On March 30th, 1964, television viewers were treated to a new quiz show that turned the traditional format of quiz shows on its head. In this new show, the host read answers for which contestants were required to provide the questions—what’s been labeled the “answer-and-question” format. According to the show’s creator, television impresario and entertainment mogul Merv Griffin, this unconventional approach was suggested by his wife, Julann.1 As they say, the rest is history!
Jeopardy! is “America’s Favorite Quiz Show®,” averaging nine million viewers daily. Royalty, presidents, movie stars, television personalities, famous athletes, and a host of Nobel laureates have presented clues or been contestants on the show. Since 1984, it has outlived three hundred competitors, received twenty-nine Daytime Emmy Awards, and both TV Guide and the Game Show Network (GSN) ranked Jeopardy! #2 among the Fifty Greatest Game Shows of All Time.2
Jeopardy! has achieved an iconic status within popular culture, regularly serving as a source of reference and parody on popular television and in movies, novels and music. Some of the most popular television shows of all time, including The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, Cheers, and The Golden Girls, to name but a few, have used Jeopardy! with hilarious effect. “Weird Al” Yankovic did likewise with his song “I Lost on Jeopardy.” More seriously, Jeopardy! has also been used as an instructional tool by a variety of national educators. And the participation of “Watson”—the IBM-developed supercomputer—brought to widespread public attention the development of “artificial intelligence” and added a new and exciting element to the show: the long-imagined competition between humans and machines.
The show has evolved with the passage of time. Contestants on the show range in age from ten upwards, and its reach now extends to electronic gaming systems, Facebook, and the Twitterverse. Each month its official website (www.jeopardy.com) receives upwards of four hundred thousand visits. The most successful Jeopardy! contestants—Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter, Frank Spangenberg, for example—have appeared on late-night talk shows, received book contracts, and been interviewed by major newspapers, treatment that is substantially different than, say, the treatment received by the winners of The Price Is Right, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or Deal or No Deal. Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter have both become millionaires as a result of the show!
What explains the show’s overwhelming and continuing success? There are numerous possible answers to that question, among which must certainly be the diversity of topics from which questions are drawn. Contestants are asked to answer questions concerning everything from “Geometry” to “Central American Wildlife” to “Car Pets” and “Historical Twits,” and almost everything in between. When that fact is coupled with the establishment of separate categories for kids, teens, college students, and champions, Jeopardy! provides a forum in which almost all who wish to can participate in friendly competition, whether in the studio as official contestants or in the comfort of their home (where we can be secure in the knowledge that we could surpass Ken Jennings’s record, if only we had the time to participate in person!).
Those features of Jeopardy! generate a veritable cornucopia of topics that are ripe for philosophical exploration. This book looks at questions such as: Is Jeopardy! a “good” game? Does it educate or merely entertain? Does it celebrate particular values, principles or beliefs? What can it teach us about artificial intelligence and the social benefits of a liberal education? And, perhaps most importantly, would Ken Jennings survive on Survivor?
Those questions are answered through an examination of various aspects of the show, including its revolutionary format and its unparalleled success both as a television show and a recognized icon of popular culture. Contributors include professional philosophers, other academics, and writers—a couple of whom are, themselves, Jeopardy! champions (though, thankfully, they have managed to avoid the restricting degree of celebrity suffered by Ken Jennings). There are also ‘answers’ for readers to ponder, so that they might get their fix of Jeopardy! without having to put down the book.
I’m willing to wager that this book will delight and stimulate all those armchair Jeopardy! champions among us.
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1 Cynthia Lowry, “Merv Griffin: Question and Answer Man,” Associated Press, Independent Star-News (March 29th, 1964).
2 See “Jeopardy!” Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeopardy!>.