We’re through another week of Jeopardy! Here is another week’s worth of thoughts from the other side of the editorial desk!
The Biggest Beef I Have With “Celebrity Jeopardy” This Season
For the most part, I’ve enjoyed this season of Celebrity Jeopardy. However, something I have noted—especially in my columns for Questionist—is that a brand-new writing team was brought in for these questions, which has led to my biggest beef with this season of the show.
The new writers aren’t following the show’s established style guide, which is very frustrating for me as a fan.
There are some minor stylistic issues I’ve noticed—like not always using an ampersand instead of “and”—but the biggest faux pas from the writers is the misuse of quotation marks in category titles, with a pair of categories in this week’s game being the major culprits. Firstly, with the category “N-I-A-L” AIN’T A RIVER IN EGYPT”, hyphens in the quotation marks generally mean there are letters in between. As this wasn’t the case here, I was left confused as a home viewer and regular Jeopardy! fan. Secondly, U.S. “WORLD CAPITALS” in Triple Jeopardy was another glaring error from this new writing team. Quotation marks mean that something is required in the response—that has been a hard-and-fast rule for nearly 40 years, and it is unacceptable for these writers to deviate from that. This sort of sloppiness, seen mostly in Season 1, was supposedly tightened for Season 2—in 1985.
If Jeopardy is going to bring in new writers for future shows, it is imperative that the “new blood” follows the show’s established practices and rules. Playing fast and loose with quotation marks in category names doesn’t cut it in 2023.
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An Update On Zoha Khalili
If you’ve been reading some of my recent previews, one recurring theme has been my wondering about Zoha Khalili, the third player from February 1, 2022 who made a very similar comeback to Henry Rozycki on Wednesday before falling short in Final Jeopardy. I wondered why Zoha hadn’t been invited to Second Chance, and it prompted an email from Zoha on Thursday of this week.
Zoha writes,
My Google alerts have told me a few times about your surprise at me not being on the Second Chance Tournament. In case it is a comfort, I was invited to be an alternate in September 2022, not a participant, but I was not available at the time of taping, so I’ll never know if I might have gotten that second chance. The producers were and have been so kind, so I just wanted to let you know that it’s not all on them that it didn’t happen for me!
Thanks so much for your kindness and for writing about this show we both love so much!
Having heard this, I’m very glad to hear that Zoha was at least considered for Second Chance, and while I’m disappointed that possible scheduling didn’t work out, it is something that all of us should remember when discussing potential “snubs” for competitions in the future.
A Suggestion If You’re A Hopeful: Maybe Keep Quiet On Reddit?
I noticed on Reddit that a group of diehards are still upset that contestants are being asked to say the full category name every time, with one poster suggesting, “What happens if the contestant doesn’t say the entire name? There isn’t anything the producers can do, is there?”
There’s one thing the contestant department can do, especially if you’re a hopeful: Not cast you.
One important thing that the contestant department of a game show is looking for is willingness and ability to follow instructions. If the contestant department somehow doubts your willingness to follow gameplay instructions—and saying the entire category name is an instruction—the likeliness of you being brought to the Alex Trebek Stage is reduced significantly. No show wants a contestant who will “go rogue” and skirt rules.
So, I’d suggest keeping that in mind if you’re a contestant hopeful—maybe biting your tongue here will help your chances of getting on the show.
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What I’ve Learned From The Reaction To Wednesday
Longtime readers of this section know that I’m not the biggest fan of reporting on “negative records”—in fact, my editorial decision to report Becky Lynch going 0-for-the-first-60 on Wednesday, which ended up spawning hundreds of news articles, was made specifically because this was a celebrity game and not a regular civilian one. I thought that celebrities would be more used to an onslaught of news articles, whether those articles are positive or negative.
Certainly, I’ve learned that negative stats are much more likely to go viral—and visibility in today’s fractured media landscape is important. However, is that visibility worth being the flint that starts the fire of virality towards an average American if their own appearance goes south? I’m still not convinced. One thing that I am finding, though, is that contestants should probably be prepared at this point for the media to report on their gameplay—Jeopardy! is one of the most-watched TV shows in America at this point, and it no longer flies under the radar in terms of media coverage. And I’m certainly entertaining the idea of changing my coverage. Certainly, Elias Sports Bureau doesn’t shy away from “negative” records, and Michael Davies wants to see Jeopardy covered more as though it’s a sport.
What do you think as a reader? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one.
In Closing
Season 40 rolls on as the excitement ramps up. Have a great week!
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It’s nice Becky was a good sport about making that jeopardy record even if it’s a dubious honor going 0 for 70ish… can’t remember the exact number. I wish more could put a positive spin on such things
I noticed one of the primetime writers is Amy Ozols, former head writer for Jimmy Fallon (among other things). I assume they’re trying to make the clues on the primetime version more humorous and less staid than in daytime in their efforts to appeal to a broader audience.
I don’t think it’s that; I think it’s more that Michael Davies brought over his Millionaire writers specifically to write this season of Celebrity Jeopardy because the usual writing crew was trying to finalize Jeopardy! Masters and cobble together the first 14+ weeks of Season 40 before the strike on May 2.
Hopefully, they just didn’t have time for a regular writer (who is more attuned to the rules) to “clean it up” before usage (due to the looming strike) and going forward these will stick to the rules more.
As for negative coverage, for regular Jeopardy! (much less syndicated tournaments) IMHO you are entitled to report whatever you think of the play, not just the stats, because they all had to do well on that online test to get onto the show. It seems that in the vast majority of cases not doing really well was a matter of strategy and you already comment on that and doing quite poorly is almost always a matter of just not getting the hang of the buzzer (and/or going up against contestants who REALLY got that just right) and you also generally report that.
However, celebrity contestants do not have to pass any preliminary tests (right?) and are presumably chosen for the show based on a combination of popularity, availability (especially this season), willingness to appear, and maybe the advice (good or bad) of their agents. Other than noting poor buzzer skills and attributing poor strategy to anyone just by NOT noting any good strategy. [In the most recent episode there was almost no strategy displayed by any of them, except maybe the DD bet amounts. Well, I sort of take that back. I suppose almost entirely taking every category top to bottom and occasionally (but not often) switching to a personally more desirable category is slightly a strategy. Also, as they all didn’t seem very confident, I suppose they were practically avoiding DDs so as not to HAVE TO do one that they didn’t know, so that is kind of a strategy.] I cannot see how you could say much else without basically calling a contestant dumb or ignorant [which is not exactly the same], which you (understandably) do not want “us” to do.
This is a comment/question that is between being about your ‘poor clue writing’ comments and about celebrity contestant ability . . .
I could swear that used to in Celebrity Jeopardy! shows they would have a few categories related to the specific contestants — like for this week they would have had a WWE category, an SNL category, and maybe a ‘Christmas movies’ category or a ‘1990s movies’ category, but the clues are all ones featuring kids (like Free Willy and The Mighty Ducks). That increases the chance that no one contestant will have much less chance of getting none correct (even if they wind up in the negative overall). Am I remembering wrong that they used to do that?
Also, last week they had a category ‘Horse, Hog, or Dog?’ Having a category of that nature every episode would also give the worst player a little bit of a chance to get one right. Of course last week not one of them got it right and Sheryl got a lot of abuse for repeating one of the prior answers, but that was really Peter Facinelli’s fault for offering the second choice ‘hog’ “out of turn” right after making the wrong FIRST choice of ‘dog’, so after Dulé said ‘horse’ Sheryl couldn’t quickly remember which of the two rhyming words dog or hog Peter had said first/wrongly. [She said that she couldn’t remember what had already been said, but she had actually inadvertently been miss-directed by hearing hog more recently than dog.] It is possible that had this category appeared this week instead of last week, either Macaulay or Rachel would have gotten them all right first [I knew every one of them] and Becky still not gotten a chance, but if the show includes one of these type categories in every show they could make it even more difficult to better give the least good contestant a change to get at least one right (because I think having a contestant that gets none correct reflects even more on the show than the contestant due to having made a poor choice of contestants).
It does save time not saying the entire category name, especially when the category name is long. That way the board can be emptied of all categories and answers.
I find it difficult to make a timing argument at this point, especially considering that we haven’t seen an unplayed clue all season.
That reminds me. It seems a bit odd. It definitely seemed like we had multiple unplayed clues fairly often in the past. I wouldn’t say it happened every game, but it was very common, even “normal”. What is different now? Are they purposely making the questions shorter? Fewer video clues? Or does Ken just talk faster? Hmmmm
But didn’t that start to change when the overall quality of contestants rose after the online qualifying process began (leading to a wider possibility for contestants, not just from a larger area, but allowing for very smart people who hold jobs too demanding to spend days trying to qualify in person)?
This game from 2010 has a quotation marked category with hyphens (ON THE “L-I-E”) where all of the correct responses contained the exact string of letters with no others intervening: https://j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=3494
I remember this because it was a category in one of my games with Watson at the beginning of October 2010 before this episode aired, and when it was explained that “LIE” would be in each correct response, I immediately interjected with my understanding of hyphens in that context, and was assured that it wasn’t an “in that order, not necessarily together” type of category.