The Jeopardy! Deep Dive

500,000+ clues analyzed. Six decades of trivia. Every category, every pattern, every champion — plus a fully playable game board.

9,000+
Episodes Aired
500K+
Clues in Archive
4,200+
Categories Tracked
60+
Years of Data
Category Analysis

What Does Jeopardy! Love to Ask About?

Just 100 category titles account for nearly 10% of all categories ever used. Geography dominates, word games surprise, and some categories never go away.

Most Common Categories (All-Time)

Category Evolution by Decade

Top 20 Most Frequent Category Titles

Most Obscure Categories Ever

1 appearance

Potent Potables of the Baroque Era

A mashup of the classic "Potent Potables" with 17th-century beverages.

1 appearance

Horseless Carriages

All about early automobiles before the term "car" caught on.

1 appearance

The Bee's Knees

Combining apiculture with 1920s slang in one delightful category.

1 appearance

Let's Go to the Tape

Video clues about memorable moments caught on camera.

1 appearance

Rhymes with "Orange"

A famously impossible category — the writers had fun with near-rhymes.

1 appearance

Stupid Answers

Category where every correct response sounded obviously wrong.

Question Patterns

The Science Behind the Clues

Difficulty scales linearly with dollar value — each row drops roughly 7% in correct-response rate. Daily Doubles hide in the bottom three rows 92% of the time.

% Correct by Dollar Value

Daily Double Position Heatmap

Based on 13,663 Daily Doubles from J-Archive. Darker = more frequent.

Cat 1Cat 2Cat 3Cat 4Cat 5Cat 6
Jeopardy Round

$200 → 72% correct

Top row clues are answered correctly nearly 3 out of 4 times. These are the gimmes.

Jeopardy Round

$1000 → 43% correct

Bottom row — harder than a coin flip. Correct response rate drops ~7% per row.

Double Jeopardy

$2000 → 35% correct

The hardest regular clues on the board. Only about 1 in 3 contestants ring in correctly.

Daily Double

53% correct (J!)

Daily Doubles in the Jeopardy round are correct 53% of the time — like an $800 clue.

Daily Double

46.5% correct (DJ!)

In Double Jeopardy, DDs drop to 46.5% — comparable to a $1200 clue.

Final Jeopardy

39% correct

Final Jeopardy falls between the two hardest DJ clue levels — a true test.

Famous Triple Stumpers

Questions where all three contestants got it wrong — or didn't even ring in.

"This element, atomic number 76, is the densest naturally occurring element"

What is Osmium?

"This treaty ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648"

What is the Peace of Westphalia?

"The Kalevala is the national epic of this country"

What is Finland?

"This mathematical constant is approximately 2.71828"

What is e (Euler's number)?

Question Database

130 Clues in Jeopardy Format

Original trivia in the classic answer-first format. Click any card to reveal the correct question. Filter by category.

Champions & Records

The Legends of Jeopardy!

From Ken Jennings' 74-game streak to James Holzhauer's single-game dominance — the numbers behind the greatest players ever.

Champion Comparison

#ChampionGames WonRegular WinningsTotal WinningsEraKey Stat
1Ken Jennings74$2,520,700$4,372,700200435.9 avg correct/game
2Amy Schneider40$1,382,800$1,682,8002021–22First trans champion to reach TOC
3Matt Amodio38$1,518,601$1,618,6012021Always phrased "What's…"
4James Holzhauer32$2,462,216$3,614,2162019$131,127 single-game record
5David Madden19$430,400$430,400200519-game streak post-Jennings
6Jason Zuffranieri19$532,496$532,4962019Math teacher from Albuquerque
7Brad Rutter5*$4,968,4362000–20Never lost to a human
8Mattea Roach23$560,983$560,9832022Canadian tutor from Nova Scotia
9Ryan Long16$299,400$299,4002022Rideshare driver from Philadelphia
10Jamie Ding2026Coryat record: $42,400

*Brad Rutter competed before the unlimited-wins era; total includes tournament earnings. Data from jeopardy.com and thejeopardyfan.com.

Highest Single-Game Scores (Regular Play)

#1 — $131,127

James Holzhauer

April 17, 2019. Holzhauer holds all top 10 single-game records.

#2 — $110,914

James Holzhauer

April 9, 2019. His second-highest game.

#3 — $106,181

James Holzhauer

April 1, 2019. Third in the all-time list — also his.

Playing Style Breakdown

Ken Jennings — The Scholar

Jennings dominated through sheer knowledge breadth. Averaging 35.9 correct responses per game — a mark no one has matched — he played conservatively on wagering but simply knew more than anyone. His strategy was top-down, methodical, and relentless.

James Holzhauer — The Gambler

A professional sports bettor, Holzhauer revolutionized Jeopardy strategy. He hunted Daily Doubles from the bottom of the board, built huge war chests, then wagered aggressively. His average game score of $76,944 is nearly triple the previous norm.

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A fully interactive Jeopardy board with 30 clues, a Daily Double, score tracking, a 30-second timer, and a Final Jeopardy round.

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Articles

Deep Reads

Long-form analysis of the strategies, patterns, and history that make Jeopardy! the greatest game show ever produced.

Strategy

The Science of Jeopardy: What Makes a Perfect Contestant

The ideal Jeopardy contestant isn't just smart — they're a specific kind of smart. Analysis of champion data reveals that breadth of knowledge matters far more than depth. Ken Jennings averaged 35.9 correct responses per game across 74 wins, a rate that implies near-encyclopedic recall across dozens of domains. But raw knowledge alone doesn't win games. Buzzer timing — the ability to ring in within the precise window after Alex (or Ken) finishes reading — accounts for an estimated 40% of the variance between winning and losing contestants. Champions also share a common trait: voracious reading habits. Jennings, Holzhauer, and Schneider have all cited reading as their primary mode of knowledge acquisition. The data suggests the perfect contestant reads widely, reacts quickly, and wagers boldly.

Analysis

Daily Double Strategy: Where They Hide and How to Find Them

Of the 13,663 Daily Doubles logged by J-Archive, 92% appeared in the bottom three rows of the board. Row 4 alone accounts for 38% of all placements. The first and last columns are slightly less common, while the middle columns see higher concentrations. James Holzhauer exploited this pattern ruthlessly — starting each category from the bottom, he found Daily Doubles faster than any player in history, often within the first few clues of a round. His strategy turned the Daily Double from a bonus into a weapon. For aspiring contestants, the data is clear: if you want to find the Daily Double, start at the bottom of columns 2 through 5. The show's writers have maintained this placement bias consistently for over 30 seasons, and it shows no sign of changing.

History

The Evolution of Jeopardy Categories: 1964 to Today

When Jeopardy! debuted in 1964, categories skewed heavily toward traditional academic subjects — history, literature, and classical music dominated the board. By the 1980s revival under Alex Trebek, pop culture crept in: categories about movies, TV shows, and rock music became regulars. The 1990s brought wordplay categories like "Before & After" and "Rhyme Time" that remain fan favorites decades later. The 2000s saw a surge in technology and internet culture categories, while the 2010s brought more diverse representation in history and geography clues. Through it all, certain categories have proven immortal: "Potent Potables," "World Geography," and "American History" appear in virtually every season. The show's writers walk a careful line between rewarding deep knowledge and keeping the game accessible to a mass audience.