Why Is Jeopardy! a Rerun? Weekend Encores, the 46-Week Season and Telling an Old Game From a New One

So the honest answer to "why is this a repeat" is usually the dullest one: the show did not make an episode for that slot.

How many nights a year are actually new?

Season 42 ran the customary 46 weeks, from its Sept. 8 premiere to the last first-run game on July 24. Five a week across 46 weeks is 230 episodes.

By our count that leaves 230 new games in a 365-day year, about 63 percent of days. The other 135 days are weekends, the summer gap and holidays — and every one of them still has a Jeopardy! half hour sitting in the local schedule.

Why do weekends look like reruns?

Because they are. The show tapes weekday games only, and always has.

Whether you get a weekend airing at all depends on your station. Some markets run a Saturday and Sunday encore in the usual slot, some run one day, some run none and hand the half hour to local news or paid programming. It is a syndication decision, not a network one, which is why your cousin three states away sees something different.

Which episode turns up on the weekend?

Once a new season starts on weeknights, the weekend encores step back to the previous one and walk through it in order — one episode per weekend, the same game on Saturday and Sunday in markets that carry both.

That pacing has a consequence nobody mentions. The weekday show moves five episodes a week and the weekend encore moves one, so the encores fall four games further behind every week and will never catch up. The game airing this weekend first played 136 days ago, and that gap widens by six days every seven.

The Jeopardy! Fan keeps the running list of which episode is next, pulled from published program guides.

How do you tell a new game from an encore?

Three tells, in the order they are useful.

The champion. This is the fast one. If the person at the center lectern is not the player who won on our nightly Jeopardy! page, or their running total does not match the one in our results archive, you are watching an old game.

The day. Saturday and Sunday are never first-run. Neither is anything between the last week of July and the September premiere.

The archive. J! Archive lists every game ever played by original air date, with scores and the Final Jeopardy! clue, so a ten-second search settles it.

👉 If you only remember one thing: the champion's name and money are the fingerprint. Everything else about the set and the host looks identical.

Are holidays different?

A bit, and in a more annoying way. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas some stations air an encore, and others drop the show entirely for a parade, a bowl game or a local special.

Labor Day works the same way. Wheel of Fortune ran a holiday encore on the Monday before its season premiere this year, which we covered at the time — the pattern repeats most years, on both shows.

Does Wheel of Fortune do the same thing?

Same idea, different bookkeeping. Wheel also makes weekday episodes only and fills weekends with older ones, but its Saturday reruns tend to be pulled from themed and compilation weeks rather than marched through in strict order.

This year the Saturday repeats started early, during the summer hiatus, instead of waiting for September. Fan trackers publish the list week by week. Our Wheel of Fortune page carries the bonus puzzle and winner for each new episode, so if a Saturday puzzle is not on it, that game is an encore.

FAQ

Is Jeopardy! new on Saturday? No. There has never been an original Saturday game; weekend slots carry encores, and only in the markets whose stations choose to run them.

Why is Jeopardy! a repeat in the summer? The season ends in late July and the next one starts in September. Those weeks are the production break, and the slot is filled with earlier games.

Do encores count toward a champion's winnings or streak? No. An encore is a rebroadcast of a game already played and already paid out; nothing about it changes the record.

For what is coming rather than what already aired, the week-ahead schedule lists the new games day by day, the weekly wrap has every Final Jeopardy! and winner, and the air-times guide covers channels and start times by city.

Sources · The Jeopardy! Fan — weekend encore recap and the upcoming encore list · Matt Carberry — Season 42 runs 46 weeks, Sept. 8 to July 24 · Wheel of Fortune with Andy Nguyen — Saturday rerun schedules · Jeopardy.com — official site

By the Game Show On Air desk · Updated Sept. 20, 7:26 a.m. ET