It’s the rules of the gameshow Jeopardy. The gimmick is the game will give you an answer, you have to guess the question, so all responses must be in the form of a question to count.
So for the prompt:
“This Actor portrayed the captain of the Enterprise in all but the pilot episode of the original Star Trek series.”
Because there were a whole bunch of trivia gameshows out there at the time, this one had to set itself apart somehow. So it’s trivia, but in reverse, which was novel for the time. The format and content were a hit formula, enjoyed by the well educated and the uneducated alike. We forget the weird gimmick because it has been a nightly fixture in homes for several generations. It’s just good, high paced trivia with little filler and, for almost the whole series, a beloved host.
It’s the rules of the gameshow Jeopardy. The gimmick is the game will give you an answer, you have to guess the question, so all responses must be in the form of a question to count.
So for the prompt:
“This Actor portrayed the captain of the Enterprise in all but the pilot episode of the original Star Trek series.”
You would answer:
“Who is William Shatner?”
How bizarre.
Why not just ask questions the usual way?
edit: Evidently everyone really loves this show, as they are downvoting me like crazy for not having heard of it and finding it weird.
This pattern only really exists in the game show Jeopardy, and people specifically referencing the show.
Because there were a whole bunch of trivia gameshows out there at the time, this one had to set itself apart somehow. So it’s trivia, but in reverse, which was novel for the time. The format and content were a hit formula, enjoyed by the well educated and the uneducated alike. We forget the weird gimmick because it has been a nightly fixture in homes for several generations. It’s just good, high paced trivia with little filler and, for almost the whole series, a beloved host.