Jeopardy 2026

Most people are aware that the goal of Jeopardy is to pose the answer in the form of a question to something the clue is referring to. The clues are often multi-layered and can be as opaque as frosted shower glass. They sometimes leave you saying "huh" to yourself. But you've got to act quickly and press that buzzer and hope you've got the answer. Some examples of  recent Final Jeopardy clues are:

Arts and Artists

He once said, "a hole can have as much meaning as a solid mass."

U.S. Presidents

His mom Eliza, was the first mother to attend her son's inauguration, survived him by about 6 years; his wife by 36.

I'm not here to provide the answers, but to merely show how clues can be constructed working backwards from a single answer. The answer to the U.S. Presidents is a doozy. No one got it.

Clues have degrees of difficulty, with the Final Jeopardy ones meant to be the coup de grâce for the contestants.

Last week, there was an appropriately valued $1,000 clue in a "Hodge-Podge" category that went:

Military leader who is credited with building what became a modern Egypt.

That someone buzzed in quickly with the right answer, Muhammad Ali, (WHAT!) is a testament to why I'll never be a Jeopardy contestant.

I've taken the Anytime Test online. They don't tell you how you did, but when the phone don't ring, you know it's Jeopardy not calling.

My guess is that they only need to start to cull respondents from people who've gotten all the answers right. They're not going to start marking it on a curve you for you.

But you're shitting me. Someone with the name chosen by Cassius Clay when he converted to Islam was famous for modernizing Egypt?

Did Muhammad Ali know whose name he chose? It's too late to ask him, since he passed away in 2016.

We have to go to that crutch Google.

Muhammad Ali was the Ottoman Albanian viceroy and governor who became the de facto ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848, widely considered the founder of modern Egypt.

I'm a old enough to know a good deal about Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali. I saw Ali fight Joe Frazier on March 8, 1971 in Madison Square Garden for what was considered the "Fight of the Century" where two undefeated Heavyweight champions fought each other. (It's complicated how that was true.)

I saw the closed circuit telecast of the "Rumble in the Jungle" when Ali "rope-a-doped" George Foremen into a tired mass of humanity. My wife and I were vacationing in Toronto, so we went to Maple Leaf Gardens to see the telecast, late at might on the East Coast, but early morning in Zaire.

Who can forget Ali always jumping up and down and telling everyone he was "The Greatest." Pulling Howard Cosell's hairpiece off?

I don't know, did he say anything about making Egypt "The Greatest?". He might have. It wouldn't be beyond something he'd say and no one would believe him. "I conquered Egypt!." I never heard anyone explaining who Muhammad Ali was other than the former Cassius Clay.

I've doubled back on his New York Times obituary to see if there is any reference to the name he chose when he converted to Islam.

The only reference is that when he changed his name to Muhammad Ali he said it meant, "worthy of all praise most high."

And Muhammad in Islam means just that, worthy of high praise; Ali in Islam means noble, or high ranking.

Muhammad Ali's was given his name by his father, Ibrahim Agha, who was a commander of a small military force for a governor of Kavla. Muhammad Ali seems to have fulfilled the promise of the name.

But, until a Jeopardy clue researcher came along, few ever really knew that Muhammad Ali's name meant more that just a name chosen by a boxer to boast his "greatness."

The things we learn from game shows.

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