The Jeopardy Archive – Episode Archives

If you’re searching for a Jeopardy! archive, I’ll direct you where New York Magazine, Slate Online, and Straight Dope sends Jeopardy fans: the J! Archive. This huge resource of old Jeopardy episodes is really the only tool you’ll need to research old contests, come up with clues for a Jeopardy night you’re putting together, or otherwise learn about America’s favorite tv trivia game show.

Be sure to also check out my new post about Jeopardy slot machines.

J! Archive

J! Archive does not have a comprehensive episode guide to the earlier years, though you’ll find it has a significant number of episodes dating back all the way to the 1984 series premiere. You won’t find episodes from the Art Tinker era (1964-1975), but you’ll have a pretty good chance to get the information you need on anything from the Alex Trebek version of Jeopardy!. To give an example, Season 1 contains a record of episodes #1-5, #9-14, #56-68, and #110. The later you go, the more complete the archived records become.

This fan-created Jeopardy episode archives claims to contain over 216,000 clues and counting. Included in the archives are episodes going back to the first episode of the Alex Trebek era, when Greg Hopkins, Lois Feinstein, and Frank Selevan squared off in the second series premiere. You can search through the Daily Double statistics, Final Jeopardy! information, round statistics, and miscellaneous other statistical data. You can also search through a Jeopardy glossary for terminology like “Shore’s Conjecture”, the “Two-Thirds Rule”, “Bridge’s Rule”, and “Boyd’s Rule”.

Other features of the “J! Archive” include links to the current season, last season, prizes, and a wagering calculator. On the home page, you’ll be able to access both “Recent Final Jeopardy!” questions and “Random Final Jeopardy!” questions to test your knowledge and trivia mastery.

Jeopardy Episode Archive Example

I’ll give an example of the Jeopardy episode archive from the last posted episode: December 20th, 2011. (Spoiler alert if you want to watch the episode without foreknowledge.) The three contestants of the day were Doug Davies (Investment Consultant from Monrovia, California), Karen Hedlund (Nursing Student from Brooklyn, New York), and Jason Keller (Tutor from Highland Park, New Jersey). Jason Keller was the returning champion, having won $44,800 over a two-day win streak in the previous two episodes.

Once you get this background information, you’ll see a grid with the day’s first Jeopardy round, including the six categories: classic novels, Broadway settings, word origins, Project Runway, colors, and papal people (matching year-to-pope). All 36 clues are then listed on the J! Archives blue-screen format in the Jeopardy colors, with the clues in answer-form as they appeared on the original episode. Interestingly, the questions (answers) are not given.

At the bottom of this table, you’ll find what the scores were at both the first commercial break (15 questions) and after the opening round. At the first commercial break, Jason was at $2,800, Karen at $1,400, and Doug at $800. After the first round, Jason remained in the lead with $6,200, while Karen trailed in second place with $3,800 and Doug with $2,800.

Double Jeopardy! Records

You get more of the same for the Double Jeopardy round, as you see a table with the 6 categories: Touch by an Angel, have a wonderful wedding, yule tube, zoom in for a close-up, making a “list”, and checking it twice. Once again, you’ll see at the bottom of this table the scores after the Double Jeopardy! Round: Jason is in dominating position with $22,600, Doug moving into second place with $7,600, and Karen sitting at third with $6,100.

Final Jeopardy Record

Finally, you’ll see what the Final Jeopardy question is (poets), what the final scores were, and how much each contestant walked off the set with. The winner was Jason with $25,000 ($69,800 total for 3 days), Doug with $12,201 (2nd-place prize of $2,000), and Karen with $6,100 (for a 3rd-place prize of $1,000).

Below this, you see a game dynamics graph, which shows a graphical breakdown of the players’ throughout the questioning. You also see a Coryat score, which includes how many questions each players got right or wrong, how many Daily Doubles each player hit or missed, and the combined Coryat score (the dollars all three combined players won).

J! Archive – Jeopardy Online Archives

As you can see, the J! Archive is going to contain most of the information you’ll want or need about old episodes of Jeopardy!. You won’t find videos of the original broadcasts, but you do get the complete game information. The J! Archive even contains a small side notes section, so you can see what might have happened during the episode. For instance, Alex’s mother visited the December 15, 2011 episode, while Alex Trebek acknowledges a 102-year old fan in the audience in the December 16, 2011 broadcast.

Jeopardy Episode Archive

You can watch a selected few Jeopardy episodes on a few websites willing to post Jeopardy broadcast contest. You’ll have to pick and choose the content, since these Websites may also show movie content like the film Double Jeopardy, an episode of Sanford & Son called “Legal Eagle” because the term “jeopardy” is found in the synopsis, and a number of those old SNL skits involving comical versions of Alex Trebek, Sean Connery, Bert Reynolds, and other celebrities. To save you the trouble of looking on Hulu.com for Jeopardy! episodes, the Hulu videos link to Crackle.

GSN Jeopardy Archive

You can watch feeds from the Gameshow Network rebroadcasts of Jeopardy on the XfinityTV from Comcast. Once again, these are going to be hit-or-miss, but should give you many hours of online Jeopardy watching pleasure. It’s easy to confuse their archived content with simple listings of broadcasts on GSN, so you might not be able to find as much of a Jeopardy archive as you first imagine. Another option I’ve heard about is “Fast TV”, but you have to register to start watching, so I’m not going to link to their site.

Archived Jeopardy Information

Ultimately, the J! Archive is the best source of Jeopardy information and content on the Internet. You won’t have the videos to watch, but you will be able to get to the heart of the show, which is its clues. You can challenge yourself or your friends and family from a virtually endless supply of questions, a record of Jeopardy Q&A content which is approaching a quarter-of-a-million Jeopardy! clues.

See also: How to Study for Jeopardy