'Jeopardy!' host Ken Jennings finally addresses the hardest part about his job: 'They make you...'

After being the star player for a long time, Ken Jennings took over as the only host of "Jeopardy!" and has done a commendable job, winning the hearts of the fans. However, even with considerable experience, there are a few things that Jennings struggles to do. Speaking to Mental Floss, the host opened up about the hardest thing to do on the show for him.

Talking about his new book "The Complete Kennections" with Mental Floss, Jennings discussed how his time on "Jeopardy!" He expressed that he still feels he will never be as good a host as Alex Trebek. "He was just so perfect for that job. Like he’d been engineered in an Ontario lab for it. We miss Alex every day," he said.

However, Jennings did believe that he brought something to the table as he had been a contestant on the show before. "I remember what it was like to be a contestant. So a lot of that is just remembering the panic. There’s a lot of big feelings when you’re a Jeopardy! Player. And so every morning I come out and I try to chat with the players, I try to talk them down. I convey to them, if possible, that I’m on their side and everybody on the show is on their side, and we just want to see three people play well," he told the publication.

When asked if he helps the writers with the clues, Jennings said he doesn't need to, despite all his experience. He praised the team of Emmy-winning writers, explaining the amount of work that goes into researching and producing 61 clues for the game, along with the bonus clues for every episode. "We’ve got, like, eight to 10 researchers who have to kick the tires on every single fact," Jennings noted. "And the writers are great at it. They do not need my help," he added. 

When Jennings was asked to come up with a "Jeopardy!" anecdote, the host revealed that it was the hardest part of his job. "That has got to be the hardest part of being on that show 75 times. Answering the clues is hard enough, but then they make you have a funny story every half an hour. Nobody has 75 funny stories," he said. However, the host admitted that it has been easier for him as he gets to travel a lot, and sometimes, he even makes up stories. "I could say that a llama spit on me in Peru or something. And that’s maybe not even true. But here’s the thing about Jeopardy!—we do not fact-check the stories," he stated. 

In the end, Jennings reminisced about his time on the show as a contestant and admitted that the one wrong answer that ended his 74-game winning streak still troubled him to this day. "You know, once a day, it’s still going to eat at you. For me, that was H&R Block, the final question I got wrong, which means pretty much every time I drive past a strip mall, I get to remember my failure. So that’s nice," he candidly joked.

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