‘Jeopardy!’: Paolo Pasco Speaks Out After Incredible TOC Win

After winning the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions in three straight games, Paolo Pasco spoke out about his time on the game show, how he is preparing for Jeopardy! Masters, and more.

Pasco, a puzzle writer from San Diego, California, played in the TOC finals against 16-game champion Scott Riccardi from Somerville, New Jersey, and five-game champion TJ Fisher from San Francisco, California. The puzzle writer dominated the first three games of the tournament, securing the win. He took home $250,000 and earned a spot in the upcoming Jeopardy! Masters. Masters has not yet been renewed, but executive producer Michael Davies shared he had high hopes for another season.

The champion sat down with the showrunners, Sarah Whitcomb-Foss and Davies, in a new Inside Jeopardy! Podcast episode on February 6. He, like most other contestants, started watching Jeopardy! when he was a child. Pasco never thought back then that he would make it on the show.

It wasn’t until he started making crossword puzzles that he thought he had enough knowledge to even be on it. A few years ago, Pasco entered a crossword competition and lost. This caused him to brush up on his trivia and rewatch Jeopardy!, this time keeping score.

Once he thought he was good enough to be on the show, Pasco took the anytime test in a mall food court with three other friends. The rest is history. “It’s been a wild journey from there to here,” shared.

In the episode, Davies revealed that he called Whitcomb-Foss while he was driving to the studio and said that the TOC was going to be won in three games. “I didn’t call all the runaways. I didn’t call all that. As happy as I am that you won, I am even happier that I was right,” Davies said.

“Michael had all of this confidence. Did you have this much confidence coming in?” Whitcomb-Foss asked.

“That’s very funny to hear. I think if you asked me if it went to three games, I would say possibly, but I don’t think I’d attach the same person to it,” Pasco replied.

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He went on to say that he felt scared watching the Quarterfinals because the competitors were putting on “scary, scary games.” Pasco “went into panic mode” when he faced off against Riccardi and Laura Faddah, two contestants who had beaten his streaks, in the Exhibition game.

“I felt like I had to buzz desperately and as fast as I could,” he said.

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In each of his games, Pasco went all in on the Daily Double wagers. He went 11 for 11 during the course of his TOC games. The TOC champion explained that, due to the seven-game format, “you can afford to take a big swing because there’s always tomorrow.”

After winning $250,000, Pasco shared that he would have had to make one billion puzzles in order to earn that much money. He wants to remake the music video to OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again” and rent out eight treadmills for it, but he said that is something to do after Masters and this whole journey is over.

Speaking of Masters, Pasco said the contestants are an “intimidating crowd.” “I feel like it’s going to be such a fun journey on how to even prepare for that because it is such a new thing and such a huge expanded canon beyond Jeopardy!. I’m just going to be doing a lot of book research,” he said.

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