Free Jeopardy PowerPoint template

Every board in the library downloads the same way from its own page, already filled in, if you would rather start from written clues. A few of them are listed at the foot of this page.

• A board slide: six category headers and thirty squares from $200 to $1,000, each linked to its own clue slide, plus a Final Jeopardy button.
• Thirty clue slides, each with a Show answer button and a Back to board button.
• Thirty answer slides, each with a Back to board button.
• Final Jeopardy, reached from the button on the board.
• A link on the first and last slides to play the same board online with phone buzzers, for anyone the file gets passed to.

Slides move only by their links. A click on the background does nothing, rather than advancing to whichever slide happens to come next, which is what makes a hand-built deck go wrong mid-game. The arrow keys still work, for the moment you need to get somewhere the links do not go.

• Type the six category names into the headers on the board slide.
• Work through the clue slides in order. Each placeholder names its square — "Type the $200 clue for category 1 here" — so you always know which clue you are on.
• Write each answer on its answer slide at the same time as the clue, not afterwards. An answer the host has to reconstruct live is the most common failure of a homemade board.
• Write the Final Jeopardy category, clue and answer last, and make it harder than anything on the board.
• Edit text, but do not delete, duplicate or reorder slides. Each link points at one particular slide, and removing one breaks the square that pointed at it without any warning.

When you are done, run the show and click every square and every Back to board button once. It takes five minutes and it is the only way to be sure nothing moved while you were typing.

• Start the slide show and go to the board.
• A player picks a category and a value; click that square.
• Read the clue, take an answer, then click Show answer so the room sees it written.
• Click Back to board, and note the points on a whiteboard or a sheet of paper.
• When the board is done, click Final Jeopardy, collect written wagers, then reveal the clue.

Played squares do not grey out on their own, and the followed-hyperlink colour trick from the build-it-yourself guide does not apply here, because this file puts each link on the whole square rather than on its text. Two ways to handle it: during the show, switch to PowerPoint's pen (Ctrl+P, or right-click > Pointer Options > Pen) and strike through a square after it is played — the ink stays on the board slide for the rest of the show — or press Esc, delete the square's value, and resume with Shift+F5. A printed copy of the board that you cross off works too, and needs nothing from PowerPoint at all.

Google Slides opens the file directly. Upload it to Google Drive, right-click it and choose Open with > Google Slides, then File > Save as Google Slides if you want a native copy to share. The square, Show answer and Back to board links all survive the conversion, because none of them rely on animations.

Keynote opens it with File > Open. Keynote converts the file rather than editing it in place and may swap fonts it does not have, so click through one full column and Final Jeopardy before game day.

• Keep score. Points live on a whiteboard or on paper.
• Grey out played squares on its own. See the two workarounds above.
• Give anyone a buzzer. The first to answer is whoever you hear first.
• Hide Daily Doubles with wagers. You can write "Daily Double" on a clue slide and take the wager out loud, but the deck will not enforce it.
• Change size. It is a 6 × 5 board; adding a column means adding thirty-odd links by hand.

Those are the limits of a slide deck rather than of this file, and in a room with no wifi they are worth accepting. Where there is wifi, Make My Jeopardy plays the same board online: players buzz in from their own phones with a five-letter code, the buzz order is settled by the server, the scoreboard keeps itself, and played squares grey out. A 6 × 5 board with Final Jeopardy is free and needs no account.