Learn how to do anything: How to Make a Jeopardy Game on PowerPoint

Want to make a fun and professional-looking Jeopardy game for your class? Looking to spice up game night with a different spin on trivia games? Creating your own version of Jeopardy is a snap with Microsoft PowerPoint. Follow this guide to make your won from start to finish.

Steps

Creating Your Questions and Answers

Learn the basics. In Jeopardy, the contestants are provided the answer, and they have to respond with the question. There are two rounds with 30 possible questions each, and then a final round of one question and answer.
- Each round is split into 6 categories with 5 questions in each one. Each question in a category is progressively “harder” than the one before it. Harder questions are worth more points.
Create your categories. For a full game of Jeopardy, you will need to come up with 12 categories of questions. Each category will have five questions in it that should all be related to that category.
Come up with questions for each category. Remember to make them increasingly difficult, though each category should have about the same difficulty. This guide goes into great detail about how to create the perfect Jeopardy questions.
- The clue should be in the form of an answer, and the contestant responds with the question. For example: Clue – “This is the largest of the oceans.” Response – “What is the Pacific Ocean?”
Create a Final Jeopardy question. After two rounds of play, contestants go to Final Jeopardy where they can wager some or all of their points on getting the correct response. This question has its own category, and contestants are given more time than usual to answer. The Final Jeopardy question should be the most difficult in the game.
- All contestants write down their Final Jeopardy answers at the same time, giving all contestants a chance to score.
Write out all of your questions and answers. Having your questions and answers written out beforehand will save you a lot of time as you create the game. Enter the questions and answers into a word processor so that you can quickly copy and paste them into your game.

Making the First Round

Open up PowerPoint. Create a new project and put your game’s title on the first slide. Feel free to fancy it up however you’d like.
Create a second slide. This slide will be your clue selection screen.
Make your clue table. Create a table in the second slide by clicking the Insert menu/tab and selecting Table. Make this table 6X6, so that it is 6 columns across and 6 rows tall.
- Enter your first 6 categories into the top row, one category per cell.
- In each column under the category, enter the values 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000 in the remaining cells. These are the standard values for clues in the television version of Jeopardy, but you can use whatever values you feel work the best.
Format your table. Once you have the table filled out, you can start formatting the table to make sure it looks good. This includes centering the text and ensuring that all cell sizes are uniform.
Create 30 blank slides. This can be a little time consuming since you have to click the New Slide button for each one. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + M to create new slides.
Start entering your clues. Scroll back to Slide 3 and begin entering your clues into each slide. Be sure to go in order (1st category, 2nd category, etc.) to that you can easily link to the correct clue. Copy and paste the clues from the document you created earlier.
- You can format the clue slides however you’d like. You may include the category or point value, or just put the clue in.
Make one of the clues a Daily Double. This will allow the contestant to place a wager on their answer, potentially netting them a lot more points. In the television version, there is one Daily Double available in the first round.
- Since a contestant wagers before seeing the clue for a Daily Double, you will need to create an extra slide for this. The first slide they see will be the Daily Double slide, and then once the contestant makes the wager, you can proceed to the actual clue.
Create a button on each clue page. This button will link back to the category slide. You can insert an image of your own choosing, pick a piece of clipart, or just use a text link.
- Once you have inserted your button, select it and click the Insert tab/menu. Click Hyperlink. This will open a new dialog box.
- In the left menu, select “Place in this Document”.
- In the main frame, select the clue table slide and then press OK. The button will now link back to the clue table when you click it during the presentation.
Link the point values to the clues. Once you’ve got all of your clues entered, you can start linking them to their respective values. To do this, highlight the first “200” in the first category in your clue table. Click the Insert tab/menu and select Hyperlink. Link to the first clue slide. When you click on the “200” during the game, it will link to that clue.
- Repeat this for each of the clues until all of your point values are linked. Be sure to link to the appropriate Daily Double if you have one.
Create a link to the second round. On your clue table slide, create a button or link to the second round. This will ensure that you don’t have to scroll through your slides to get to the new categories. You can just create the button now, and link it once the new categories are made.

Making the Second and Final Rounds

Create a new slide. Once again, you will be creating a 6X6 table. If you want to keep your formatting consistent, copy and paste the table from your first round and change the category headings.
Enter in the second round values. In the second round of Jeopardy, the point values for each clue are doubled. Enter the following values into each category: 400, 800, 1200, 1600, and 2000.
Create and link your clues. Follow the steps from the previous section to link your next set of 30 clues. The second round of Jeopardy typically has two Daily Doubles available.
Create a link to Final Jeopardy. At the bottom of your second clue table, create a link to the Final Jeopardy slide. You don’t have to make the link active until you actually create the slide.
Create your Final Jeopardy slide. Place your Final Jeopardy clue on the slide. This clue should be one of the most difficult in your game.

Playing Your Game

Get your materials ready. You will need to have the answers to all of your clues, a piece of paper to keep score, and a buzzer for each of the contestants (any item that they can use as a buzzer will work, such as a bell. Your contestants could even clap their hands instead of buzzing).
Start the game. When you start the presentation, your title screen will appear. Click the mouse and you will be taken to your first clue table. Whoever you determined gets to start first will then pick their first category and value.
- Read the clue out loud. Once you are finished reading, allow your contestants to buzz in. The first one to buzz in will have a chance to answer. If the answer is incorrect, wait for another contestant to buzz. If the answer is correct, that contestant gets the points and can choose the next clue.
- If a contestant gets an answer wrong, they will lose the amount of points that clue was worth. In the television version, contestants can have negative points.
Use a timer for clues that are unanswered. If no one buzzes in before the timer goes off, read out the answer and let the last person who picked a clue pick again.
Continue until the first round is over. Once the entire table has been answered, click the link at the bottom of the table to move to the second round.
Keep up on the score. You can use a piece of paper or a computer to keep quick tallies of the score. This will help the contestants know how much they can wager on Daily Doubles.
Continue to Final Jeopardy. For Final Jeopardy, read the category first and give everyone a chance to write their wager. Once all of the wagers are written, you can show the clue.
- Make sure that no one can see anyone else’s answer. Set a timer so that everyone knows how long they have to answer the clue.
- Once the timer is up, go down the line and ask contestants to reveal their answers and wagers. Add or subtract points from their score and determine the winner of your game!