‘Jeopardy!’ Hired Some Contestants to Write Questions After They Won
Jeopardy! awards winners with thousands of dollars, and more if they have epic runs and return for special tournaments. Some go on to even longer careers with the show. Jeopardy! has hired past contestants to write questions for the game show.
Former head researcher Suzanne Stone spoke about her 38 years with Jeopardy on the June 29 episode of the Hollywood & Levine podcast. Here’s how contestants transitioned to the other side of Jeopardy!
‘Jeopardy!’ contestants won more than money
The writers and researchers of Jeopardy! have been keeping the game going for decades. However, at one point the producers realized contestants offered a unique perspective.
“As it is, years ago, the producers were very interested in talking to some of the champion contestants and seeing if they were interested in becoming Jeopardy! staffers,” Stone said on Hollywood & Levine. “So that happened and to this day we have several people on the staff who did have experience as contestants.”
Matt Caruso got a job on ‘Jeopardy!’ after being a contestant
Matt Caruso won $80,000 in three April 2003 episodes of Jeopardy! according to J! Archive. Stone said the show hired him, and IMDB lists his stint with the show from 2009 – 2021
“One researcher, Matt Caruso was, I believe, a three day champ and graduate of UCLA,” Stone said. “He has written questions for the show too. Very interested in a lot of different topics. Obviously good enough to be a contestant and that’s good to know.”
Each question writer has unique specialities
Stone continued to describe how Jeopardy! diversifies its questions by hiring researchers and writers with different areas of expertise.
“Everyone’s got a college degree,” Stone said. “Some have masters in English, History, Political Science. I have an Art degree. I sometimes would have contributed ideas for artists or interesting things about art, art history. Yeah, there are writers who kind of specialize in things, Shakespeare or novels.”
There is a hierarchy on Jeopardy! higher ups develop categories and they have teams that fill in those categories with questions.
We have head writers and then they go ahead and work with the writers on creating categories. Sometimes also finals and maybe just one clue will become a whole category later on. So once the head writers approve of the categories, they’re meted out to the researchers and sometimes given deadlines, sometimes quotas. Maybe you can do two or three categories a day depending on the difficulty of the topic. Also, we had a very, and we hope to have just an open conversation about interesting topics, current events, funny things that we discover and build categories around them or an unusual final jeopardy.
Suzanne Stone, Hollywood & Levine podcast, 6/29/22
The pandemic has changed the layout of Jeopardy! but the integrity of the process remains.
“We always had, obviously, our research library which is like a bullpen area with a conference room table and then there were individual offices around,” Stone said. “So everyone mingled in the olden days. That’s coming back now post pandemic but it’s a conversation with very intelligent creative people all day long so that was fun. Trying to keep up on what’s going on in the world and in culture and in humor and pop culture. Also word play, pop music, we just did that all these years.”
