form of answers. Contestants must phrase their response in the form of a question.
Were the category “Opening Lines”, for example, this is what it might sound like on the couch at our place:
Clue: “Before we proceed any further, hear me speak”.Me: “Hamlet! No. Sorry. What is Hamlet? No. Macbeth! What is …”Wife: “What is Coriolanus?”Me: “D’oh!”
Most winners enjoy one or two victories, pocket a few thousand dollars and bow out. Recently, there was a new winner every night for 11 nights. Five wins in a row earns an invitation to the Tournament of Champions.
Host Ken Jennings, himself a former contestant, won 74 games in a row, a record that still stands. He is also a Mormon, something I thought remarkable until I learnt that Johnny Gilbert, who introduces Ken and the three contestants, is 98 years old.
Until 2025, Jennings also held the US record for being the highest-earning game show contestant ever – more than $US4.5 million ($6.8 million) from Jeopardy! alone. Slate magazine called him “the Michael Jordan of trivia” and “the Seabiscuit of geekdom”. The title of his 2006 memoir was Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia.
“I was aware, from a young age, about being a know-it-all,” Jennings once told The New Yorker. “You immediately realise that America doesn’t like that, that it’s not a hit with girls in your class to know Captain Kirk’s middle name … It is kind of silly to know this weird stuff but we can have a good time with it. It’s better than not knowing it, right?”
As a contestant, Jennings knew enough weird stuff and more to provide thousands of correct responses. But it is a single incorrect answer that still haunts him. The year was 2004, the category was “Tool Time” and the clue was: “This term for a long-handled gardening tool can also mean an immoral pleasure seeker”. Jennings, who looked then, as he does now, like the Mormon missionary to Madrid he once was, answered: “What is a hoe?”
“No,” responded Alex Trebek, the show’s then-host. Pause. “Ooooh … they teach you that in school in Utah?” he quipped.
“What is a rake?” another contestant replied correctly.
In the US, where the show attracts 20 million viewers a week, fans online endlessly dissect and relive such moments (as well as debate whether Jennings will ever match the still-beloved Trebek, who appeared in 37 seasons before he died of pancreatic cancer in 2020).