How The Clues Are Created

Every day, the Jeopardy! writers create two or three categories with five clues each. Each clue goes through a rigorous fact-checking and editing process. When everything looks good, they’re put onto the grid of blue screens.

“The eight of us as a group try to improve the material as much as we can,” Jeopardy! head writer Billy Wisse told Vulture. “We talk about whether we’ve done this fact too much, or talked about this person or this country too much recently, or whether this clue could be worded better. Or when I ordered the category, why on Earth did I put the easiest clue for number four or the toughest one as number two? It’s constant dialogue and comments to try to break the games down and make them as clean as possible.”