Any insights on how a computer can win at Jeopardy?

In a trial round of against former high winning champions of the television quiz show Jeopardy, a computer designed by IBM came out on top. To me this seems extraordinary. I can understand how it can have huge amounts of information stored. What I don’t understand is how it can interpret the questions and use them to organize its information search. Are call center workers in danger of being replaced by computers?