BEST JEOPARDY! HOST: IS THE ANSWER ALEX OR KEN?

OUR TAKE ON WHO'S TOP OF THE LIST: THE CLASSIC FAVORITE OR THE CHAMP TURNED EMMY NOMINEE

ALEX TREBEK There are GOATs, and then there are lions. With no knock against “Greatest of All Time” player turned host Ken Jennings, whose nerd-tastic savoir-faire is keeping Jeopardy! relevant for the next generation of trivia nuts, Alex Trebek will now and forever be remembered not only as the face and voice, but as the soul and heart, of TV’s smartest quiz show.

Icons like Trebek aren’t born, they’re made, and Alex honed his craft as a newscaster and TV host in Canada before decamping to California in the early 1970s. After rising through the ranks of more middling game shows, he landed the prized Jeopardy! gig when it was successfully relaunched in syndication in 1984. It was a perfect fit. As I noted in my tribute when Trebek passed away in November 2020 after a public battle with pancreatic cancer, he was “a constant and reassuring presence in so many lives…a comforting oasis of intelligence and quick thinking presided over by a man with the air of a gentleman scholar.”