The question, “Who won Jeopardy! Friday night?” The answer…”Who is Casper’s Pat Greiner!” As a result, she will be appearing again on Monday’s show. Pat, who has worked for many years with K2 Radio as a copywriter and announcer, traveled to Los Angeles in December with her husband Ron Richard to tape the episode, an experience she describes as being on her “bucket list.” She was sworn to secrecy as to the outcome, and now that the episode has aired, she shares some of her experience with us.

“I credit the win to the fact that a lot of the Final Jeopardy questions are answerable with an educated guess, which is what mine was.  I was behind going into Final Jeopardy … I had $7,000-some and the leader has $12,000-some.  That’s because I totally blew a Daily Double.  I picked it when it was the last question left on the board. It was in a category that I knew very little about – Lighthouses – and I was 2,000 behind the leader.  I really wanted a lead going into finals, so I bet $3,000 -- and then had no clue what the answer was (though I will remember forevermore that the lighthouse off North Carolina is Cape Hatteras).

The Final Jeopardy category was British Novels. I have a decent background there, but the leader (who was the returning champion) was currently a PhD student in English Lit.   That meant he was on top of this stuff, while my degree is from 37 years ago.  But all I could do was bet heavily and hope.   The answer was “THE TITLE OF THIS 1908 NOVEL IS AN ALLUSION TO THE HOTEL IN FLORENCE WHERE THE NOVEL STARTS & ENDS THE NEXT YEAR.”   I didn’t know the answer – so I started rummaging through my brain for titles that might be something to do with a hotel room.  I thought of one that might fit (though I’d never read the book), and I knew it was about the right time period, so I went with that. ‘What is A Room with a View?’  -- and I guessed right.  Luck was with me and neither of the other guys got it.”

Pat added that the studying she did was to no avail. “There were no questions that I knew because of my poring over lists of world capitals or US presidents.  But I did get at least one answer right because of reading stupid celebrity news on Yahoo (the one about Ariana Grande licking the donut).”

Pat says since she won on the last game on the last day, she had to wait a long time to play again, and there were other factors in play.

“On the last day they were shooting before their Christmas break (Dec. 14), I had to wait a long time to play again.  They were shooting the College Tournament in early January, so they could get students before they went back to school.  The date I was to come back and play again was January 23 … but on Jan. 10, Ron got the call to receive his lung transplant in Denver.   I kept the contestant coordinators in the loop about what was going on, and talked with medical personnel as well.  We didn’t even know if Ron would be out of the hospital by then.  But he did really well and was released on Jan. 18, and the docs said that as long as there was someone super-responsible to stay with him and take him to his follow-up appointments during the time I was gone, it should be fine for me to go.   Luckily I had my best friend close by – Moselle Kleppinger Bernal, who lives in Colorado Springs, came up to Denver and took on caregiver duties so I could go back  to LA.   Since I couldn’t let people know I was going back to LA or they’d know that I must have won on the first trip, I have to thank Ron for providing the best cover story ever!”

As for the results of Monday’s show, she is sworn to secrecy again, but we can all tune in and find out. Jeopardy! airs in the Casper area at 4:30 p.m. on NBC, check your local listings. Pat will also be a guest on the K2 Radio Morning show Monday morning to talk about her adventures.

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