TL;DR: a baby shower Jeopardy board is five categories across, five clue values down, played in teams for 20–30 minutes. Below: the setup (whiteboard and screen versions), the host mechanics, and 50 original clues with answers — every factual one checked against a real source. Want it already built? Our trivia decks do the same job with tap-to-reveal answers.
Jeopardy is the best shower game nobody plans properly: it has the scoreboard most shower games lack, and needs the board, host and tie-break plan most hosts forget.
What the board actually is
Five categories across the top, five clue values down each column — $100 to $500, harder as the value climbs. A team picks a square (“Baby Basics for $300”), you read the clue, they answer in the form of a question, and the square comes off the board.
Two rules make it the show rather than a quiz sheet. Teams choose their own squares and keep the board until they get one wrong — that alone is what makes it a game instead of a list. And the clue is a statement, the response a question: “a baby goose” → “what is a gosling?” Loose enforcement in round one, strict in round two. The enforcement is the comedy.
Setting it up in ten minutes
The low-tech board (poster, whiteboard, sticky notes)
- Rule a 6×6 grid — five category columns plus a header row.
- Write the five category names across the top. Use the ones below or your own.
- Cover each of the 25 squares with a sticky note carrying its dollar value. Peeling one off is the ritual — don’t swap it for a printed grid.
- Keep the clues on numbered index cards in your hand. Never on the board: guests read ahead.
- Score on a second sheet, big enough to read from the back of the room.
The screen build (TV, laptop, video call)
- Build a 5×5 grid slide in Google Slides, Keynote or PowerPoint, then a clue slide and an answer slide per square.
- Hyperlink each cell to its clue slide, with a “back to board” link on every answer slide. Budget 30–40 minutes; this is the slow part.
- Or use a free board builder such as JeopardyLabs, which does the linking and hands you a URL.
- Test it on the actual screen. Text that reads fine on a laptop vanishes on a TV across a living room.
- Present from the machine you built it on — links don’t always survive the hop to a tablet. On a video call, share the window and read every clue aloud.
Team formats, by headcount
| Guests | Format | Who picks next |
|---|---|---|
| 6–10 | Individuals, or pairs | Round the circle in order |
| 10–20 | 3 teams of 3–6 | Whoever answered last |
| 20–40 | 4–5 teams, named by table | Rotate strictly by table |
| Virtual | 2–3 teams, answers in chat | Host calls the square aloud |
Teams beat individuals above about eight guests: shy guests never buzz in alone, but they will absolutely mutter the right answer to the person next to them.
Host mechanics
- Five-second window, counted down aloud. Without a timer the room deliberates and the game dies.
- Take the first team to shout, not the first hand up. Hands are ambiguous; volume isn’t.
- A wrong answer opens it to the room — no points off. Deducting points at a shower kills the mood faster than any awkward game.
- Appoint a scorekeeper who isn’t you. Hosting and scoring at once is how a game runs 15 minutes long.
- Don’t let the guest of honour play — make her the judge. She gets the final say, and nobody has to pretend to let her win.
Timing: 20–30 minutes
Twenty-five clues at roughly 45 seconds each — read, deliberate, answer, react — lands near 19 minutes; add banter and it’s 25. That’s one round, which is right for a shower where three or four games share the afternoon. Short on time: a 5×3 board, $100–$300, twelve minutes. Games are the whole event: both rounds below with a break between, since round two’s doubled values are what let a losing team come back. Running late: announce “last two squares” and clear the rest. Nobody counts.
Tie-breakers (decide before you start)
- Final wager. Each team secretly writes how many points it risks on the last clue. Right, they gain it; wrong, they lose it. Use a $1000 clue below.
- Closest guess. Ask the mother-to-be a number only she knows — her own birth weight, how many weeks she’s at. Nearest team takes it.
- Sudden death. One clue, first to shout. Set a spare aside beforehand; improvising turns a tie-break into a debate.
Round 1: 25 clues, $100–$500
Written for this page, every factual answer checked — sources at the bottom. Answers hide behind a tap, so you can run the game straight off this page without the room reading ahead.
Nursery Rhyme Lane
| Value | Clue (read this out) | Correct response |
|---|---|---|
| $100 | The mouse ran up this, and then it struck one. | RevealWhat is the clock? (“Hickory Dickory Dock”) |
| $200 | Miss Muffet was eating these two things when the spider arrived. | RevealWhat are curds and whey? |
| $300 | Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch this. | RevealWhat is a pail of water? |
| $400 | How many bags of wool the black sheep has. | RevealWhat is three? |
| $500 | What the third little piggy had for dinner. | RevealWhat is roast beef? |
What’s the Baby Called?
| Value | Clue (read this out) | Correct response |
|---|---|---|
| $100 | A baby goose. | RevealWhat is a gosling? |
| $200 | A baby ferret, rabbit or beaver. | RevealWhat is a kit? |
| $300 | A baby turkey. | RevealWhat is a poult? |
| $400 | A baby fish. | RevealWhat is a fry? |
| $500 | A baby pigeon — also a menu item. | RevealWhat is a squab? |
Celebrity Tots
| Value | Clue (read this out) | Correct response |
|---|---|---|
| $100 | Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s eldest, born 2013, named for a compass point. | RevealWho is North? |
| $200 | Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin picked this fruit for their daughter in 2004. | RevealWhat is Apple? |
| $300 | David and Victoria Beckham’s only daughter carries this number as a middle name. | RevealWhat is Seven? |
| $400 | Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ first child, 2014, named for Ryan’s late father. | RevealWho is James? |
| $500 | Chrissy Teigen and John Legend’s eldest, born 2016, has a name that means “moon.” | RevealWho is Luna? |
Old Wives’ Tales: Fact or Fiction
| Value | Clue (read this out) | Correct response |
|---|---|---|
| $100 | A fetal heartbeat over 140 bpm means it’s a girl. | RevealWhat is fiction? |
| $200 | Dangle a ring on a string over the bump and it will tell you the sex. | RevealWhat is fiction? (A coin flip.) |
| $300 | A properly spicy curry will reliably start labour. | RevealWhat is fiction? (An upset stomach isn’t labour.) |
| $400 | Sweet cravings mean a girl; salty cravings mean a boy. | RevealWhat is fiction? |
| $500 | Pregnant people really are told to hand the cat-litter box to somebody else. | RevealWhat is FACT? (Toxoplasmosis — the folklore that turned out to be medical advice.) |
Baby Basics
| Value | Clue (read this out) | Correct response |
|---|---|---|
| $100 | To the nearest half-pound, the average American newborn weighs about this. | RevealWhat is 7.5 pounds? |
| $200 | The umbilical cord stump usually drops off inside this window. | RevealWhat is one to three weeks? |
| $300 | The soft spot on a newborn’s skull goes by this name. | RevealWhat is the fontanelle? |
| $400 | The tar-black contents of a newborn’s first nappy, in one M-word. | RevealWhat is meconium? |
| $500 | This thick golden first milk shows up before the mature milk does. | RevealWhat is colostrum? |
Round 2: 25 harder clues, $200–$1000
Same categories, doubled values. Play it second so a trailing team can still win.
Nursery Rhyme Lane
| Value | Clue (read this out) | Correct response |
|---|---|---|
| $200 | In “Hush, Little Baby,” Papa’s opening purchase is this bird. | RevealWhat is a mockingbird? |
| $400 | Little Bo Peep has lost these, and doesn’t know where to find them. | RevealWhat are her sheep? |
| $600 | The farmer’s wife used this to cut off the three blind mice’s tails. | RevealWhat is a carving knife? |
| $800 | In “Pat-a-Cake,” the cake gets marked with this letter. | RevealWhat is B? |
| $1000 | “Mary’s Lamb” first appeared in the 1830 collection Poems for Our Children, credited to this editor. | RevealWho is Sarah Josepha Hale? |
What’s the Baby Called?
| Value | Clue (read this out) | Correct response |
|---|---|---|
| $200 | A baby spider. | RevealWhat is a spiderling? |
| $400 | A baby oyster. | RevealWhat is a spat? |
| $600 | A baby llama or alpaca. | RevealWhat is a cria? |
| $800 | A baby eel. | RevealWhat is an elver? |
| $1000 | A baby hawk or falcon, in falconers’ language. | RevealWhat is an eyas? |
Spare clue for a sudden-death tie-break: a baby echidna — what is a puggle?
Celebrity Tots
| Value | Clue (read this out) | Correct response |
|---|---|---|
| $200 | Kylie Jenner legally changed her son’s name from Wolf to this. | RevealWhat is Aire? |
| $400 | Kim and Kanye’s youngest, born 2019, is named for a book of the Bible. | RevealWho is Psalm? |
| $600 | Nicolas Cage named his son after Superman’s Kryptonian birth name. | RevealWhat is Kal-El? |
| $800 | Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ fourth child, whose name Ryan finally revealed in 2024. | RevealWho is Olin? |
| $1000 | Teigen and Legend’s fourth child, born June 2023, is named for this small brown songbird. | RevealWho is Wren? |
Old Wives’ Tales: Fact or Fiction
| Value | Clue (read this out) | Correct response |
|---|---|---|
| $200 | Reaching your arms overhead loops the cord round the baby’s neck. | RevealWhat is fiction? |
| $400 | The Chinese gender calendar predicts sex from the mother’s age and conception month. | RevealWhat is fiction? (About as accurate as guessing.) |
| $600 | Every hot soak is out — a warm bath is as risky as a hot tub. | RevealWhat is fiction? (The caution is water of 101°F and up; a warm bath is fine.) |
| $800 | Eating dates in the final weeks of pregnancy is linked to shorter labour. | RevealWhat is FACT, with an asterisk? (Trials point that way; their authors call the evidence low-quality.) |
| $1000 | Nipple stimulation, the oldest midwife’s trick, has trial evidence behind it. | RevealWhat is FACT? (A Cochrane review found fewer women still not in labour at 72 hours.) |
This is the category that starts arguments, which is the point. Three of these ten are true, and they aren’t the three anybody expects.
Baby Basics
| Value | Clue (read this out) | Correct response |
|---|---|---|
| $200 | On the CDC’s milestone checklist, most babies sit without support by this age. | RevealWhat is 9 months? |
| $400 | On the same checklist, most babies take their first steps alone by this age. | RevealWhat is 15 months? |
| $600 | This one food is off-limits for the entire first year, because of botulism spores. | RevealWhat is honey? |
| $800 | Newborns get a shot of this vitamin at birth to prevent a rare bleeding disorder. | RevealWhat is vitamin K? |
| $1000 | This 0-to-10 newborn score, taken at one minute and five, named for its 1952 inventor. | RevealWhat is the Apgar score? |
If you’d rather not host and keep score
All of the above assumes you want to be the host. If you don’t, the alternative is a deck that runs itself. BabyShowerShow has six trivia decks, 90 questions — baby facts, baby animals, old wives’ tales, milestones, famous fictional babies and traditions around the world — on any screen you already own: a TV, a laptop, a phone passed round, or a shared window on a call. Question up, room argues, tap, answer appears. Nothing to build, sort or print, and no account.
Round 1 of every game is free, so you can try the format first; all 20 games are $9.99 once, for 30 days — not a subscription, and long enough to cover a gender reveal or sip-and-see after the shower. What it won’t do is keep score. That job stays yours either way.
The honest trade: a hand-built board is more personal, because you can slip in clues about the parents themselves. If that’s the shower you’re throwing, build it and use the 50 clues above. If the shower is Thursday and you haven’t started, take the deck.
FAQ
How many categories should a baby shower Jeopardy board have?
Five, with five clues each — 25 squares, 20–25 minutes. Fewer looks thin; more won’t fit legibly on a poster or a TV.
Can you play baby shower Jeopardy on Zoom?
Yes — the board gives everyone a shared focal point. Share the window, read every clue aloud, take answers in chat. Mechanics: baby shower games for Zoom.
How is this different from regular baby shower trivia?
Trivia is a list of questions; Jeopardy is a board with values, team control and a comeback round. For the plain list, we have 50 baby trivia questions and answers — different questions from these, so you can run both. Prizes for a winning team should be divisible: see the shower prize guide.
Sources
- CDC — milestone checklists (sits unsupported by 9 months; walks alone by 15): cdc.gov
- AAP / HealthyChildren — vitamin K at birth; no honey before age 1: healthychildren.org
- Mayo Clinic — cord stump falls off in 1–3 weeks: mayoclinic.org
- Cleveland Clinic — colostrum, the thick golden first milk: clevelandclinic.org
- ACOG — the Apgar score, at 1 and 5 minutes (Virginia Apgar, 1952): acog.org
- CDC — toxoplasmosis and cat owners: cdc.gov
- Cleveland Clinic — hot tubs in pregnancy (the caution is water temperature): clevelandclinic.org
- BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth — dates in the peripartum period; effect found, evidence quality rated poor by the authors: springer.com
- Cochrane — breast stimulation for cervical ripening and induction: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Britannica — baby animal names: britannica.com
- Celebrity names checked against contemporaneous reporting in People, TODAY Parents and NBC News.