How hard was it to win on Jeopardy in 1967?

[Game Show Dynamo]

I won 3 games on Jeopardy in 1967 when Art Fleming was the wonderful host. I watch Jeopardy regularly now and can still answer a lot of the questions even though I am 87 years young.  Does anyone know how difficult it was to win back in 1967 compared with now?
Thanks!

[Matt Ottinger]

I won 3 games on Jeopardy in 1967 when Art Flemming was the wonderful host. I watch Jeopardy regularly now and can still answer a lot of the questions even though I am 87 years young.  Does anyone know how difficult it was to win back in 1967 compared with now?

Welcome!  I'm sure we'd all be interested in your experience on the show.  Did they tape all your shows in one day back then, or did you have to come back for three straight days?  What else do you remember?  You'd be surprised what we'd be interested in hearing, no matter how insignificant you might think it is.

I think it would be hard to answer your question definitively.  People have argued for decades about whether the questions were harder in one era or the other, or even from year to year in either version.  Nevertheless, the goal of the game remained unchanged.  You just have to be better than the other two players.  My instinct would be that players in general are probably better today than they were back then, just because it's a lot easier to draw good players from all over the country now than it was in 1967.  That should not be taken in any way as diminishing your accomplishment.  I lost my Jeopardy game, so anybody who won three is aces in my book, no matter when it happened!

[parliboy]

Given the change in buzz-in procedure, does it change the type of player who is likely to win at Jeopardy?  If so, then your question might be nearly impossible to answer.

[TLEberle]

Given the change in buzz-in procedure, does it change the type of player who is likely to win at Jeopardy?  If so, then your question might be nearly impossible to answer.

I don't think so, you still need to be able to quickly read and process the clues, and then press the button. Given that you had to wait for the clue to be revealed before you could signal, the new procedure just changes that point, so the reflexes are still a factor.

[Matt Ottinger]

Given the change in buzz-in procedure, does it change the type of player who is likely to win at Jeopardy?  If so, then your question might be nearly impossible to answer.

I don't think so, you still need to be able to quickly read and process the clues, and then press the button. Given that you had to wait for the clue to be revealed before you could signal, the new procedure just changes that point, so the reflexes are still a factor.

I don't know if it changed the type of person who would do well, buit the buzzer change is a lot more significant than you're suggesting.  In the old days, some people would buzz in as soon as the clue was revealed, gambling that they would probably know the answer even before they'd read a single word.  That changes the dynamic pretty seriously.

[TLEberle]

I don't know if it changed the type of person who would do well, buit the buzzer change is a lot more significant than you're suggesting.  In the old days, some people would buzz in as soon as the clue was revealed, gambling that they would probably know the answer even before they'd read a single word.  That changes the dynamic pretty seriously.

Given how badly I've done with the buzzer when playing chat room Jeopardy where the signalling actually works like the Go Lights, I would say that it is indeed significant. What I'm saying is that the difficulty of timing moves from one millisecond to another. Given that I haven't seen all that much of the original Jeopardy, I don't know if it makes the game more or less difficult, and I would love to hear more of your analysis on the subject.

[mmb5]

A friend of mine who was a College champion was watching one of the Fleming episodes floating around.  His one comment: "People were smarter back then, right?"

The major difference I see other than the buzz-in rule is to quote the Bee Gee's "The New York Times Effect on Man."  Today's clues are more crossword-puzzle like, while the 60s clues were a more straight forward.  Changes the dynamic a little bit on who an elite player would be.


--Mike

[Game Show Dynamo]

I won 3 games on Jeopardy in 1967 when Art Flemming was the wonderful host. I watch Jeopardy regularly now and can still answer a lot of the questions even though I am 87 years young.  Does anyone know how difficult it was to win back in 1967 compared with now?

Welcome!  I'm sure we'd all be interested in your experience on the show.  Did they tape all your shows in one day back then, or did you have to come back for three straight days?  What else do you remember?  You'd be surprised what we'd be interested in hearing, no matter how insignificant you might think it is.

I think it would be hard to answer your question definitively.  People have argued for decades about whether the questions were harder in one era or the other, or even from year to year in either version.  Nevertheless, the goal of the game remained unchanged.  You just have to be better than the other two players.  My instinct would be that players in general are probably better today than they were back then, just because it's a lot easier to draw good players from all over the country now than it was in 1967.  That should not be taken in any way as diminishing your accomplishment.  I lost my Jeopardy game, so anybody who won three is aces in my book, no matter when it happened!

They taped all three shows back then, I think. I remember that there was a guy in a baseball cap, chewing gum,  behind the board who pulled the categories up by hand and put in new ones. Sometimes they would get stuck and they would stop the taping. The categories were worth a lot less than now. Alex Trebec was not the host but he was the host of To Tell of The Truth when I was an impostor in the 1980's.  Art Fleming was easy going and very charming. I loved being on Jeopardy even when I lost.

[Game Show Dynamo]

I don't know if it changed the type of person who would do well, buit the buzzer change is a lot more significant than you're suggesting.  In the old days, some people would buzz in as soon as the clue was revealed, gambling that they would probably know the answer even before they'd read a single word.  That changes the dynamic pretty seriously.

Given how badly I've done with the buzzer when playing chat room Jeopardy where the signalling actually works like the Go Lights, I would say that it is indeed significant. What I'm saying is that the difficulty of timing moves from one millisecond to another. Given that I haven't seen all that much of the original Jeopardy, I don't know if it makes the game more or less difficult, and I would love to hear more of your analysis on the subject.

I think mastering the buzzer is half the battle of winning no matter what the timing is. It is significant indeed. I don't remember buzzing in before I saw the question.

[gameshowcrazy]

It seems to me that anytime there is a conversation about current vs. older shows, the point is made that because the clues seem to be getting easier, the contestants must not be as smart as the good old days.

I believe there are two factors at work here that get most of us into that mode of thinking:

1.   We watch the show every day, and have watched for most of our lives, mostly from the time we were kids.  Do I have a much larger knowledge base at age 39 than I did at age 11—yes I do.  Do I have a larger knowledge base now than I did five years ago—I think so, by watching every day and playing other trivia games and reading all the time the extent of what I know continues to grow.

2.   The evolution of the style of the questions given, not just on Jeopardy, but on all game shows is more a factor of keeping the audience watching, not because the contestants aren’t as good as in the past.

I think the contestants are every bit as good now as in the past, but the criteria they must meet for the shows has changed.

As far as the question for is it harder to win three games now or was it harder then, I think if someone has and can analyze the statistics of number of contestants each year that won three games, we may be closer to our answer, even if we continue to debate it.

Keep in mind that the current show has had maybe 10000-12000 contestants, only 329 have won $50,000, something that should be achievable in three wins with the current dollar amounts.

[thomas_meighan]

Something else that makes it hard to compare the relative difficulty of Jeopardy! eras is that some things necessarily pass out of "general" knowledge. There were lots of Watergate questions on game shows in the mid- to late 70s that most reasonably informed people could have answered back then; today, I suspect many new college graduates wouldn't know the fine details of Watergate unless they majored in American history. Likewise, the 2000th episode of Jeopardy! had a question about Maude Adams playing Peter Pan on the stage. Even for a middle-aged person in 1972, Maude Adams would likely have been someone they had read about rather than actually seen, and today a very well-read person could live out their existence without ever hearing of her.

[Bryce L.]

Alex Trebec was not the host but he was the host of To Tell of The Truth when I was an impostor in the 1980's.

Question, sir, and apologies for going off-topic, but do you recall who or what the main subject was of your appearance on To Tell The Truth, or who the guest panelists were on your appearance? (I'm just curious to see if your episode is circulating among any fans or is online)