JEOPARDY! champ Yogesh Raut has admitted to pulling a brazen stunt involving a phony reaction to a Daily Double in the 2024 Tournament of Champions finals.
The controversial pro quizzer faces fan-favorite Ben Chan and the formidable Troy Meyer for $250,000 and a Jeopardy! Masters slot.
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During Wednesday’s 2024 ToC match, Yogesh found a Daily Double, and with his $9,200 in second place to Troy, he went all in.
The $1,200 clue in the “17th CENTURY WRITING” category read, “In his 1624 history of Virginia and New England, he included the famous story of his rescue.”
Yogesh theatrically shrugged, “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll just guess a random name: John Smith.”
But host Ken Jennings, not easily fooled, saw through Yogesh’s potential charade, deadpanning, “It is John Smith as you well know.”
Yogesh’s “random guess” turned out to be spot on, doubling his score to a whopping $18,400, causing a seismic shift in the game.
‘WEIRD FLEX BUT OK’
Viewers were left scratching their heads, unsure if Yogesh was genuinely clueless or playing a prank – which would be an ill-timed gesture given the gravity of the tournament.
“What was with the ‘I don’t know. I guess I’ll say a random name’? It seemed like he was pretending not to know, but he knew it like the back of his hand…LOL,” one Reddit user wrote.
“John Smith is the most stereotypically common name, hence the joke,” another defended.
“It’s a joke that didn’t land,” argued a third.
“Yeah, that was weird. Like you clearly knew that, why are you acting like it’s even a hard clue?” echoed a fourth.
‘100 PERCENT CERTAIN’
Taking to Facebook the next day, Yogesh set the record straight—as many suspected, the moment was not a guess at all but rather the “biggest troll-portunity of them all.”
“Troy told me after the game that he thought my ‘John Smith’ bit was clever (and you can see him laugh during the game).”
“Ben, on the other hand, thought I might have been hedging my bets in case I was wrong.”
“Ben, sweetie, if I weren’t 100% certain of the answer, there’s no way I would have included a first name,” Yogesh quipped.
Yogesh’s clarification that he was pretending not to know the answer failed to quell the flood of reactions
One Facebook user summed it up with, “Good God, what an egotistical dumb a**. Lol.”
Meanwhile, Troy clinched a record-breaking win with a staggering $46,800 haul, leaving Troy with one final win and Ben with one win (three wins secure the title).
RAUT OF LINE?
It’s no secret that the power player is controversial on and off-screen, and that showed during an earlier Daily Double during his semifinal win.
Emily Sands had $7600, Yogesh led with $13,000, and David Sibley had $2200 in Double Jeopardy! when she landed on a Daily Double.
Emily opted to go all-in on the video clue under the category: “Shades of Blue.”
It read: “In his ‘Great Waves’ print, Hokusai used this imported blue pigment first made in Germany.”
Emily incorrectly guessed “Cobalt,” and she looked crushed as host Ken Jennings told her the correct response was “Prussian Blue.”
But as Ken said the correct response, Yogesh could also be heard uttering “Prussian Blue” under his breath.
J-archive – which chronicles every episode – even included Yogesh’s mention of the correct response but has since removed it.
The unbecoming remark did not win fans over, especially since the huge miss may have cost Emily the game and being a finalist instead.
One fan wrote on Reddit, “Did I hear Yogesh quietly say ‘prussian blue’ as Ken was telling Emily the correct response?
“You just saw your opponent lose everything in a huge daily double, and your first thought is to tell them that you knew the correct answer?”
And another, “Blurting out the correct answer to Emily’s missed daily double was so uncalled for.”
Emily responded in the Reddit thread, “I didn’t hear it, wouldn’t care if I had.
“Yogesh was nothing but friendly throughout the ToC and you’d have seen all three of us in a post-game celebratory hug had they not cut to Ken for his closing remarks.
She added, “Yogesh knows everything I do plus another 40%+ so I knew I’d have to play well and get lucky to win. I almost kept it interesting to the end but I have zero regrets as to how things played out.”
Ken also shaded Yogesh in the post-game chat of that match, “Did you enjoy that game? It looked like you were almost having fun.”
CONTROVERSIAL CONTESTANT
Yogesh made a splash during his three-win stint in 2023 by blasting Jeopardy! as “unimportant” and a “glorified reality show” on Facebook upon losing.
The $98,000 winner (who scored a perfect game) also used three of his four on-stage stories to brag about being a big name in the trivia world.
He claimed that he beat James Holzhauer at high school trivia, (whom he called “Jamie”), boasted of being recognized by a now-deceased contestant India Cooper, and beat host Ken, 49, at a trivia convention.
This persona didn’t go over well, nor did his fiendish buzzer technique or failure to clap for his spirited victor Katie Palumbo.
Yogesh then proceeded to post online rants slamming fans, the culture of Jeopardy!, and his peers the next week.
He wrote in part: “Jeopardy has not nor will ever be the Olympics of quizzing. Jeopardy is not the problem, its centrality to American quizzing culture is.
“There will never be healthy quizzing culture in this country until we can learn to stop pretending Jeopardy! is important.”
He added that his three wins will “never top the list of my quizzing accomplishments — not even my quizzing accomplishments of 2022. It is entertaining to watch but it bears the same relationship to real quizzing that ‘Holey Moley’ does to golf.”
Some fans thought Yogesh would be banned for good – instead, he’s now a finalist in its most esteemed tournament.
THREE FOR ALL
The 2024 Tournament of Champions premiered on February 23, 2024.
Previously known as the 2023 ToC, this year’s throwdown was postponed from the fall due to the WGA strike, and in the meantime, past-player Champions Wildcard and Second Chance contests have ensued.
It finally returned with an unprecedented 27 contestants (the largest playing field ever).
The quarterfinals, however, were utterly shocking, with the most highly anticipated contestants losing upon arrival.
21-day champ and golden boy Cris Pannullo was defeated in a blowout to a three-day champ, and its second seed, 13-day champ Ray LaLonde lost to none other than Celebrity Jeopardy! winner Ike Barenholtz.
Fans called Ike’s win “the craziest thing to ever happy in the history of Jeopardy!” on social media.
Ken Jennings called this year’s Tournament of Champions opening round its “most dramatic in history,” and even Matt Amodio joked on X that losing from the first podium was “getting old.”
Thankfully, the semifinals went more as-predicted, and now we have our three finalists.
Troy Meyer is a music executive from Tampa, Florida. He dominated last season, earning a massive $214,802 in just six wins.
Troy is the top quizzer in the United States on the invite-only online trivia club Learned League, and his wife defeated James Holzhauer on The Chase.
Ben Chan is a philosophy professor from Green Bay, Wisconsin, who amassed nine wins and $252,200 last season.
Ben won all nine of his games in a runaway fashion and is the first contestant ever to do so.
The frisky college professor is a fan favorite, especially because he was plucked from obscurity into greatness compared to his trivia titan foes.
Ben also lost his run on that Benedict Final Jeopardy, where a one-letter typo ended it all.
Like the last Tournament of Champions, the finals are a first-to-three-wins format.
That means Ben, Yogesh, and Troy could duke it out over three games or up to seven.
The trivia trio returns tonight for game three at 7 pm E.T. on ABC.
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