SAT Vocabulary Jeopardy

A ready-made SAT vocabulary review board. Copy it free, put it on the projector, and let students buzz in from their phones before test day.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

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Words for Tone and Mood

$200
This adjective describes a tone that is grimly mocking or scornful.
What is sardonic?
$400
This adjective describes a mood of wistful longing for the past.
What is nostalgic?
$600
This word describes a deep, lingering sadness, often thoughtful rather than sharp.
What is melancholy?
$800
This short word describes humor that is dry and lightly mocking.
What is wry?
$1,000
This adjective describes a mournful tone, like that of a poem lamenting the dead.
What is elegiac?

Arguing and Persuading

$200
This persuasive appeal targets the audience's emotions.
What is pathos?
$400
This persuasive appeal rests on the speaker's credibility and character.
What is ethos?
$600
This fallacy misrepresents an opponent's position to make it easier to attack.
What is a straw man?
$800
Admitting that an opponent has a valid point before answering it is called making this.
What is a concession?
$1,000
This adjective describes an argument that seems plausible but is actually false or misleading.
What is specious?

Commonly Confused Pairs

$200
Usually a verb, this word means to influence, while its look-alike is usually a noun meaning a result.
What is affect?
$400
A speaker does this, suggesting without stating, while a listener infers.
What is imply?
$600
This word means to complete or go well with something, while its sound-alike means to praise.
What is complement?
$800
Properly meaning impartial or having nothing to gain, this word is often misused to mean bored.
What is disinterested?
$1,000
This spelling means separate and distinct, while its sound-alike means careful and tactful.
What is discrete?

Roots and Prefixes

$200
This Greek prefix meaning against begins the name of medicines that fight bacteria.
What is anti-?
$400
This Latin root meaning to carry is found in words for bringing goods into a country and for the document you show at a border.
What is port?
$600
This Greek root meaning love ends a word for a book lover and begins the name of the City of Brotherly Love.
What is phil?
$800
This Latin root meaning good begins words for a helpful effect and for a person who gives money to a cause.
What is bene?
$1,000
This Latin prefix meaning around begins a word for the distance around a circle.
What is circum-?

Words for Character

$200
This adjective describes someone who stubbornly refuses to change their mind.
What is obstinate?
$400
This adjective describes someone extremely careful about every small detail.
What is meticulous?
$600
This adjective describes someone generous and forgiving, especially toward a rival.
What is magnanimous?
$800
This adjective describes someone too eager to please or obey, to the point of fawning.
What is obsequious?
$1,000
Named for a Roman god and a quick-moving metal, this adjective describes someone whose moods change unpredictably.
What is mercurial?

Reading Comprehension Terms

$200
This is the central message or insight about life that a literary work conveys.
What is the theme?
$400
This is a conclusion a reader draws from evidence rather than from a direct statement.
What is an inference?
$600
This is a brief reference to a well-known person, place, event or work, such as calling a miser a Scrooge.
What is an allusion?
$800
This is a statement that seems to contradict itself but reveals a truth.
What is a paradox?
$1,000
This is the placing of two contrasting things side by side to highlight their differences.
What is juxtaposition?

Final Jeopardy — In Context

This word describes writing or speech that is deliberately vague or ambiguous, often used to avoid committing to a clear position.

What is equivocal?

How to run this board

Rather than a flat word list, the six categories split vocabulary by the kind of question it actually shows up in: words that describe tone, words for arguing and persuading, commonly confused pairs, and roots and prefixes that unlock a word a student has never seen.

Roots and Prefixes is worth playing even for students who feel confident - it is the category that transfers to words the test writer invented specifically to be unfamiliar.

A five-second penalty for guessing without using the word in a sentence turns this from a memorization drill into practice actually using the vocabulary, which is closer to what the test rewards.

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