Still speculating over what the big secret is about tonight's episode of Jeopardy!
Richard Leung points out to me that a three-way tie with all the players at zero has happened before. As noted at this site, it occurred on the show that aired on September 11, 1984. That was the second show of the Alex Trebek era.
But consider this. In that promo to which I linked (this one), they say, "In 23 years, it's never happened." That would seem to indicate that it never happened on the show…but a fast calculation shows that September 11, 1984 was 23 years, 1 month and 5 days ago. [Correction: No, it wasn't.] So the first time there was a three-way tie with zero scores was more than 23 years ago. It could still be that. And maybe it's significant that they said "In 23 years, it's never happened" instead of, "In the history of Jeopardy!, it's never happened." I think there were several ties, zero and otherwise, in the earlier version of the show hosted by Art Fleming.
Meanwhile, as has been noted on several message boards this morning, there's an interesting clue which may give it away or it may be something that a smart guy did to trick us. The address of that page with the promo announcement ends with "20070314_3wt.php." Note the "3wt" in there. One would assume it stands for "three way tie." That would seem to tip the surprise but, as Maxwell Smart would say, maybe that's what they want us to think.
We shall see, we shall see.