Jeopardy! Masters' Daily Double Twist: Love It or Loathe It?

We’ve got a timely question for Jeopardy! fans: What did you think of the seismic Daily Double format change that was introduced in tonight’s Jeopardy!: Masters?

The tweak in a nutshell: For the first time in franchise history, viewers at home — and only viewers at home — were privy to the exact location of the Daily Doubles on the game board. The alteration will remain in place throughout Jeopardy!: Masters, which consists of 10 hour-long episodes spread out over three weeks and pits the current six highest-ranked contestants (Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio, Mattea Roach, Andrew He, Sam Buttrey and James Holzhauer) against each other.

“This is something we’re trying out with Masters,” host Ken Kennings explained Monday to ABC’s Milwaukee affiliate WISN. “We noticed it’s very fun in the studio that we know where the Daily Doubles are because we can see the contestants get close [to the clue]… [and] sometimes they veer away at the wrong time. It’s a little bit like a big game of Battleship.”

It remains to be seen if the format twist will be carried over to the syndicated version. “I don’t know if we’ll try it on the syndicated show,” Jennings hedged. “But I really like it because the host always knows where the Daily Doubles are in advance, so I get to watch a contestant who really needs the Daily Double kind of advance towards it, ‘Oh, is she gonna get it?’ [or] ‘Oh no, she’s switched categories!’ You can really get a sense of how the match is changing and how the odds are changing in real-time.”

For those viewers to prefer to remain in the dark about where the Daily Doubles are hiding, Jennings suggests they should simply “avert their eyes.”

Monday’s two-round Jeopardy! Masters debut saw He and Holzhauer prevail over Schneider/Amodio and Buttrey/Roach, respectively.

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