Yogesh Raut gets candid on why he ‘chose to speak out’ against Jeopardy! and won’t apologize for controversial posts

 

JEOPARDY! champion Yogesh Raut is at peace with his sudden TV fame and fortune – and not being everyone’s cup of tea, he’s told The U.S. Sun in a no-holds-barred interview.

Yogesh won the 2024 Tournament of Champions and placed runner-up on ABC’s Jeopardy! Masters, but his controversial Facebook statements about the game show cast a shadow over his accolades.

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Yogesh Raut – seen here during his initial 2023 run – opened up on his Facebook posts to The U.S. SunCredit: Jeopardy!

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Yogesh Raut won the 2024 Tournament of ChampionsCredit: JEOPARDY

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He placed second on ABC’s Jeopardy! Masters in May, losing to Victoria Groce (left) and beating James Holzhauer (center)Credit: JEOPARDY
Now, he’s told The U.S. Sun where he’s coming from, starting with clarifying that his 2023 posts were not a knee-jerk reaction to losing.

“Almost everyone repeated comments I said after I lost, which provides the implication that my comments were a result of my loss,” Yogesh shared in an hour-long Zoom interview.

“Many people can testify I said most of those things in the exact same way before I knew I’d ever be in Jeopardy!… I am not a sore loser.”

The Vancouver, Washington-based writer, podcaster, and social/personality psychologist initially tore through a three-day streak in January 2023.

He amassed a dominant $96,403 and partook in the only perfect game in the 21st century.

As many Jeopardy! players have experienced, Yogesh instantly received criticism, with viewers and media outlets picking apart his buzzer style, Q&A stories about his quizzing accomplishments (like beating host Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer at trivia), and a perceived lack of sportsmanship upon losing.

But more surprising, as followers of the show know, was that Yogesh instantly hit back.

Yogesh directly responded to critics – and the very concept of Jeopardy! – in a string of since-deleted posts on his public Facebook page.

He made national news for a week-long series of posts that took on Jeopardy!’s relevance, the trivia community, and fan culture the week after his run aired.

Some of his critiques-turned-pull quotes included calling Jeopardy! the “Holey Moley of Golf,” a “glorified reality show,” and “not compatible with true social justice.”

He wrote in part, “Jeopardy has not nor will ever be the Olympics of quizzing.”

“There will never be healthy quizzing culture in this country until we can learn to stop pretending Jeopardy! is important,” he added.

This caused a spiral effect, with fans and outlets leaning into the villain narrative and Yogesh getting so much hate he had to unfollow the show on Facebook.

Yogesh Raut’s Jeopardy! appearances

Yogesh has taken to the Alex Trebek stage for three different stints.

January 2023: Three-day winning streak during Season 39 ($96,403)

February-March 2024: Tournament of Champions winner ($250,000)

May 2024: Jeopardy! Masters Season 2, second place ($250,000 and guaranteed spot in Masters Season 3)

Total earnings: $596,403

Career statistics: 501 correct, 44 incorrect on clues. 16/17 on Daily Doubles. Average Coryat: $17,478

‘NOT AN EMOTIONAL REACTION’

“Oftentimes when I’m being critical, I’m talking about a segment of the fandom, because people have supported me, defended me, reached out to me telling me I’m an inspiration,” he continued.

“The critical comments I made are fundamentally targeted at a minority of the fandom- a loud and vocal part.

“When someone is willing to explicitly say they don’t think I’m a human being, there is no point in making them think I am one.

“I tell uncomfortable truths. That is a key part of my narrative. I am not throwing tantrums, I am not ‘ranting.’ I am a grown man with three master’s degrees, an elite quizzer, and a person who has personally experienced some of the ugliest forms of racism there are.

“When I chose to speak, I chose to speak what I believed to be true based on that, not because I was having an emotional reaction to the ten millionth time I have lost something.”

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Yogesh Raut told The U.S. Sun, ‘I said most of those things in the exact same way before I knew I’d ever be in Jeopardy!’Credit: The US Sun

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An excerpt from Yogesh Raut’s January 2023 Facebook postsCredit: Facebook/YogeshRaut

‘I HAVE NOT TAKEN BACK MY VIEWS’

Yogesh continued posting about Jeopardy! on Facebook during the 2024 ToC and Masters, and his posts were less reactionary.

He gave fans play-by-play of every game and the highs and lows of his fellow contestants with whom he told The U.S. Sun he had “great camaraderie.”

However, he dismisses the idea that he’s on a redemption arc – or that he acted “better” on stage when he returned – as insulting and diminishing his experiences.

“If there’s one thing I can respond to, it’s people who insisted that I had taken what they have said to heart and modified my behavior as an acceptance of the truth of what they said -that is both false and highly offensive… I never apologized.

“People who said, ‘Oh, he chose to be funny in the ToC to win over fans’ – The notion that they corrected me and cyberbullied me into a better person, I am not what they view as a better person,” he shared.

Despite calling out the most previous ToC winner, Amy Schneider, and her “BS relating quizzing expertise to ‘privilege,” and other beloved show figures like its stage manager in 2023, Yogesh regrets nothing.

“I have not taken back anything that I had to say before; I have changed any of my views.”

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Yogesh Raut left in disbelief after winning the 2024 Tournament of ChampionsCredit: Jeopardy!

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Yogesh holding up his ToC Championship prize beltCredit: JEOPARDY

SPARRING WITH SHOWRUNNER

On May 22, 2024, as the Masters finale aired, Yogesh shared a lengthy post on Facebook that he had not removed and elicited 240 comments on the Jeopardy! subreddit.

He shared a confrontation with the show’s executive producer, Michael Davies, for describing him as a “character” on the show’s podcast.

“No way I would have returned for Masters” had Davies not apologized, Yogesh wrote. The showrunner’s comments were in response to what Yogesh posted on Facebook initially in 2023.

Fans were surprised since Davies has say in whether Yogesh can be in future tournaments.

“No one reported on what a ghastly thing that was to say,” Yogesh told The U.S. Sun. “It was unacceptable behavior. These statements were over a year old, and no one had pointed out how objectionable they were.

“In spite of that, I have persevered,” Yogesh continued.

“I have established myself as one of the top people in the quizzing community, and unlike the rest of the top, none of them have been persecuted the way I was while being good at it and being good at it with the ‘wrong’ skin color.’ That feels like a story.”

In the same podcast, Davies applauded Yogesh’s run, said Jeopardy! was “not beyond criticism,” and implied they would ensure he’d be in the next ToC despite only winning three games (he was, and he won.)

In the post, Yogesh reiterated the “gossip problem in the quizzing community,” the “awfulness of toxic fans,” and said anyone who disagreed or wrote off his viewpoint was “racist and stupid.

He also described being “banned” from a weekly Portland, Oregan pub trivia night, which he claimed was out of racism. Other parties online have claimed the reason was otherwise.

The U.S. Sun has reached out to the trivia company for comment.

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An excerpt of Yogesh Raut’s May 2024 Facebook postCredit: Facebook/YogeshRaut

HOW HE WINS BIG

That said, Yogesh’s performance on Jeopardy! speaks for itself, and he spilled some of the secrets behind his gameplay.

He forgoes coffee but throws back multiple Redbulls before competing: “Sometimes it helped, and sometimes it felt like it didn’t help.”

From there, he lets his brain do the rest: “I just try and be calm. I know whatever happens, some things are out of my control. The categories, the timing, the other players. Be calm, keep your mind open, and let your mind do its work.

“It’s so fast – you have to let your intuitive mind take over. Leave your mind as open as possible to process the information hurled at it.

“Making people aware of how the game works and that it is, in fact, a game isn’t something I’m never going to feel bad about.”

Yogesh, whose immigrant parents raised him in central Illinois, grew up watching the Alex Trebek era of Jeopardy!.

He had half a dozen auditions over 20 years before he got on the show.

Forged in the fire of online trivia circuits like LearnedLeague, similar to Victoria Groce and Troy Meyer, he admits he never made much money from quizzing until Jeopardy!.

Yogesh claims the most he’d won outside the show was “$4000 as part of a team prize split five ways, two books, and a DVD of Space Balls.”

He called Jeopardy!, “The only way of getting compensation for people of these skills, as flawed as it was as a meritocratic competition.”

INSIDE YOGESH’S HEAD

Some messages Yogesh got were quite far from negative – he’s even gotten love letters.

“A wide variety of people have reached out in a wide variety of ways, let’s put it that way,” he told The U.S. Sun.

Yogesh is still single and joked an ideal Mrs. Raut would be “as similar to Spencer from Pretty Little Liars as possible… personality-wise.”

Yogesh also shared how he absorbs information, a topic that made him visibly at ease during our interview.

“My entire life, I’ve heard, ‘It seems like you have such a narrow life.’ But I don’t know.”

Yogesh took a deep breath and implied that quizzing – his preferred word to “trivia” – is not just his only hobby but is tied to his sense of identity.

“This ‘trivia hobby’ covers the entire breadth of human existence from the beginning of time onward. It’s not simply learning it; it’s making it relevant to me.”

He dispelled that he rips through flashcards all day, saying he likes to experience new facts holistically.

“I dont use flash cards. I only remember things so I can find a way to make them relevant and connect them to things I care about. Flashcards are just not how my mind works.”

“When I come across things, I add them to my list of things to look into later. Later, I delve into them and write them up on my blog and so on. I try to make it energizing to learn, so I dont have to take a break from it.”

Yogesh spreads the wealth by sharing facts endlessly on his podcast and blog to “enrich” the lives of others “by learning about it.”

“I dont think this is a narrow way of living or having a life.”

Yogesh will return for Jeopardy Masters 2025 along with his fellow 2024 finalists, champion Victoria Groce and James Holzhauer, who placed third (yes, Yogesh beat Jeopardy! James).

Until then, he’s focusing on his podcast Recreational Thinking, his facts of the day blog, and continuing to be his unabashed self.

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Yogesh Raut raked in $500,000 on the game show in the past year and just shy of $600,000 totalCredit: JEOPARDY

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Yogesh did so in the face of fan hate, amplified by his refusal to sugarcoat his experiences with quizzing culture and Jeopardy!Credit: JEOPARDY

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Ken Jennings hosts Jeopardy! and Jeopardy! Masters, for which Yogesh will return next yearCredit: Getty