James Holzhauer, Brad Rutter keep the trash-talking going after 'Jeopardy!' tournament

Ken Jennings is the newly crowned GOAT on "Jeopardy!," but fellow contestants James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter take the cake when it comes to talking trash.

After Jennings' victory Tuesday on the "Jeopardy!: The Greatest of All Time" tournament, Holzhauer and Rutter sparred online, trading friendly snark as they've done throughout the tournament.

"It's all good fun," Rutter said in a Wednesday interview. "But you know how we all know a guy who will usually take it a little too far. James is that guy."

The banter kicked off between the first and second games, when longtime host Alex Trebek announced he was clearing the contestants' scores between rounds.

As Trebek explained scoring rules, Holzhauer interjected: "Hey, Brad's score is still on there." Rutter finished the first round with zero points. Cue a collective "Ohhhhhh" from the audience.

Rutter says he took it "in stride. I know he's just joking around." But Rutter took his shot on Twitter after Tuesday's episode.

"Have the New Orleans Saints been in touch about a job?" Rutter tweeted to Holzhauer afterward. "Because with their tendency to talk a bunch of trash after losing in the playoffs, you’ll fit right in."

The trash-talking was all in good fun: Between trading insults, the contestants also retweeted each other's jokes and offered well wishes, and Holzhauer thanked his competitors for being "incredibly good sports" about his playful insults.

Holzhauer's style enlivens the game, Jennings says. "James is a pro wrestling fan and he enjoys being a bit of a heel, as they say in wrestling, doing the bluster and the taunts. He admires Brad very much and has said very nice things about him, but that does not stop him from turning into his James Holzhauer wrestling character on TV. I could never do it, but I think it's delightful that someone else is."

The contestants had a few self-owns, too, taking jabs at their own mistakes.

In the Final Jeopardy! category, Holzhauer theoretically had the opportunity to take the game from Jennings. The clue: "He has 272 speeches, the most of any non-title character in a Shakespeare tragedy."

He guessed "Who is Horatio?" but Jennings correctly answered "Iago," the villain from "Othello." Holzhauer later trolled himself on Twitter for the flub, changing his profile picture to another famous Iago: The parrot from Disney's "Aladdin."

Earlier, Jennings got stumped in a complicated category: "Math to Roman numerals to initials to names."

The clue: "(1,000 / 2) - 350 to this rock singer who was also a 1997 Golden Globe nominee." Jennings correctly answered the math equation (150) and translated that into Roman numerals (CL), but couldn't pinpoint the famous name with those initials.

"I'm pretty sure I'm the first Jeopardy player ever to answer 'Charles Lindbergh' when the answer was Courtney Love," he joked on Twitter. The famous pilot Lindbergh died in 1974.

Jennings acknowledged taking part in the Twitter back-and-forth earlier in the competition. "James has brought out that boy in all of us, maybe."

But he's not joining the current online jousting. "Now that I have the trophy, it's a little unseemly."

Recap: 'Jeopardy!: The Greatest of All Time' crowns Ken Jennings winner

Contributing: Bill Keveney

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Jeopardy!': James Holzhauer, Brad Rutter take loss with playful shade