I'll take AWKWARD SILENCE for $800

Silence is a unusual sound in Jeopardy. It usually indicates hesitation or confusion among the contestants on a show where it's most important to answer first. Questions that stump all competitors are rare, mostly.

An analysis of Jeopardy since 2010 found that not only are contestants guessing incorrectly more often, but the times that no contestant knows the correct answer are also up. When none of the three contestants can answer the question correctly, Jeopardy buffs will refer to it as a 'triple stumper.' In the past three months, this phenomenon reached an all-time high.

"As a contestant, it's actually a moment to think hard about a clue to see if you can reason your way to the right answer," said Joshua Weikert, a recent Jeopardy contestant who won seven games in a row. "But a triple-stumper slows things down in a way that I felt acutely."

Jeopardy is an American game show where contestants work to prove their knowledge of categories ranging "U.S. GEOGRAPHY" to "BOOK TITLE ADJECTIVES" to "DICK'S SPORTING: GOOD." The show is known for its widely adored late host, Alex Trebek, and its dedicated fan base.

Contestants must answer in the form of a question, so "This number is two and two added together" would be answered as "What is four?" Questions are rated by difficulty and give differing levels of money in two rounds of 30 questions, culminating in a final question that contestants must bet a certain amount of their earned money on.

To boost ratings, recent years have seen the rise of tournaments like "Jeopardy! Masters" which collects some of Jeopardy's most successful winners together to answer more advanced trivia. Commenters thought this might have been the reason for the uptick in difficult answers, but even without these games, recent games have held more triple stumpers than ever before.

One explanation for this increase could simply be that Jeopardy questions are getting harder. The indication that not only individual guesses are more often wrong, but that all three contestants are stumped is possible evidence.

Brian Hamilton utilized historical Jeopardy clues for his graduate thesis, examining win rates and categories.

"One of the ethos of the people who wrote the questions is that you don't want them to be impossible," Hamilton said. "You still want people to get the answer."

It also may be that contestant quality is going down overall. While difficult to quantify, contestant winnings have remained constant since 2010, and the number of contestants with a long streak is also the same.

The growing frequency of triple stumpers raises questions about Jeopardy's future direction. If the trend continues, producers may need to recalibrate question difficulty or reconsider contestant selection processes. For viewers, though, these moments of collective stumping offer a different kind of satisfaction: the rare opportunity to shout an answer at the TV that even the champions couldn't figure out.