Alex Trebek Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
49 free Alex Trebek trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Alex Trebek hosted Jeopardy! for 37 seasons, from the 1984 revival until his death in 2020, and along the way set a Guinness World Record, swapped jobs with Pat Sajak for a day and played himself in everything from Cheers to The X-Files. This quiz starts in Sudbury, Ontario and the CBC, moves through The Wizard of Odds, High Rollers and Classic Concentration, and covers the Jeopardy! years, his philanthropy, the pancreatic cancer fight and the tributes that followed. About a third of the questions are easy for regular viewers, a third are medium and the rest are for game-show historians. Every answer is checked against Trebek's biography.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who created Jeopardy! and hired Trebek for its 1984 revival?
Merv Griffin
Merv Griffin. The format was his wife Julann's idea: quiz shows had been caught feeding contestants the answers, so she suggested handing the answers over and asking for the questions.
Q 02In which Canadian city was Trebek born?
Sudbury, Ontario
Sudbury, Ontario. His father was a hotel chef in the mining town; Trebek left at 12, when his parents divorced, for a boarding school in another city.
Q 03Alex was Trebek's middle name, so what was his first given name?
George
George. He was named for his father, George Edward Trebek, a hotel chef, and family and friends called the boy Sonny to tell the two apart.
Q 04Trebek's father emigrated as a child from which country?
Ukraine
Ukraine. The family name was Terebeychuk when he left, and with a French-Canadian mother his son grew up speaking both French and English.
Q 05Why did Trebek drop out of a military college in Quebec?
He was asked to shave his head
He was asked to shave his head. By his own account he lasted three days: after two of hazing, the regulation haircut was the last straw, since, as he wrote, 'I had a good head of hair'.
Q 06What was Trebek's first job, at age 13?
Bellhop
It was at the hotel where his father worked as a chef.
Q 07From which school did Trebek graduate with a philosophy degree in 1961?
University of Ottawa
University of Ottawa. He paid his tuition by working nights as a radio announcer, and later repaid the school with millions in gifts; its alumni hall was named for him in 2015.
Q 08For which broadcaster did Trebek begin his career in 1961?
CBC
CBC. He started there part-time to pay for university and stayed on after graduating, reading news, weather and sports before anyone let him host a show.
Q 09What was Trebek's first hosting job, a Canadian teen dance show launched in 1963?
Music Hop
Music Hop. It was the country's first live teen music show, and its fresh-faced host was still three years away from fronting his first quiz.
Q 10Which Canadian high-school quiz show did Trebek host starting in 1966?
Reach for the Top
Reach for the Top. It was his first quiz show: for seven years he fired general-knowledge questions at teams of teenagers, and found the job he would do for life.
Q 11Why did Trebek reportedly lose out on hosting Hockey Night in Canada in 1971?
His mustache
His mustache. The producer who auditioned him says his boss refused to hire men with mustaches; told the story decades later, Trebek thanked him for turning him down.
Q 12Which fellow Canadian, later a sitcom dad, lured Trebek to the US to host The Wizard of Odds?
Alan Thicke
Alan Thicke. He also wrote and sang the show's theme song; NBC dropped it within a year but kept its host.
Q 13Which casino-style NBC game show did Trebek host in two separate runs, starting in 1974?
High Rollers
High Rollers. It took over the slot of his cancelled first American show, so NBC swapped one Trebek game for another, and later brought this one back for a second run.
Q 21Which cooking competition did Trebek host for CBS in the 1990s?
Pillsbury Bake-Off
Pillsbury Bake-Off. He fronted the press conference at which the contest raised its grand prize from $50,000 to $1 million.
Q 22With whom did Trebek swap shows on April Fools' Day 1997?
Pat Sajak
Pat Sajak. It made that day's Jeopardy! the only episode in 37 seasons that Trebek did not host: he was spinning the wheel, with Sajak and Vanna White playing for charity.
Q 23On which sitcom did Trebek play himself when a know-it-all mailman went on Jeopardy!?
Cheers
Cheers. In a 1990 episode, Cliff Clavin's Final Jeopardy! response is 'Who are three people who've never been in my kitchen?'
Q 14Which CBS game show hosted by Trebek shared its name with a later Nickelodeon hit?
Double Dare
Double Dare. There was no slime in his version: it was a quiz for adults that lasted less than a year, a decade before Nickelodeon gave the name to its messy kids' game.
Q 15Which Saturday Night Live star played Trebek as a host driven to despair by idiotic celebrity contestants?
Will Ferrell
Will Ferrell. Trebek enjoyed the send-up of himself as a tightly wound taskmaster, and in 2002 he walked onto the SNL set to stand beside his impersonator.
Q 16Trebek was never paid for hosting which syndicated show after its producer went bankrupt?
Pitfall
Pitfall. An unpaid debt sank the Vancouver company behind it; contestants went without their prizes too, and Trebek called it the only time anyone had stiffed him.
Q 17Which Hollywood legend encouraged the creator of Jeopardy! to hire Trebek for the 1984 revival?
Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball. With the I Love Lucy star's backing he shot two pilots for the revival, and the one that sold gave him a job for the rest of his life.
Q 18Who was the original Jeopardy! host whom Trebek succeeded?
Art Fleming
Art Fleming. He fronted the original from 1964 to 1975, and the 1984 revival went to his friend instead; a quarter of a century apart, the same illness killed them both.
Q 19Which NBC puzzle game did Trebek host alongside Jeopardy! until 1991?
Classic Concentration
Classic Concentration. Hosting two daily shows at once was not enough for him: in his last months on this one he took on a third as well.
Q 20In 1991 Trebek became the first person to host three US game shows at once by taking over which one?
To Tell the Truth
He replaced Lynn Swann on February 4, 1991 and stayed until the run ended that May.
Q 24Which 2019 champion joined the show's two biggest winners in Trebek's 2020 Greatest of All Time special?
James Holzhauer
James Holzhauer. His 2019 winning streak, built on enormous bets, gripped viewers in the weeks after Trebek announced his illness, and earned him a place beside the two biggest winners.
Q 25For which international children's charity did Trebek tape reports from developing countries as a spokesman?
World Vision
World Vision. He went further than lending his name: in Zambia he adopted a village and helped build it a school, teachers' houses and a clinic.
Q 26In The X-Files episode Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Trebek played what?
A Man in Black
A Man in Black. He and the wrestler Jesse Ventura turn up at a UFO witness's door to tell him that all he really saw was the planet Venus.
Q 27Trebek apologized after moderating the 2018 Wolf-Wagner governor's debate in which state?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania. He wanted a conversation and ended up doing more than 40 percent of the talking himself; the crowd booed, and he apologized for misreading a moderator's job.
Q 28Trebek announced which NHL team's third-overall pick, in Jeopardy! style, at the 2020 draft?
Ottawa Senators
Ottawa Senators. 'Our category today is the NHL,' he began, and the clip of him reading out the pick as a clue went viral, a month before he died.
Q 29A 2013 Reader's Digest poll ranked Trebek eighth on its list of the 100 most what in America?
Trusted people
Trusted people. That mattered to him: he wanted his show to be an oasis of learning and a safe space for facts, and it had just been honored as a model of integrity.
Q 30What sent Trebek's pickup truck flying off a rural California road in 2004?
He fell asleep at the wheel
He fell asleep at the wheel. The truck took out a row of mailboxes, sailed over an embankment and landed in a ditch; he walked away unhurt and was back taping four days later.