Jeopardy!

Jeopardy! is an American television quiz show created by Merv Griffin, first broadcast by NBC on March 30, 1964. Its contestants are read answers, which the show calls clues, and must reply with the matching question: shown "This planet has the shortest year", a contestant says "What is Mercury?" The original daytime version ran until January 3, 1975, and the daily syndicated version has been broadcast since September 10, 1984.^[1]

The show's format, and its name, were borrowed in 2026 for JeoPOREdy!, a science quiz hosted by the felt mascot of Molecular Reality Corporation.

Griffin credited the reversal to his wife, Julann Griffin, who suggested on a flight that a quiz could give the contestants the answers and make them come up with the questions.^[1]

A game has three rounds. The first, which shares the show's name, and the second, Double Jeopardy!, each present a board of six categories with five clues apiece, the values rising down each column and doubling in the second round. Category titles are often puns or wordplay, and the clue is read aloud by the host while it appears on the screen.

A contestant who knows the response signals with a hand-held button. Since September 1985 the button has been locked until the host finishes reading. Lights around the board, which viewers at home do not see, show when it is open, and a contestant who presses too early is locked out for a quarter of a second.^[1] Before 1985 contestants could ring in as soon as the clue appeared. The first to ring in answers. A correct response adds the clue's value to the contestant's score, and an incorrect one subtracts it, so a wrong guess costs as much as a right answer earns.

The question form is a rule with degrees. In the first round a contestant who forgets it is only reminded. It is enforced strictly in the second round and in the hidden Daily Doubles, on which the contestant who finds one names a wager of any size up to their whole score (or the round's top clue value, if that is higher). In Final Jeopardy!, a single clue on which each contestant writes a response and a wager, an unphrased answer loses the wager even if it is right.^[1] The contestants have 30 seconds, during which the show plays "Think!", a tune Griffin composed as a lullaby for his son under the title "A Time for Tony".

In February 2011 an IBM computer system, Watson, won a two-game match against two of the show's most successful champions, broadcast over three episodes.

The quiz runs inside EQBio-OS, the company's software for members. Each of its 138 clues arrives as a message from Keltar, who reads it aloud in a synthesized voice. While he reads, the answer box says "Clue is being read..."; when he stops, it opens and a ten-second countdown begins.^[2] The television show adopted the same rule in 1985. The rest of the rules are gentler than the original's. The customary "What is...?" is optional, a clue can be replayed as often as the player likes, only the first attempt earns experience points, and no points are ever deducted.^[2] An earlier version, a board with a 30-second clock, wagers and a final clue, ran under the tagline "Where Pores Meet Their Match".^[3]

The category titles follow the show's habit of wordplay: "2D or Not 2D", "Light My Pore", "Aerolysin Alley", "Molecular Numerology" and "Too Fast, Too Furious". Under "Coulter Counted", after the inventor of the Coulter counter, one clue's response is "What is a hole?"^[4] After each answer Keltar delivers one of twenty recorded congratulations or twenty regrets, such as "Indubitably!" and "Ooh, so close, but no. The answer is,", which are listed in Keltar's quip library.^[4] In September 2026 The Femtoliter Review described the game as "the quiz game inside the company's members' site, modeled on a television quiz whose name it puns on".^[5]

• List of Molecular Reality Corporation puns
• Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality