Beloved Jeopardy! contestant Scott Riccardi has spoken out about his recent loss, and how he’s preparing for the Tournament of Champions following his 16 wins.

Trivia show Jeopardy! champ Scott Riccardi lost his crown on the final episode of the game show’s 41st season.

For 16 games straight, Scott was victorious, completing his reign with $455,000 in earnings. After winning so many times, he garnered a huge fan base, who really wanted him to win the last game of Season 41 so he could go on to Season 42. That dream was ripped from viewers after Scott lost the final question to Jonathan Hugendubler. Since his defeat, the multi-winning former title-holder has opened up about his experience on the game show, his record-breaking winning streak, and Tournmanent of Champions prep style.

During an after-show interview with executive producer Sarah Whitcomb-Foss, asked Scott, “How does it feel to know where it ends for now?”

To this, Scott replied: “It’s just hard to believe that it even came this far. I feel like I barely won a lot in my first few games. Then, I had a pretty tough week where I was kind of ramped up. There’s always a feeling like your momentum is not going to hold up, your luck is going to run out, but I’m glad I can just finally relax.”

Scott continued to speak about his entire time on Jeopardy!, admitting that it was very surreal to him.

Not only has he reached the Leaderboard of Legends, tying in tenth place with Ryan Long for winning the most consecutive games, but he also placed 8th for Highest Winnings in Regular Season Play.

Scott shared that he looked at the leaderboard, thinking, “there’s no way this could happen.”

He added: “In the tenth spot, someday, someone else is gonna pass that mark, and I’m hoping they’ll feel as accomplished as I feel, and how unbelievable it feels to pass someone like that. Whoever it ends up being, I wish them the best of luck.”

During his conversation with Sarah he also delved into how he was preparing for the upcoming Tournament of Champions.

Scott said he “turned up the jets” with reading and studying, adding “So, I’m just going to try to learn new things every day over the break, but with a lot more leisure.”

Meanwhile, Scott got candid about him losing to Jonathan in Final Jeopardy! in a forum on Reddit.

“Congratulations to Jonathan for the amazing win! It’s truly deserved, and I can’t wait to see him return next season; he is a powerful competitor and all-around wonderful guy. Kudos to Charlotte [Cooper] as well for a very strong showing in tonight’s game,” he wrote.

“I apologize that I didn’t have any earlier opportunities to be active in these discussion threads, but I’m thankful for all the kind and insightful comments throughout what has been a completely surreal experience for me. I hope I didn’t overstay my welcome on the Alex Trebek stage for everyone who watched.

“There were too many talented challengers to be able to list them all here, but I’m hoping to be a proud supporter of each and every one of them in the hopes that they make up a sizeable subgroup of Second Chance competitor.

“As for Final Jeopardy, my mind unfortunately went straight to Howard Hughes mostly due to overestimating the importance of the movie companies part of the clue; any previous FJs that had come to mind immediately had worked out, so I trusted my initial response on this.

“Hearst wasn’t on my mind at all until the moment Charlotte’s answer was revealed, and even then it didn’t immediately strike me as correct until Ken [Jennings] confirmed it. Truthfully, I was just especially unprepared to respond correctly to a clue about Hearst.

” I made a mental note before flying out that I was consistently forgetting to consider, of all things, Citizen Kane and the Tower of London as responses whenever they came up in archived practice clues; in the green room that week, I reminded myself about the Tower of London but could not remember the other half of that mental note.

“Also, before I started my prep for the show in earnest, I had found that I was having a hard time properly retaining info on what I found to be a confusing amount of three-named Williams in publishing (William Randolph Hearst, William Lloyd Garrison, and William F. Buckley, to name a few), never circling back to that thought after I got the call to be on the show. So several information near-misses and a poor understanding of the timeline in the clue really piled up to prevent me from getting what I now understand to be a very gettable clue.”