Make My Jeopardy

How to make a Jeopardy game in Google Slides

Updated

Google Slides can do everything PowerPoint can here except one thing, and that one thing changes the build. Slides has no trigger animations, so you cannot click a box to reveal an answer on the same slide. The standard workaround is a second slide per clue, which turns a thirty-clue board into sixty slides. Here is the method, and the two ways to avoid the doubling.

Building the deck

  1. Set the theme dark before you build anything

    Slide > Change theme, or set the background to a deep blue on the master. Doing this first means every duplicated slide inherits it. Doing it after you have sixty slides means changing sixty slides.

  2. Build the board grid

    Insert > Table, 6 columns by 6 rows on one slide. Categories along the top, 200 through 1000 down each column. Centre everything vertically — Slides defaults to top-aligned table text, which looks wrong on a board where the numbers are the whole design.

  3. Make one clue slide and one answer slide

    The clue slide holds the clue and nothing else. The answer slide holds the same clue in smaller text at the top and the answer beneath it, so the room can still see what was asked. Get both right once, then duplicate the pair thirty times.

  4. Link each square to its clue slide

    Select the text in a square, press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on a Mac), then click "Slides in this presentation" and pick the slide. Slides lists them by number and thumbnail, so name your slides in the filmstrip first if you want this to be quick.

  5. Link every answer slide back to the board

    Put a small shape bottom-right on the answer slide layout, linked to slide 1. Editing the layout rather than the slides means one edit instead of thirty, and it lands in exactly the same place every time.

  6. Present in a tab, not in a window you will alt-tab out of

    Slides' present mode swallows the arrow keys, which is what you want — the board is navigated by clicking links, and an accidental arrow press jumps you to slide 2 with no way back that the room will not notice.

Avoiding sixty slides

Two workarounds are common, and both trade something.

  • Cover the answer with a shape the same colour as the background, and delete it live during the game. Keeps you at thirty slides, but you are presenting from edit view, so the room sees your filmstrip.
  • Skip the answer slide and just say the answer out loud. Perfectly fine for a fast-moving party game, worse for a classroom, where seeing the answer written is most of the learning.

What Slides gives you that PowerPoint does not

One link to share, and colleagues can copy your board with File > Make a copy rather than emailing a deck around. For a department that reuses the same review game across sections, that alone is worth the extra slides.

It also autosaves, which matters more than it sounds when the build is an hour of fiddly hyperlinking.

What it still cannot do

The same three things no slide deck can: there are no buzzers, so first-to-answer is decided by whoever is loudest; there is no scoring, so someone is keeping it on a whiteboard; and used squares are marked by hand, mid-game, in edit view.

If those are the parts you were dreading, they are the parts a purpose-built board maker removes. Make My Jeopardy gives every player a buzzer on their own phone through a five-letter code, decides the buzz order server-side, keeps the scores, and greys out a square when it has been played. A full 6 × 5 board with Final Jeopardy costs nothing and needs no account, and if your clues are already in a Google Sheet you can import the sheet rather than retyping it.

Common questions

Can students play a Google Slides Jeopardy game on their own devices?

They can open the deck, but they should not — anyone with the link can click ahead to the answers. Keep the deck on the presenter's screen and give students something else to answer with, whether that is hands, mini whiteboards or a buzzer they open on their phones.

How do you make a square disappear after it has been used in Google Slides?

You change its fill to the background colour, which requires edit view. There is no way to do it from present mode, which is why most hosts keep a printed board and cross squares off instead.

Is there a Google Slides Jeopardy template?

Yes, and copying one saves you the linking. Before you commit, click through five or six squares and the return links — templates get copied and re-copied, and broken links propagate with them.

Make one now

A 6 × 5 board with phone buzzers, live scoring and Final Jeopardy — free, no account. Or copy a ready-made board.

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