After the 1st commercial break after Alex is talking to the contestants, is there usually an edit while he walks back to the podium?

Sometimes when they cut to commercial, you can see him shuffling some papers as well as hear him cross off stuff using his marker.

Does he read the questions from paper? I always thought there was a monitor in his podium.

No, it's all done in real time.


Yes, he reads the clues from a big piece of paper that has them all listed on there just as they are on the board. At the College Tourney taping I attended, this actually caused him to slip up once when someone jumped from the top of a category to the bottom. He was just watching his paper and expecting to go the next clue. (That part, of course, was edited out.) He marks the clues off with the marker as he goes.

Mike's got it right. Chris' question may arise from the distortion of the camera lens. That walk back to the podium is, in reality, just 2 steps.

And while on the subject, here's a bonus factoid. Because stop-downs can be lengthy, and because Alex's knees are bad, he has a very unique stool to sit on that still has it appear as though he is standing. It's a bicycle seat kind of affair that is high enough off the ground to not diminish his height when he sits. The seat's vertical support slides upstage and downstage in a track that takes it from it's usual position, hidden under the podium, to where he can use it.


Randy
tvrandywest.com

My understanding is that the giant card on his podium just has the responses and if they're video or audio, if necessary (and who it is, if it's Clue Crew or celeb). The actual clue is read off of the monitor in his podium (and on video clues, the text of the clue is always shown on the game board with a "Video Clue" tag above it--the clip itself is shown on a monitor above the slave tote boards just to the left of the board [Pat Sajak] that our home audience can't see, but our players can see [PS]).

The only card Trebek has with the actual clue on it, AFAIK, is the FJ! card.

But this doesn't explain how he could read the wrong clue if someone skips to the bottom of the category, unless someone brought up the wrong clue on his monitor (which doesn't seem likely since the correct one was on the screen at the time). He has to have the clues on the paper in order for that to happen, and I'm almost certain he explained that to the audience during a taping break.

I remember reading someplace that part of his preshow prep was to go over both of those sheets, do a pre-read of all of the clues (reinforcing your opinion), and address any potential pronunciation issues with the writers. I've always been under the impression that the text of the clue was on that sheet as well.