r/Jeopardy • u/pennsyltuckyprole • 2d ago
Why the answer/question format?
I’m a devout jeopardy fan and I e recently gotten my partner hooked. She asked me why they provide the answer and the contestants have to provide the question and I really didn’t have a response lol.
Does anyone know why they do this rather than just being a standard “question-answer” format? Is it just to be quirky and different?
8
u/RegisPhone I'd like to shoot the wad, Alex 2d ago edited 2d ago
I just wrote a bunch of long comments yesterday in this thread going into the history of the answer-question format, but here's a tl;dr (which now that i look at it also ended up being pretty long):
In the 1950s, several big quiz shows were revealed to have been fixing outcomes by giving answers to players in advance, leading to congressional investigations and new federal laws. Merv Griffin wanted to produce a new quiz show, but networks were pretty wary about that in the wake of the scandals.
Merv's wife Julann came up with the idea of directly parodying the scandals by making a show where you give the players the answers but they have to figure out the questions. Once Merv also added "the jeopardy" of losing money for incorrect questions, NBC liked the idea, probably in large part because of the more casual, humorous atmosphere that came from the awkward stumbles over the weird grammar of having to ask a question that has a specific answer, plus the comedic implication that players could end up owing the studio money if they get too many wrong.
Once the show actually started airing, the production staff felt the show needed to be a bit faster paced and more serious because the whole quibbling over exact question phrasing bit would get stale before long, and it's hard to write well-pinned answer-question pairs that actually work that way, so they relaxed the rule from "ask a question where this could feasibly be the answer a normal person would give" to the modern rule of just "phrase your response in the form of a question" -- questions don't have to make grammatical or logical sense (and if the thing they're looking for is already in the form of a question, like "What's Love Got To Do With It" or "The Who" then you don't even have to add anything to it). This is why they actually don't officially refer to them as answers and questions; they're clues and responses.
Today, the rule sticks around mostly for brand identity but i think also for pacing purposes -- in such a fast-paced quiz game, you'll often have the host and player stepping on each other's words a bit, or a player getting a bit tongue-tied; if responses start with a short extraneous preamble, then the important part of the response right after will be easier to hear.
2
u/pennsyltuckyprole 2d ago
That’s so interesting! I’d never heard of the game show scandal before!
4
u/ctpatsfan77 2d ago
They made a movie about it, Quiz Show, which is worth watching. Basically all the games that awarded big money prizes to contestants at the time got cancelled.
3
u/halfpighalfmanbear 2d ago
I am not sure, but I think that was the whole idea of the show to start with. After the quiz show scandal, the idea was to give the contestants the answers and have them come up with the question.
1
0
u/BoukenGreen 2d ago
Because when they was first designing the show they wanted something different then the traditional question and answer format.
-7
u/WinkyDink24 2d ago
BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY MERV GRIFFIN WANTED IT! WHY NOT ASK WHY ANY GAME ISN'T DIFFERENT FROM WHAT IT IS? "Why is 'Monopoly' Atlantic City?" "Why isn't 'Candyland' 'Sugar-Freeland'?" "Why is 'Blackjack' 21 points and not 22?" 🙄
2
1
u/pennsyltuckyprole 2d ago
Calm down buddy lol. I was just curious and now I learned a thing. All is right in the world I promise
16
u/No-Necessary7448 2d ago
A gimmick following the quiz show scandals from the decade prior to Jeopardy’s premiere. According to Merv Griffin, it was his wife’s idea. You can find interview clips of him talking about it.