Our writers and researchers have been with Jeopardy! for so long, I’ll often joke that working for the show is an annuity. They are constantly working on questions. We’ve developed a large backlog over the years. In fact, one of our original writers, a guy named Steven Dorfman, died in 2004 after working on the show for nearly twenty years. He wrote something like fifty thousand clues during that time. We’re probably still using some of them.
The writers, God bless them, are really sharp. They’ve won a lot of Emmys, and they deserve them. They can take a mundane fact and make it very entertaining. They once came up with the category “When the Aztecs Spoke Welsh.” The category’s clues were made up of Aztec words and Welsh words. It scared the daylights out of me. It was a tongue twister’s delight. I spent a great deal of time preparing to pronounce all the words. In the production meeting, I said, “Damn, you guys gave me some tough stuff in this category.”
After a brief pause, they said, “Did you look at the date?”
At the top of each game sheet is the date when that game will air. The airdate of that game was April 1. So it was an April Fools’ joke on me. I was really ticked at them because I’d put in a lot of time working on all those words and getting the right diacritical marks so that I’d give them the correct pronunciation. I’ve always thought we should have done it as a real category. Because the clues were valid. Of course, if I screwed it up, I’d have to come after them with a baseball bat.
You could replace me as the host of the show with anybody and it would likely be just as popular. Hell, after thirty-six years with me, it might even be more popular. The show might be even more appreciated than it is with me as host. This goes back to what I said earlier about always insisting I be introduced as the host rather than the star. I try to be intelligent enough with regard to my profession to know what the most important elements of the show are. Right at the top are the writing and the clues.