Jeopardy! newbie Yogesh Raut jolts Ken Jennings with huge flex about being 'smarter' than James Holz

JEOPARDY! contestant Yogesh Raut hit the ground running on Wednesday with a big $41.6K victory and an even bigger flex.

The 1-day winner riled up host Ken Jennings by revealing he beat James Holzhauer at high school trivia.

Returning champ Connor Sears - a copy editor from Queens New York - faced Yogesh, a blogger, podcaster, and writer from Springfield, Illinois, and Andrew Whatley, an academic administrator from Chicago.

Connor had inked out a swell $43K in his two wins going in.

But Yogesh at the rightmost podium got all the buzz from Jeopardy! fans as he came out swinging.

The quiz wiz put up $6K within the first minute of the episode, which scored the attention of host Ken, 48.

'CAN YOU STACK UP TO JAMES?'

Yogesh replied: "He was Jamie Holzhauer in those days, but yes."

"He went to a rival high school - we competed against each other in Scholastic Bowl and Math Team”

Ken replied: "Can you stack up with James Holzhauer? Or at least back in the day?"

Yogesh was not shy about how things went against the poker player-turned-Jeopardy! star who won 32 games and put up $100K scores regularly in 2019.

James and Ken also faced off in the famed G.O.A.T tournament won by the host - thus Ken calling them frenemies.

Yogesh hilariously replied: “My team won two scholastic bowls and a state championship and his team won zero, so...”

“Well!” Ken jumped back with a grin and a wide shrug, not expecting the confidence.

"That would be, I’m not a mathematician but that would be two more" the host concluded.

'HE COULD BE DANGEROUS!'

After nabbing half of the clues in the episode - correct on all but one of them - Yogesh had $30,800, Andrew a solid $20,800 and poor Connor $1,800.

Final Jeopardy read: "In 2022 she became the first woman to have a Billboard Top 10 album in 5 decades starting with the 1980s."

Everyone was correct with "Madonna" but Yogesh topped the charts with a $10.8K wager - Andrew wagered $0 hoping he'd miss; he didn't.

His $41,601 score and big splash had fans going haywire online and they already have high hopes.

"Outstanding. $41K. I smell a Cris Pannullo-like player here," one Reddit user wrote.

"To me, Yogesh looks like the most dangerous player we've had since Cris," wrote another also referring to the 21-day record-setter and former poker player from earlier this season.

And a third: "Yogesh has certainly caught my attention. That was a very strong debut performance by him!"

A fourth penned: "It sounds like Yogesh has an absolutely monster knowledge base, so I think the length of his run will depend largely on his buzzer skill."

As a fifth noted: "I feel like Yogesh's buzzer technique isn't very optimal though."

The winner held the signaling device far off from the podium and then switched to using both hands, so that was the only concern on the board so far.

"James vs. Yogesh on Jeopardy! when?" craved one more on Instagram.

"Did he just call out James Holzhauer? #jeopardy" someone had to ask over on Twitter.

"This guy is coming for Ken Jennings' record. Yogesh is a fu**ing machine" tweeted yet another.

Over the summer, Ken and actress Mayim Bialik were announced as the permanent replacements for the late longtime host, Alex Trebek.

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