Show HN: I built a Jeopardy game maker with buzzer support

This is really nice. Well done!

I've had a jeopardy based toy project on the backburner for several years, with the north star goal of solving the problem I've had with every jeopardy game I've ever played: you need an Alex/host who knows the answer and can judge players right or wrong. This ability to buzz in, be wrong and then have another player respond is fairly crucial to real strategic play.

I get this is for fun and not meant to be "real" jeopardy, but I wonder if you could add support for something like this by allowing a "join as host" option when using the QR code that would reveal the answer and not have a score.

Great work and thanks for sharing it!

That's funny, I too made a phone-buzzer app to watch Jeopardy with the in-laws. All it does is pause the video on the laptop for 10 seconds when someone presses the button on their phone, and show their name. On the plus side it works for any YouTube/PeerTube/local-file video, on the minus side no score-keeping or even checking of the answer.

https://github.com/remram44/video-buzzer

I think we only used it once, years ago.

Very cool! I built a no-code version of this for my friends' birthdays where all of the clues were about them (inside jokes, dumb bets, catch phrases, etc). I just printed out categories in a grid on a sheet of paper and had a bunch of questions listed out in OneNote on my phone and manually kept score. I didn't put penalties in place if somebody got it wrong to encourage people to participate vs just optimizing for score. "Jonpardy" and "Joshpardy" are two of our friend groups most cherished and repeatedly cited events from the past 10 years.

I've dabbled with the idea of creating some real implementation of this. I most recently put together an @Midnight / After Midnight no-code game for a friend's bachelor party. The buzz-in mechanics and score-keeping are somewhat similar. Maybe you could repurpose your core logic for several different game show themes?

When I was in high school in the mid 80s I was in the av club and we filmed things for local access cable. We made a jeopardy game on a Commodore 64 and converted a joystick into three buttons with latches to prevent ties. We broadcast three episodes and had the most feedback to the local paper of any local access tv show. We were proud. Fun to still see kids doing this.

Every other anime convention I go to has a fan panel featuring an interactive Jeopardy-style game. It's usually built using powerpoint or a half baked webapp that crashes the moment the audience connects. Would love to see more of them use buzzinga instead!

Make this a tvOS app and it would be perfect. Parties aren't fun if you have to lug out your laptop and hook up the hdmi to the tv.

You've made it onto Digg's homepage so expect plenty of traffic https://digg.com/gaming/link/jeopardy-buzzinga-at-home-game?...

Very fun! I can't wait to give it a run through when I finish some of the questions. I have really enjoyed the "Hacker Jeopardy" at Derbycon and a few others and I will enjoy the opportunity to play without being forced to drink an intentionally warmed bottle of smirnoff as punishment for getting the wrong answer =)

Chrome+WebUSB should allow supporting Buzz! USB buzzers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz%21

https://github.com/bbeardsley/BuzzIO

There is actually a pretty cool clone of Svoja igra (russian jeopardy clone <https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Своя_игра>) sigame <https://vladimirkhil.com/si/game> which is popular with russian streamers and is open source. It is available as a web and native application, and has an extensive library of packs (sets of questions, tho many of them are in russian).

“I’m a lawyer for Sony Pictures Television, producers of the hit syndicated television show “Jeopardy.” While we appreciate our fans, we cannot allow this to continue. You must cease and desist” arriving in your inbox in 3…2…

This is cool, congrats on launching!

Jeopardy is an extremely popular “playing in Discord with friends” activity in Russia / CIS (called Svoya Igra here, lit. “own game”, or just svoyak for short). I think this is the most popular app of this kind here: https://vladimirkhil.com/si/game

That's really cool. I always liked trying to do interactive applications like this.

What's the story behind the name, "Buzzinga" aka Bazinga?

Do you implement the Jeopardy!-style buzzer lockout or can contestants hit their buzzers as much as they want without penalty? https://www.jeopardy.com/jbuzz/behind-scenes/how-does-jeopar...

That looks like a lot of fun... can you share a little about what you used to make phones work nicely as buzzers?

For a few years I was hoping someone would create something like this, or I’d eventually do it myself. Thank you!

fantastic! I’ve been building game show buzzers and various PCBs for them for about ten years and used them at a lot of events.

any chance you’ll open source this?

My boards and code live here:

https://github.com/netik/rpi_gameshow

Wow, get a few of these bad boys and you're in business!

(Physical usb buzzers)

https://www.delcomproducts.com/productdetails.asp?PartNumber...

This is super cool!

I'm going to try in the next game night with my friends. Will let you know how it goes.

Great Implementation!! Jackbox games are ever more popular with remote work. There's a huge market for games like these.

I think bundling a few of these and selling B2B to corporates as FunFriday activities would bring huge sales.

Very cool! Love the project. Thanks.

I watch Jeopardy a lot -- that bartender from New York achieving 9 days of wins, was an amazing thing to watch.

Curious: are you using questions from the game or built your own database?

You should pitch this for the next Chaos Computer Congress. They used to play "Hacker Jeopardy" with some self hosted solution. Yours looks much better.

This is awesome! Is there any chance of open source?

Hi! this looks amazing. wanted to confirm what the pricing will look like? i want to try it out in a college quiz contest.

I have no notes, this is really dialed in.

A classic thing I was looking for back when I was doing technical training, well done.

Great job! Really well done. Congrats on launch!

That's awesome! Gotta check this out.

only one I've seen so far is buzzin.live, which acts only as a buzzer (pretty good one at that)

Is the website open source?

You're going to want to change the wording to "Jeopardy-style" rather than implying that it's a Jeopardy product.

I would also recommend changing the default color scheme; it's inviting a lawsuit.

This seems like a cease and desist letter waiting to happen. Are you worried that using the name “Jeopardy” and styling it so closely to the actual game might bring Sony lawyers knocking on your door?

Love it! It's not really Jeopardy without the buzzers, is it?