Every game ranked by how much drama it actually contained — round tempo, final stakes, DD wagering, FJ cover tightness, hot starts, buzzer dominance, and four more signals fitted to community sentiment. Scores above 7.45 land in the top 5%; above 8.24 is All-Time Great territory — just 1% of 5,000+ games. Start at the top.
The Jeopardy Excitement Index ranks every televised Jeopardy game by drama: lead changes, late-game swings, near-misses, clutch wagering, and how much win probability moved during the moments that mattered most. Every game from January 2002 forward gets a single score, plus a tier — All-Time Classic, Thrilling, Competitive, or One-Sided.
The score is computed from ten components, each measuring a different facet of in-game tension. A game with three close lead changes, a Final Jeopardy comeback, and a high-leverage Daily Double will score in the top tier. A wire-to-wire runaway with no contested clues will score at the bottom. Components are normalized against the entire Jeopardy corpus so percentile thresholds stay stable across eras — a "Thrilling" game from Season 18 means the same thing as a "Thrilling" game from Season 41.
Use the index to find historical games worth re-watching, to settle arguments about which Tournament of Champions final was the most exciting (as measured by the Jeopardy Excitement Index), or to browse games featuring a specific player sorted by drama. You can also build your own version with the Custom Excitement Index, which lets you reweight every component to match your personal definition of an exciting game.