If you’ve watched Jeopardy! for a long time (we’re talking decades), then you may have noticed that contestants seem to answer fewer questions incorrectly than they used to. The three players at the podiums aren’t often stumped these days, and usually one is able to conjure up an answer to nearly every question. Extremely long winning streaks have become commonplace, too, which is a big departure from how the show used to run—the show only began allowing these streaks after 2003, and, in the past couple of seasons, they’ve been happening unusually often. For all of these reasons, many people are even claiming that Jeopardy! is getting boring.
Does this mean that Jeopardy! is getting easier for the contestants? Or has the show just changed over the years? Perhaps these changes aren’t quantifiable, or they can’t be attributed to the level of Jeopardy!’s difficulty—it could be chance, after all. Regardless, we at Trivia Bliss are here to spell out why some viewers think Jeopardy! questions are getting easier. After, we’ll share our own analysis about the show’s difficulty nowadays. Ready to go?
Why Some Say Jeopardy! is Easier
Members of Jeopardy!’s audience have various theories as to why the show’s questions might be getting easier. We’ve outlined a couple of major ones below for you. Read on to absorb these hot takes and form your own beliefs about the difficulty (or lack thereof!) of Jeopardy!.
Massive Winning Streaks
A major reason that some viewers believe that Jeopardy! questions are getting easier is because competitors maintain winning streaks that last for weeks or even months. But this didn’t used to happen—in fact, it’s a pretty new phenomenon.
Here’s some Jeopardy! history to catch you up to speed: in the first many seasons of Jeopardy!, players were only allowed to stay on the show for five episodes total. Even if they could have continued to win, they were cut off from their streak. This rule was supposed to prevent any single contestant from getting an exorbitant amount of time on air. After their five episodes, the big winner was booted off the show but was given a spot in the annual Tournament of Champions, which seems like a pretty sweet deal, if you ask us.
However, this rule changed in 2003. At that point, the episode limit was revoked, meaning all bets were off in terms of winning streaks. A single particularly savvy player could conceivably continue as a contestant on the show forever, so long as their luck was good, and they didn’t tire of the competition. And since then, there has been a plethora of epic Jeopardy! winning streaks. The players who win time after time answer questions masterfully and with ease, making it seem as though the questions might not be difficult enough for them.
Take this season—number 38—for example. It began with Matt Amodio continuing his streak from the previous season. He won 38 times in a row, becoming the contestant with the second-longest winning streak in Jeopardy! history. Soon, however, that streak was bested by Amy Schneider, who bumped Amodio down to third place in terms of winning streak length. Schneider won 40 games in a row later in the season, coming the closest anyone ever has to breaking Ken Jennings’ record-long winning streak that lasted 74 games.
And just last month, Mattea Roach won 23 consecutive games of Jeopardy!, which is no small feat, either. Winning streaks this long have never been this common before in the history of the game. This could lead one to believe that the questions on the show are simply easier to answer correctly than they used to be. How else could these winning streaks have become so much more common so quickly?
There are a couple of other potential explanations for this new winning streak phenomenon. For one thing, the contestants might just be sharper than they were in previous seasons. Years of reading every piece of Jeopardy!-related advice put out by former contestants (and, trust us, there’s a lot of that out there) might help them prepare these days. After all, a lot of competitors state that the secret to Jeopardy! isn’t knowing all the answers. Instead, it’s to have an intentional strategy as you the board and quick reflexes to press that handheld buzzer. Perhaps, contestants now are more aware of all the skills that are necessary to win Jeopardy! and are readying themselves better.
Another big thing to consider is all the extra time people have gotten to study while isolating at home in the past two years. This might seem a little far-fetched but think about it—we’ve been living through a global pandemic, and people have spent a lot more time at home than they normally do. More time at home equals more time to study the encyclopedia or a favorite database to learn and memorize potential Jeopardy! answers. It seems as though plenty of the competitors this season have taken advantage of their time at home to learn as much as they can, and it’s serving them well.
Still, these winning streaks could be due entirely to luck. The questions might be easy for the winners, but they aren’t always, especially for those who lose to these longtime champs. What could be another explanation for a change in Jeopardy!’s difficulty?
Fewer Dud Games
By the same token, some people believe that Jeopardy! is easier than it used to be because there are fewer games in which many or all the questions are answered incorrectly. Historically, every couple of Jeopardy! seasons (at the very least), there are a handful of episodes that feature contestants that are less than prepared for the game. During these episodes, few, if any, questions are answered correctly, and the audience is left to watch, dumbfounded, as these so-called brainiacs suffer their way through the host’s incessant questioning.
Sometimes, on rare occasions, Jeopardy! games end up with all of the contestants having zero dollars. In those cases, there isn’t a winner for the episode. How does this happen? Players may answer some questions correctly throughout the game, but somewhere along the way they mess up and lose money. Maybe they wager it all on that final question and get it wrong. This has happened a few times in the history of Jeopardy!, and audiences love to hate episodes like this. No matter how they play out, they’re cringe-worthy to watch.
However, there aren’t as many games without a winner these days as there used to be. To be specific, there have only been two instances of a Jeopardy! game without a winner in the current millennium: once in the 2013 Teen Tournament semifinal, and another time in 2016. The other five times this occurred happened in the 1980s and ’90s. Considering that over half of Jeopardy!’s seasons have taken place since 2000, that’s a pretty big difference. Clearly, this unfortunate occurrence has gotten much rarer as the show has gone on.
Are the contestants on Jeopardy! getting smarter, or are the show’s questions getting easier? Maybe it’s both, and perhaps it’s neither. These games tend to be outliers, anyway, and they don’t reflect so much on the general ability of all Jeopardy! competitors. Only time will tell as to when the next dud game will be—we’ll see if the show’s writers serve up a doozy anytime soon.
They’re Running Out of New Categories and Questions
Jeopardy!’s been on the air for quite some time now—38 seasons, to be exact. While knowledge has continued to expand and grow during the many decades the show has been on the air, Jeopardy!’s writers have often fallen back upon reusing similar categories from season to season. Don’t believe us? Check out J!Archives category database, and see just how many have been reused. You’d be hard-pressed to tally up all the American Literature or Ancient Language categories that have been featured over the years—it seems like there’s at least one or two every single season. However, there’s not an infinite number of categories that can be asked on Jeopardy!, no matter how many new facts can be featured—eventually, the same ones are going come back around.
Similarly, there isn’t an unlimited number of questions that one can ask on Jeopardy!, so some questions may be reused from season to season. While they may show up in a different category than the one from which they were originally presented, or be paraphrased slightly, often these questions have the exact same answer as they did before. This means that contestants who studied by watching previous seasons of Jeopardy! (which many say is the best study guide for the show) may have an advantage and be able to answer these questions with more ease.
For example, the two questions below aren’t written in the exact same way, but they ask essentially the same thing and beg the same answer. The first appeared in the category Literary Heroines in 2000, and the second showed up in A Writer’s Life in 2019.
Question: His emotionally unstable wife Zelda inspired the character of Nicole Diver in his book “Tender Is The Night.”
Question: Nicole Diver in “Tender is the Night” is based in part on his wife Zelda.
Additionally, there have been a few instances in which Jeopardy! has asked the exact same question word for word. For example, check out this question, which was used first on October 4th, 2001, and once again on April 4th, 2012:
Question: She was the first First Lady to live in the White House.
This clue was used with the exact same wording in both episodes. It even appeared in the same category, entitled “First Lady Firsts,” both times. It’s understandable that with so many reused clues, contestants would have less trouble answering correctly than they used to.
Still, the examples we used above are pretty well-known pieces of trivia—people could easily know them without first hearing them on the show. Additionally, they were used years ago and reused within the last decade. In other words, easy questions like these have been around and have stuck around in the Jeopardy! world. There are always going to be some simpler questions as well as some tougher ones, as is the nature of the show itself.
Our Analysis
We at Trivia Bliss have been skeptical regarding some assumptions about Jeopardy!’s difficulty in recent years, so we did a little digging—and what we found might surprise you.
Casino.org conducted a study of Jeopardy! seasons 1 through 33 back in 2016. They found that season 8, which premiered in 1991 and 1992, was the easiest season of Jeopardy!. During that season, contestants answered questions correctly 4.2 times more frequently than they did incorrectly.
In contrast, they found that the most difficult season of Jeopardy! (up until 2016, that is) was season 22, which premiered during 2005 and concluded in 2006. During this season, questions were only answered correctly 1.5 times for every time they were answered incorrectly. Yikes!
According to their findings, the show had many more questions answered correctly than incorrectly during its earlier seasons. However, since season 13, there have only been a couple of seasons in which players answered two questions right for every single question wrong, if that. Mostly, the trend has stayed pretty steady—it’s never reached the crazy height of season 8, during which the players must have either been really smart or the questions way too easy.
Obviously, this data doesn’t take season 34 through 38 into account, so who’s to say if it continues to ring true. But the trends point to Jeopardy! not getting any easier—in fact, quite the opposite—as time has gone on.
But what counts as easy, and what counts as difficult? It’s all pretty subjective, especially since it’s a matter of measuring so many factors. No matter what the statistics are, everyone has a different personal metric for intelligence and difficulty. Even if the show has had more questions answered incorrectly these days than, say, in the ’90s, those questions might be easier for you as the viewer at home, which is why you assumed the show itself has become less difficult. Well, perhaps Jeopardy! viewers have simply become smarter!
Final Words
We hope you enjoyed reading about why some viewers believe Jeopardy! has gotten easier, as well as our analysis of statistics from recent seasons and seasons from the far past. If you’re looking for more of Jeopardy!‘s challenging questions, we’ve got you covered.
Do you think Jeopardy! has gotten any easier over the years, or do you think it has stayed about the same? Or does it seem harder than it used to? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Shirley Trimmer says
I believe there are obvious hints written into the clues that were not there with Alex Trebek. I know I can now get more correct.
Terry says
I agree 100%.