‘Jeopardy!’ frustrates fans with few multi-day champions lately; here’s the reason.
‘Jeopardy!’ Fans Think This Is Why There Have Been Few Multi-Day Champions Lately
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With a little over a month into the season of Jeopardy!, there have only been a handful of multi-day champions. None of them had gone more than four games. Fans think they know the reason why.
Matthew Riggle, a community college math professor, who started out the season as a two-day champion, wound up winning four games and took home $95,602. Anthony Cantor, a television and podcast producer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, also won four games this season. He won a total of $77,199. Rian Robertson was a four-game winner with a total of $64,101.
Another multi-day champion is Greg Monson, who won three. Others have won two or one games. While five games gets a guaranteed spot into the Tournament of Champions, some four-game champions also sneak through.
Fans think they know the reason why no one has made it to the postseason yet. “Is Jeopardy! getting harder, or am I just getting dumber?” a Reddit user asked. “Love the show and have been watching it for years. I used to be able to get maybe 65-70% of the questions, sometimes more on a good night. Lately, I feel like the contestants on the old SNL Celebrity Jeopardy! skit.”
Others chimed in about how much they agree with this statement. “They’re not only harder, but a lot of categories are confusing to the point I only get them once they hit the lowest amount (most players now start from the bottom),” one said.
“This. I don’t know if it is because nobody starts at the top so we don’t get the hang of the structure of the category right away, or if it’s because some of the categories lately just seem like a far reach in terms of a cohesive ‘theme’,” another replied.
“I can tell you for sure that the questions are getting less comprehensible. Really indirect sentence structure and poor syntax. Especially in some final clues,” another wrote.
“The questions are harder, and the way they jump around the board now makes it harder for us at home, at least me, cause I never know what category we’re in,” one said.
“To me it’s gotten wayyyy harder. These days there are more topics I don’t know at all, and the way clues are written I find tougher to make a quick educated guess,” a Reddit user said.
“It’s definitely been getting harder, in regular play and tournaments. I revisited the GOAT tournament recently, and I think it’s easier than current TOC boards. I think probably since the pandemic a lot more people have gotten into trivia, so the average level of player has gone up, and the writers feel like they have to increase the difficulty to compensate,” a former player said.
Some fans suggest watching Celebrity Jeopardy! to feel smarter. Do you think Jeopardy! has gotten harder? Let us know in the comments.
Jeopardy!, weekdays, check local listings, stream next day on Hulu and Peacock
