Jeopardy on Zoom, Teams and Meet
A trivia game over video works fine right up to the moment someone has to buzz in. Voice has several hundred milliseconds of delay that varies per person and per connection, so whoever unmutes first is not whoever was first — it is whoever has the better internet. Splitting the board from the buzzer fixes it, and that is the entire trick.
Setting it up on a call
Share the presenter view, not your whole screen
Share the single tab with the board in it. Sharing a desktop means the room watches you find things, and on a laptop it usually means they watch your notifications.
Put the buzzers on phones, off the call
Everyone opens the join link on their phone and types the five-letter code. The buzz never travels over the video channel, so the order is decided by the server rather than by whose connection is best.
Read the clue, then open the buzzers
Video delay means players hear you a beat late and at slightly different times. Opening the buzzers as a separate action after you finish reading removes that from the race entirely.
Say the name of whoever buzzed
The screen share lags behind your voice by a second or so, so the room hears you before it sees the board update. Saying the name out loud keeps everyone on the same page.
Handle the hybrid room deliberately
If some people are together in a room and some are dialled in, put the co-located group on their own phones too rather than sharing one buzzer. Otherwise the room plays as one player and the remote half plays as several, which is not the same game.
Why not just unmute to buzz
Because it measures the wrong thing. Round-trip latency on a video call runs from about 100 to 400 milliseconds depending on the connection, which is far wider than the gap between two people reacting to the same clue. The person who wins is the person with the best network, consistently, all game.
Chat has the same problem with a longer delay, plus everyone can see the answer being typed. A separate buzzer channel is the only version where being first means being first.
Make My Jeopardy settles the order in the database — the first press to commit wins a uniqueness constraint and every later press is discarded. No device clock is ever consulted, so a slow phone cannot claim it pressed earlier.
What to check before the call
- Share the tab, not the window, and confirm the game code is legible after compression — video encoding is unkind to thin text.
- Post the join link in the chat as well as showing it on screen, so nobody is squinting to transcribe a code.
- Have anyone on a phone-only connection join the buzzer on a second device or a second tab.
- Decide in advance whether a wrong answer reopens the clue. Over video the pause reads as a technical problem unless you say what is happening.
Cost
Free for a 6 × 5 board with buzzers, live scoring and Final Jeopardy, with no account for the host and nothing for players to install — which matters more remotely, where you cannot help anyone who gets stuck. Pro is $10 a year and adds AI drafting, media clues, spreadsheet import, larger boards and private boards.
Ready-made boards for work
Copy any of them into your own editor and change what you like — free, no account.
Common questions
How do players buzz in on a Zoom call?
On their own phones, off the call. They open the join link, type the five-letter game code, and get a full-screen buzz button. Keeping the buzz off the video channel is what stops connection speed from deciding who was first.
Can I run it in Microsoft Teams or Google Meet?
Yes. Nothing about it is specific to a video platform — you share the tab with the board in it, and the buzzers run separately in players' phone browsers.
Does it work for a hybrid meeting?
Yes, if the people in the room each join on their own phone rather than sharing one. A co-located group on a single buzzer plays as one player, which quietly changes the game for everyone else.
Do remote players need an account?
No. A link and a five-letter code is the whole join. Nothing is installed and nothing is signed up for, on either end.
Read next
How to give everyone a buzzer
The four ways to run buzz-in — shouting, hands, hardware buzzer sets and phones — and what each costs in fairness, setup time and arguments.
How to make a Jeopardy game
How to build a custom Jeopardy game: how many clues you need, writing clues that play, the scoring rules, and how to run it on the day.
Jeopardy rules, scoring and wagering
The rules of Jeopardy for running your own game: board layout, scoring, Daily Double and Final Jeopardy wagers, and which rules to drop.