What is an annoying question? Apparently, it’s whether contestants on Jeopardy! are given a list of categories to study in advance of competing on the show.
Things got a bit spicy over on the Jeopardy! Reddit fan page on Tuesday (October 28) after a fan of the show asked others whether players know what to study up on beforehand, and several apparent former contestants laid in on them with an air of complete exasperation.
The original poster wrote, “Are contestants given the categories beforehand?… It feels like they are given the categories and are able to study before the actual game. I notice it all the time, but today finally made me want to ask and figure it out. These seemingly very intelligent people mispronounce words like they don’t actually know the word and are just saying what they think from reading about it. For example someone pronounced the dog breed corgi today with a soft g and someone else pronounced chassis with the s at the end. It’s very suspicious.”
A deluge of comments then followed to answer the question with a resounding, “No.”
“For what feels like the 1000th time (since I get asked this a lot by customers at work) no, we don’t get study guides, advance notice, or any other information about the games. We aren’t even allowed to interact directly with crew members who have seen the day’s games in advance. We sign a lengthy contract that includes clauses about cheating. There is a third-party compliance attorney who supervises the taping. The production staff doesn’t even know which players will play which boards until about ten minutes before the game,” one person wrote. “Giving study guides or advance warning would literally be a federal crime. The first time any of us see the categories in a game is when the board comes on and the host reads them.”
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(The law in referenced in this comment, it seems, is 47 U.S. Code § 509, which provides, “It shall be unlawful for any person, with intent to deceive the listening or viewing public… To supply to any contestant in a purportedly bona fide contest of intellectual knowledge or intellectual skill any special and secret assistance whereby the outcome of such contest will be in whole or in part prearranged or predetermined.”)
Another thread responder wrote, “Whoa whoa whoa – contestants definitely do NOT get categories or questions in advance! Mispronunciations happen often on the show. In the Green Room the staff explain that the judges know that contestants learn many facts from reading and not necessarily from hearing a word spoken, so as long as your mispronunciation is plausible it will be acceptable.”
Yet another commenter chimed in to indicate that this was a question they were frequently asked in real life, saying, “My cousins keep asking me, as do many others. The answer is still No.”
One commenter on the thread weighed in to criticize the question (but not the poster themself), writing, “I don’t mean to come across as rude to OP but if you know anything about Jeopardy or game show rules this feels like such an insane question to ask.”
Though these former players and commentators take umbrage with the question itself, it isn’t uncommon at all for fans to wonder about. In 2023, for example, Buzzy Cohen, who won the 2017 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, addressed a similar inquiry from people in his life, saying on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast (via Newsweek), “Just this week, somebody said, ‘Do they tell you what categories to study?’ … I don’t know how that rumor got started… drives me crazy.” In response, showrunner Sarah Whitcomb Foss declared, “How does it still happen? There’s no study guide, people.” Even the
Perhaps part of the confusion stems from the fact that Jeopardy! does not share its official rules on its website’s FAQs list, and even expert Matt Carberry’s “J Case Book” collection of those known rules about the show doesn’t include intel about this particular issue.
Even so, it sounds like contestants are sick and tired of saying the same thing when this question inevitably comes up, and today’s thread was no exception.
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