Q and A with Sally Greene

     Presenting Sally Greene, who appeared June 15th on Jeopardy!

Q: Were you there on both Tuesday and Wednesday the week you taped? Will you tell us about Tuesday, if you were there?
Sally: I was only there on Wednesday (Kathy sat through the Tuesday tapings and was the "leftover" from that day). Since I was selected last on Wednesday, I got to sit through four other tapings which I think helped to calm my nerves. However, it was frustrating to see so many earlier categories come up that I could easily run.  My strengths are history and sports, and there was a little less history on my board than usual.
Q: I thought Bissell and Edison were some of your better gets.
Sally: I had actually studied a list of inventors and was excited when that category came up. The stock ticker and carpet sweeper were two from my studies I thought were interesting - not what you would expect so they stood out.
Q: What did you use to study? Also, how many times did you take the Jeopardy! test?
Sally: This was only my second try at the online test although I have watched the show since the Art Fleming days (that will date me). I used the world almanac and book of facts for a lot of my studying, as well as various lists I got from the internet.
Q: I'd seen on the Internet, someone thought you were Tournament of Champions material after your impressive J round.
Sally: Obviously, I couldn't be more pleased with the way the first round went, but I am very disappointed with the second round. The categories weren't the best for me - there were a lot more than usual that I didn't even try to ring in on, and I lost a lot of momentum. I wish I had gone to the zodiac rhyme time earlier, or gone for larger amounts near the end, but in retrospect, if I had been ahead going into FJ and then blew the last question it would have been even more disappointing.
Q: Is there anything else you want to say?
Sally: David played a great game. I knew both Daily Doubles in the second round but just didn't hit them. David did a better job of fishing for them which wasn't my strategy - a poor one in retrospect. The game was exciting and I did the best I could at the time.  My two goals going in were to have fun and not totally embarrass myself and I think I accomplished both of those. My two biggest disappointments were the two questions I missed. I taught government for years and covered polling and "margin of error" with my students. The judges actually had quite a
conference on that one for about five minutes, so they at least talked about giving me credit for "percentage of reliability". As for final - I totally approached that question the wrong way. I focused on the French part, then put down "Dominican Republic" and the minute I wrote it down I knew the actual island was Hispaniola but didn't change it as I knew it was wrong too and I was trying to think of something better. Had I just started with the list of the largest islands, which I knew, and worked backwards from there, I might have had a better chance.

     Thank you so much, Sally!