I think it is a little overrated, but i agree on the comment of how it is played. when i used to play it the class would make groups and then make an order within the group. the questions don't HAVE to be single word answers. even if the question is as simple as "what time did so-and-so teacher get up?" make the students answer "she/he got up at 6 o'clock", instead of it just being "6 o'clock". the good thing about games like jeopardy is that you can focus on a grammar point for most of the questions and the students still feel like they are getting a break from english training. my major beef with the game is that once a team has a lot of points the other teams give up. that is why i now play "the typhoon game" which i am sure you've read about on other sites. if not here is the gist of it

prior to class make a score sheet. with random scores from as little to as much as you want...i usually have somewhere in the low 20's as my highest score. add a few T's for the score. make it in a grid format with a, b, c, d, e on one side and 1,2,3,4,5 on the top side

when class starts make a grid on the board just like your score sheet but don't fill in the points.

when the students answer they say i want a-2 or whatever, and they are given the score you wrote down prior to class. the T's are 'typhoons' and erase all the points that the team has earned. the students get really excited b/c it pretty much means at any point they can come ahead or the team that is ahead can lose it all. if you find a team has gotten points and no longer plays for fear of getting a typhoon you can call on them regardless if they attempt to answer or what i usually do is change one of the scores on the sheet to something right above the winning teams point (i.e. yellow team has 35 points, and isn't playing, red team has 12 points and just answered a question correctly...they picked square E4, which says is 8 points but i'll change it to 23 points or more so that they are now equal with yellow team forcing yellow team to play again).

the students love the game and are always requesting to play it. but i try to keep it a treat for when we do play it. much like jeopardy it can be played out.

now bingo, i think that game is WAY overrated. and in japan, we do BINGO fore everything.