Alex Trebek, 1940-2020

Enlarge / Alex Trebek, seen here hosting a themed Jeopardy tournament in January 2020-and while the tournament's name was about high-performing contestants from the series' past, today, we are going to say that it's specifically about Trebek himself. (credit: Getty Images)

The staff of long-running TV game show Jeopardy confirmed on Sunday that its beloved host Alex Trebek has passed away. He was 80 years old.

While the announcement did not go into details, other than confirming he passed on Sunday in the presence of family and friends, Trebek had previously been transparent with fans about his stage-four pancreatic cancer diagnosis, using YouTube to tell fans directly about the news in March 2019. At the time, he said he chose to speak to fans via YouTube "to prevent you from reading or hearing some overblown or inaccurate reports."

Since then, Trebek went on to continue hosting the series between rounds of treatment, posting regular updates to Jeopardy's YouTube account. The last such message came in July of this year, which confirmed that the show's regular production had been put on hold due to COVID-19 precautions. This allowed him, among other things, to write a memoir that came out shortly after that last YouTube message: The Answer is... Reflections on my Life.

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