A downloaded Google Slides Jeopardy template can fail in a specific, predictable way: a few hyperlinks point at the wrong slide, there's no way back to the board from clue 17, and you find out mid-lesson.
Building your own avoids that, because you know how the links are wired. Here's how to do it, and an honest account of the five things Slides can't do no matter how well you build it.
How the mechanic actually works
A Slides board is a hyperlink maze. The main board is one slide. Every clue is its own slide. Clicking a cell jumps to that clue's slide, and a shape on the clue slide jumps back.
The part that matters: link to slides, not to slide numbers. In Google Slides, when you insert a link you can choose a specific slide in the presentation. That link follows the slide if you reorder things later. Linking by position is what makes templates fall apart the moment someone inserts a slide.
Building it step by step
1. Set up the board slide
Create one slide with a table or a grid of rectangles: five columns for categories, five rows for point values. Type your category names in the top row and the values in the cells.
Use shapes rather than a table if you can. Shapes are easier to hyperlink individually and easier to recolor during play.
2. Create the clue slides
Add 25 slides, one per clue. Keep them in a predictable order — category one top to bottom, then category two — so you can find things while editing.
On each clue slide, put the clue in large text. If you want the answer on the same slide, add it as a text box and cover it with a rectangle you delete or move during play. If you want a separate answer slide, that's 50 slides total and twice the linking work. Same-slide is usually the better trade.
3. Wire the board cells
On the board slide, select a cell. Insert a link, choose "Slides in this presentation," and pick the matching clue slide. Repeat 24 times.
This is the tedious part and there's no shortcut. Do it in one sitting so you don't lose your place.
4. Add return buttons
On each clue slide, add a small shape in a corner — an arrow or a "Board" label — and link it back to the board slide.
Build this on your first clue slide, then copy that shape and paste it onto every other clue slide. The link comes with the copy. Skipping return buttons leaves you with no way back to the board, which strands the game mid-clue.
5. Turn off slide advance during play
Present in slideshow mode, but don't use arrow keys or click on empty space — either will advance to the next slide in order and break the illusion. Navigate only through your hyperlinks. Tell yourself this before you start; it's easy to forget in front of a class.
6. Track used clues
Slides won't do this for you. Two workable methods: keep the presentation in edit mode on a second screen and gray out cells as they're used, or keep a printed copy of the board and cross clues off by hand.
The printed copy is more reliable and doubles as your backup if something goes wrong.
What Slides can't do
Five limits, and they're structural rather than fixable:
No scoring. You keep score on the whiteboard or on paper. For a five-team game with steals and point deductions, that's a real amount of mental overhead while also hosting.
No timer. You watch a clock or use a phone. Enforcing a consistent answer window across 25 clues is harder than it sounds without a visible countdown.
No used-clue tracking. Covered above, and it's a frequent source of confusion mid-game.
No wagering support. A final round with secret wagers means index cards and manual arithmetic.
Link maintenance. Every year you update the board, you risk breaking links. Test all 25 before the lesson, every time. This is also why shared templates can degrade — each person who edits one adds a chance of a broken link.
When Google Slides is the right choice
Genuinely, sometimes it is:
- Your district hasn't approved outside game tools. Slides is already in the stack, so there's nothing to get approved.
- You want total design control. Fonts, colors, images, layout — it's a presentation, so you can do anything Slides can do.
- You need it fully offline. Download as a PowerPoint file or use offline mode, and it works with no network at all.
- You're embedding it in a larger lesson deck. If the game is one segment of a presentation you're already running, keeping everything in one file is simpler.
- You already have a working template. If yours runs and you've fixed the links, rebuilding it elsewhere buys you scoring and a timer, and costs you the rebuild.
When to use a dedicated board tool instead
The case is straightforward: scoring, timing, and used-clue tracking are handled for you, which frees your attention for running the room. If you host frequently, that's the difference between a game you manage and a game you host.
Options vary in what they trade for that. JeopardyLabs is free with no account required and offers a downloadable offline version, but has no buzzer and no built-in special rounds. Factile adds Buzzer Mode and built-in Double Jeopardy and Daily Double on its paid tiers, from $48/year. Kleveroo's Board Battle is host-led on a shared screen, projector, TV, or screen share, with the host controlling the board, timer, and scoring, and public boards can be played before you make an account.
A fuller comparison is in [our roundup of Jeopardy game makers](/best-jeopardy-game-makers), and the individual writeups are in [JeopardyLabs alternatives](/articles/jeopardylabs-alternatives) and [Factile alternatives](/articles/factile-alternatives). If you're weighing a move off a slide deck more generally, [running a Jeopardy game without PowerPoint](/jeopardy-without-powerpoint) covers that side.
If you keep using Slides
Three habits that prevent most mid-lesson failures:
- Test every link before the lesson. All 25, in slideshow mode.
- Keep a printed board. Crossing off used clues by hand, and having something to fall back on if the file misbehaves.
- Make a copy before editing for a new unit. Never edit the working original. When links break, you'll want the version that ran last month.
The content still matters more than the container. For building a board that maps to what you actually taught, see [end-of-unit review games](/articles/end-of-unit-review-games), and for running it with a full class, [how to play a Jeopardy-style game in the classroom](/articles/how-to-play-jeopardy-in-the-classroom).
Google Slides is a product of Google. Kleveroo is not affiliated with Google or with Jeopardy! Productions, Inc.