Back in the day, participation in Jeopardy had limitations by resources and geography. The pandemic has forced some changes that, for at least some would-be contestants, auditioning is more accessible, as they moved to zoom rather than on-site, in-person auditions that used be held in major metropolitan areas. As I’ve spent the last year “adjacent” to Jeopardy (after having made it to the 3rd stage in June 2022 I started following Jeopardy folks on twitter, reading up on it in the various entertainment spaces online, etc). One thing that stands out to me is the increase in spaces and services that aim to give would-be contestants a competitive edge in the selection process. Likewise, the increase in particular digital communities (like Jeopardy reddit, the Learned League, etc). In this blog post, I put on my cultural critic hat and offer some thoughts on the effect of the expansion of these kinds of spaces and resources on “America’s Favorite Quiz Show.”
—Learned League: As I started to prep for Jeopardy competition, I discovered a website called the “Learned League,” an ‘invite-only” daily trivia competition that is run a lot like a sports league with ‘rundles,’ head-to-head competitions, rankings, and about the most robust statistical data offered as I’ve seen about anything short of Major League Baseball. Not knowing anyone who was part of this group, I sort of read up on it and hoped that somehow I would run across an opportunity to get invited (which I did, at lunch on my Jeopardy tape day, when the LOVELY Suresh Krishnan offered to invite me for the next game season which started last month).
Frankly, I did a pretty mediocre job at this style of competition which differs from Jeopardy or other timed trivia competitions in that it incudes a wider range of topics, has some (but fewer) ‘clues’ written into the language of the question, and includes a defensive component where point values are assigned to the questions for each day’s opponent for that match. This aspect requires some level of meta-awareness of the commonness of any given topic knowledge reflected by that question, and if relevant, any prior gameplay data about your opponent that you get. I’m doing about how you would expect at the things I know and like and about how you would expect on topics I don’t care about or bother to learn:
But what I think is interesting about the invite-only learned league (it’s participants are called “LLamas”) is that it seems to be a sort subculture that’s then tied to various Reddits and a place where aspiring Jeopardy (and past champions/players) circulate to create a little bit of an insider culture. That insider culture is emerging from the increase in professionalizing opportunities that are available for game show participation.
–-Game Show Boot Camp: An example of the above is the upcoming “Game Show Boot Camp,” established by “Bad Boy” Sports gambler super champ James Holzhauer (who has come to define the aggressive/high risk play strategy that has emerged in recent years with the game and his self-declared “game show supervillain” persona). The boot camp, benefitting Project 150 – Las Vegas, a local organization founded by Holzhauer and his wife, is described as “ Advanced training for people who want to get on their favorite show…and WIN!” and though it is not billed as having a formal relationship to Jeopardy, in 2022, Jeopardy contestant coordinators held in-person auditions at the event.
Because I am endlessly fascinated by cultures of knowledge, I’ll be part of a panel at the event and look forward to the opportunity to get more insight into how these kinds of pathways to participation are shaping/reshaping the game.
—School of Trivia: 2015 Jeopardy Tournament of Champions winner Alex Jacob, a currency trader and professional poker player who has created his own trivia newsletter and quiz league; whenever a subscriber/participant of School of Trivia appears on Jeopardy, Jacob tweets out a recognition that the player is a participant in SoT. A difference of SoT from Learned League is that “”When you submit your answers, you will also rank your answers by your confidence level. 5 points for the answer you’re most confident in, 4 points for your second-most confident answer, and so on down to 1 point for your least confident answer.” I have not participated in this league, so I can’t say much more than that about it, other than it is an example of one of the farm league/training-type events or communities that highlight links to Jeopardy participation.
I wonder whether, even in the entertaining form of a TV game show, knowledge competition becomes the province of an increasingly narrow group of people, those with connections, money, resources, and free time to pursue intense training (thought that may have always been somewhat true). This suggests that the “Jeopardy selection process” is as much the product of an investment of strategies and training as it is true “having contestant qualities.” (See, for example, the tabloid coverage of TOC qualified Ben Goldstein for even suggesting that Jeopardy might even the playing field by paying for contestant travel).
I also wonder whether the intensification of high-stakes/high risk play that has emerged from players like Jacobs and Holzhauer has reshaped the game in ways that work against players who use more traditional approaches, knowing that a typical woman player may be less likely to use such play styles (see articles on “confidence’ and gender here and here). I’m sure a lot of people will say that the point of a game is to win. I just can’t help but think that something is lost as aggressive gameplay strategy has superceded the aspects of Jeopardy that the average viewer enjoys: learning new facts, shaking loose info from their own brains, laughing at clever clue word play, and enjoying or mocking contestant personalities.
The development of new, essentially higher leagues of play–like the Master’s Tournament–is probably the right path forward as more players join the elite rather than average levels–a look at some random Jeopardata comparing a Masters game against a run-of-the-mill player game is illustrative here.
For those of us who have been Jeopardy lovers for decades, it might be an adjustment to our expectations about who plays Jeopardy and how, changes that have been afoot since Jennings and Holzhauer and their ilk have come to dominate game-play. A recent Sun story (a publication that uses a breathless TMZ style tone about topics like game shows rather than/in addition to celebrity gossip) had the headline “BIG CHANGES: Jeopardy execs beg fans to ‘keep an open mind’ after they announce complete overhaul to 2023 Tournament of Champions” gets at the issue: Jeopardy times are a-changing and perhaps with no harm to the fan base. As the New York Times recently wrote, even as streaming services transform TV-watching, “This Broadcast TV Genre Continues to Thrive. (What Are Game Shows?).” As someone who spent tens of hours of 1980s summers gorging on Press Your Luck, The Price Is Right, Sale of the Century, Bumper Stumpers, and about every other game show there is, I’ll quote Sam Buttrey and say “Bring it on!”
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