Homemade Jeopardy Game

Even though we are still kind of 'covid cooped up', August is full of family birthdays so we've had some small get togethers to celebrate (with lots of precautions and hand sanitizer of course!). My sister gave me this party idea and it's so much fun I thought I'd share. Yes things are on the down low right now, but we can still have fun - in this case it's playing homemade Jeopardy! Both of these examples are birthday editions of the game, but you can make up whatever categories you want - and you can either play in teams or individually, with the person who comes up with the questions/answers being the host ('cuz they'll know all the answers obviously!) and reading the questions.

For a birthday themed game write 5 or 6 categories across the top of a big piece of poster board (or cardboard would work just fine). A couple of the categories can be personal (in which case the birthday boy/girl can't answer the questions, duh!) and then the rest of the categories can be whatever you like. In the first example the personal categories are 'all about Taco' and 'Taco's favs' and the question/answers are things like what's his favorite song or candy, or the year his team won the state championship in HS, etc. The other categories kept up the 'Taco' theme with 'all about Mexico', '55', and 'who's yo daddy' - for example the category '55' had questions/answers built around something 55, etc.  You don't have to make all the categories themed of course, in the second example for Ronda's birthday Jen made her personal categories 'Ronda's relatives' and 'Ronda 101' and the other categories are "quotable women', 'rhyme time', 'potent potables', and 'fellow 45's'.

Then think of 5 questions/answers for each category, you want some easy and some harder just like in regular Jeopardy. These 2 example photos are set up differently - first one is pieces of paper printed on one side with dollar amounts ($100 thru $500) and the back side is the question that the host read. The second example has the questions printed on the board and then note paper covering them - both ways work. I probably don't need to say it, but easy questions get the lower dollar amounts and hard questions get the higher amounts!

To play the game - either divide up in teams if there's enough people, or play individually. Decide who is going first, they choose a category and which dollar amount they are playing for. Read
the question and give a few seconds for them to answer. If they guess wrong, the next team gets a shot. Continue going around the teams one at a time until someone gets it right, whoever answers it correctly gets to keep the card with the dollar amount on it (that's how you'll keep track of who has the most money). In 'real' Jeopardy you continue choosing amounts and categories if you won the previous one, but we play that once a team took a turn choosing it moves to the next team to pick. It's more fun that way since every team will get a chance to choose a category and dollar amount.

Once all the questions have been answered tally up each teams winnings. The two teams who earned the most get to play in final Jeopardy. Have a final question and answer ready - tell them the category (just like regular Jeopardy) and then have them write down how much they are willing to bet from the money they won playing the game. Read the question and they write down the answer without letting anyone see it. Then read the answer out loud, the two teams hold up what they guessed and how much they bet. Winner is whoever answered correctly and bet enough to outscore the other team, or if they answered wrong but didn't bet much they could still win if they ended with more money than the other team.

The winner got a big prize (candy bars) and bragging rights :) Guys, this is so much fun! And very easy other than coming up with the categories and questions hahaha - oh, you can ask the birthday boy/girl for help with questions and answers in the 2 personal categories since they can't answer those questions anyway. Enjoy!