‘Useless’ knowledge pays $186,900

Tom Walsh doesn’t know the diameter of the sun.

To those who watched him during a record-setting eight consecutive episodes of the TV game show “Jeopardy,” that may seem like the only thing Mr. Walsh doesn’t know.

The lawyer, writer and former congressional staffer won $186,900 — the highest-ever “Jeopardy” payout — during a stint that aired Jan. 5 and concluded Wednesday.

But he says the payout is well-earned money.

“If you look at it as compensation for a whole lifetime of walking around with your head filled with stuff that’s not useful, it’s really not that much money,” he says in the living room of his Southeast row house on Capitol Hill. “I’ve spent a lot of brain cells remembering Beethoven’s birthday and the date Napoleon was crowned emperor on — all these things that are of no use in life.”

So when was Napoleon crowned emperor?

“December 4, 1804 — I think,” he says.

Turns out it was Dec. 2. But Mr. Walsh, 39, never claimed that his “Jeopardy” records mean he is the smartest man in America.

“It’s not true. It’s not true at all,” he says at the suggestion, attributing his success on the show to a wealth of “arcane, useless” facts, a lot of luck and finally figuring out the rhythm of buzzing in with an answer.

“There are big swatches of the world about which I know nothing,” he says. “If we’re going to talk about booze or math or animals, or many other things, you’ve got me.”

Unfortunately, booze and math showed up in the first round of his first game. But that didn’t stop him.

Mr. Walsh recorded five shows in one day, on Oct. 29. He had to pay his own way to Los Angeles, but won $118,000. The show paid for his return trip two weeks later to record more episodes. He took home nearly $70,000 more after two more victories and $2,000 in second-place prize money.

The game show this season relaxed its rules to allow winners to continue their streaks past the standard five-day run.

Oddly enough, Mr. Walsh says he never watched the show on a regular basis before he was a contestant. Now he freely discusses the rules and the questioning patterns, saying he even has received e-mails from previous champions.

Although the plans haven’t been finalized, he does expect to appear again in a “Tournament of Champions” episode — not that he is waiting for an invitation.

Mr. Walsh says he hasn’t received his check and doesn’t know how much it will amount to after taxes, but he expects he will net about two-thirds of his winnings.

As for the money, he is considering replacing his 1995 Toyota Corolla but plans to give “quite a bit” to charity. Between the recording of his last appearance in November and the airing of his first appearance this month, he went to Thailand, where he joined up with a humanitarian organization as an English teacher to girls who had been rescued from the sex industry.

As for notoriety, he says he has been recognized in public twice. No one has asked him for money — he is not encouraging it — and so far no one on the street has asked him the average yearly rainfall in the Amazon basin.

And, no, he doesn’t have any more insight on what game show host Alex Trebek is really like than viewers of the program, although Mr. Trebek did autograph a book for him.

“Your record won’t be broken for a long, long time,” Mr. Trebek wrote in Mr. Walsh’s copy of “Jeopardy! Challenge.”