Is it just me, or have the recent run of Jeopardy! episodes been noticeably more difficult (by which I mean, degree of difficultly of the clues)? I record the show and play along with game, and I’ve been having a lot more trouble with the clues lately. Due to work and travel I’m about a week behind, so I’m thinking of the shows that ran last week, not this week. These shows ran immediately after the kid who won 19 in a row finally lost, so I’m wondering if they upped the difficulty to try to get rid of him.
Has anyone else noticed a rise in the difficulty? This is not mere speculation for me, since I’m supposed to be in the contestant pool until January, and I’ve been playing along to train myself in case I get called. I’d like to know if I’m getting stupider or not, if I’m going to show up and embarrass myself if I get the call.
Any thoughts? Is Jeopardy! still easy for you, or is the going getting tougher?
Lion, is it possible that due to work and travel, you’re (temporarily) not as mentally sharp as you were in prior weeks, and thus the clues only seem harder lately?
The best way to figure it out would be to note how many clues don’t get a correct response. The caliber of players is probably more or less consistent, so if you’re getting more unquestioned answers then they’re probably skewing more difficult.
I’ve actually noticed this as well. I tend to know about 3/4 of the answers in a typical episode. I watched a couple of episodes last week, and I hardly knew any. Then again, I hadn’t watched any for a couple of months before that, so I wasn’t used to it. Still, I can’t imagine being that out-of-shape mentally.
I watch the show every day, and yes, they’ve gotten harder. I don’t know if that was a stratagem to get rid of that smirking punk David Madden*, but that doesn’t seem like it would work, does it? He was clearly smarter than the average bear, so I’d think that if you wanted to get rid of him you’d make the questions easier and wait for someone to come along and get lucky with the buzzer.
David Madden seems to be a very nice, grounded fellow; there was just something about the look of him that annoyed the shit out of me and I was glad to see him lose.
We watch every day and both of us thought the recent eps have been harder. I have seen hard streaks before, so it doesn’t surprise me.
Agreed on David Madden. Everything he said was fine, including wanting to set up a scholarship to honor some high school teachers–wonderful idea. He was just so damn smirky. We started calling him Smug Bastid. I still maintain he looks like he might have Aspergers.
I think in large part it may be that we got spoiled by first Ken’s long run, when he was SO good at getting questions right and scoring much, MUCH higher than your average Jeopardy player, and then the Ultimate Tournament, where for weeks we were treated to the best of the best. So we were used to seeing good players who were able to get the vast majority of the material.
Now we’re back to ordinary contestants, and seeing a smaller turnover because of the no-number-of-wins limit, and so we’re actually seeing a smaller pool of people than we used to playing the game, and therefore it seems like there are fewer really good players, which also leads to more questions being missed.
So that’s a long way of saying no, I don’t think the material is any harder; I just think other circumstances have conspired to make it seem that way.
I was out of the country for the first six months of this year, and when I came back and watched Jeopardy for the first time I thought it had become much more difficult. Eventually I eased back into it, but just lately I’ve noticed that it’s become a bit more difficult again…!?
I have to laugh at everyone’s feelings towards David Madden, because I felt the exact same thing. I wanted to like the guy, but he so consistently rubbed the wrong way. I found his e-mail address online and was thinking about sending him a snarky congratulatory e-mail, but never got around to it.
Any Jeopardy fan has got to check out j-archive.com – check it out and marvel at the degree of detail included, including the exact order in which the clues were read out, and the graph at the end of each game charting how well the players did.
OK, it seems like it’s not just me. I’ve actually been pretty scientific about playing along, making up a chart and marking down the clues I know and deducting for the ones I miss and totalling up the money and figuring percentages and all that. I’ve seen a noticeable decline in my percentage recently. And yes, while I have been tired and traveling lately, I don’t think that has caused all of the dropoff. I also play along with the reruns they show on GSN, and there’s been a big performance difference between those shows and the new first run episodes. Maybe Merv is getting stingy and doesn’t want any more big winners. However it is, I’m convinced that the clues have gotten more difficult across the board.
And I’ll add my voice to the chorus on young Mr. Madden–he seems like a nice enough guy, but there’s something intangible about him that’s off-putting. But I guess he’s laughing all the way to the bank, so what do we know?