The Atlantic

<em>Jeopardy</em>, a Place Where Facts Used to Matter

The mistakes the show made in its attempts to replace Alex Trebek have doubled, for fans, as betrayals.
Source: Getty; The Atlantic

Every once in a while, after a commercial break on Jeopardy, Alex Trebek would make an announcement: The judges, he’d say, had done more research. Having consulted an atlas, an encyclopedia, or Google, they’d realized that their initial assessment of a contestant’s answer had been wrong. They would now make things right. In an instant, the dollar-based score on the affected contestant’s podium would change. And then the show, its error thus corrected, would go on.

Moments like that are part of the of —an element of why the series works, for many of its fans, not just as a quiz show but as a ritual. The show cares, obsessively,, the old adage is lived every day:.

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