What Is 50 Crazy Facts About ‘Jeopardy!’ for $1000?

2. Trebek made broadcast history in 1991 when he became the first person to host three American game shows at the same time. He earned this distinction on Feb. 4, 1991 when he took over for Lynn Swann as host of NBC’s To Tell the Truth, which he hosted until the end of the series’ run on May 31, 1991. At the time, he was also host of NBC’s Classic Concentration as well as Jeopardy!.

3. Trebek ran the Olympic Torch through a leg of its journey to Atlanta before the 1996 Summer Olympics.

4. He and Pat Sajak, host of Wheel of Fortune, traded places on April Fools’ Day 1997. Sajak hosted Jeopardy!, and Trebek co-hosted Wheel of Fortune with Sajak’s wife, Lesly.

5. Trebek produced the first three seasons of the daily syndicated version of Jeopardy! himself, before relinquishing his duties in order to host NBC’s Classic Concentration.

6. Trebek and announcer Jimmy Gilbert appeared as themselves in a Jeopardy!-themed subplot of the 1992 comedy White Men Can’t Jump.

7. Trebek claims to own about 100 suits.

8. He misses seeing Will Ferrell’s impression of him on Saturday Night Live.

9. Unless there is a Lakers game on television, Trebek will watch himself on Jeopardy! each night.

10. Trebek majored in philosophy at the University of Ottawa simply because classes were in held in the morning. He had to work evenings to pay for his tuition.

11. His favorite sport to play is hockey, but he oddly claims to have given up the sport after shaving his mustache.

12. When Trebek isn’t busy hosting, he spends time building things for his home and fixing his many sprinklers.

13. He speaks 17 languages, but only English and French fluently.

14. He once opened an Ultimate Tournament of Champions show wearing no trousers. He did this to make the contestants more comfortable.

15. Trebek’s favorite category is geography.

16. Trebek shaved the mustache he had worn for more than 30 years after a spur-of-the-moment decision in 2001.

17. Though Trebek appears to jot down notes after reading each clue, he’s actually crossing off each clue to keep himself from re-reading it in error.

18. Showrunner Merv Griffin wrote the game show’s theme song “Think!” as a lullaby for his son. Its original title is “A Time for Tony.”

19. Griffin estimates that the Jeopardy! theme song earned him more than $70 million in royalties over his lifetime.

20. Merv Griffin’s wife Julann came up with the game show while on a flight from Michigan to New York in 1963. When Griffin pitched the idea to NBC executives, they bought the show even without looking at a pilot.

21. Griffin scrapped the original show title What’s the Question? after network executive Ed Vane rejected the game concept saying, “It doesn’t have enough jeopardies.”

22. Merv and Julann Griffin built a miniature Jeopardy! game set in their dining room to use while developing the show for television.

23. Jeopardy! has had several theme songs over its 50-year history, each composed either by Griffin himself or by his wife.

24. Jeopardy! is the number two game show series in syndication.

25. Jeopardy! averages 25 million viewers per week.

26. Prominent celebrities who have presented Jeopardy! clues include Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Katie Couric and Oprah Winfrey.

27. Celebrities who’ve competed on Jeopardy! include Ashton Kutcher, Jodie Foster, Anderson Cooper and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

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28. Until 1985, Jeopardy! episodes featured buzzers that would sound when someone rang in. They showrunners silenced the buzzers because they felt the noise was too distracting to viewers. They also frequently interrupted Trebek before he could finish reading clues.

29. Jeopardy! holds a record 30 Daytime Emmy Awards.

30. In 2009, Comedian Andy Richter achieved the highest ever one-day score in a celebrity Jeopardy! tournament, earning $68,000 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

31. The Jeopardy! Clue Club is a team of roving reporters that travel the world creating video clues for the game show. The crew has traveled to 280 cities worldwide, through 48 of the 50 U.S. states and to 44 foreign countries.

32. In 1993, Air Force Lt. Col. Daryl Scott managed to win a game of Jeopardy! with only $1.

33. Brad Rutter of Lancaster, Pa. holds the record for highest cumulative amount of money won by a single player: $3,455,102 in cash.

34. Before 2002, second and third place winners received consolation prizes rather than cash winnings. These included vacation packages and merchandise donated by merchandisers as promotional consideration, as a means to keep yearly production costs low.

35. Jep! was a spin-off featuring child contestants between the ages of 10 and 12. It aired on Game Show Network from 1998-99, and on Discovery Channel until 2004.

36. Rock and Roll Jeopardy! ran on VH1 for four seasons between 1998 and 2001. Hosted by Jeff Probst, the spin-off focused on post-1950s popular music trivia.

37. Jeopardy! has foreign adaptations in 30 countries.

38. One week’s worth of episodes is shot in one day. To keep up the illusion of passing time, Trebek changes his suit between shows.

39. The show has a team of nine writers and five researchers who create clues for each episode.

40. Jeopardy! has only a 0.4 percent acceptance rate.

41. Each year, more than 100,000 people take the online test to qualify for Jeopardy!. Out of those people, producers select about 3,000 applicants to audition. After a one-on-one interview, potential contestants partake in a written quiz of 50 questions and a live round of Jeopardy! using actual buzzers. Only then do they narrow down the applicants to 400 people who will appear on the show that season.

42. Second and third place contestants win only $2,000 and $1,000 respectively, so as to make Final Jeopardy more interesting and to encourage contestants to bet to win.

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43. People who have appeared on any nationally broadcast game show of any format in the past year are ineligible for Jeopardy, as are people who’ve been on three such shows within the past 10 years.

44. The Jeopardy! contestant department never reveals test scores. The only way an applicant knows he’s passed is if he’s invited to audition for the show.

45. The online test only allows 15 seconds to answer each question.

46. Online tests are evaluated by a system that takes alternate responses, acceptable misspellings and phonetic spellings into consideration.

47. Jeopardy! has its own “button enabler,” an employee who flips a switch that allows contestants to buzz in.

48. The show films on a 46-week production schedule.

49. There is a mandatory one-year waiting period after an applicant takes an online test.

50. People who have appeared on Wheel of Fortune are ineligible to appear on Jeopardy!.