Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Wheel of Fortune Strategy

As a follower of "The Wheel", a fan of general game strategy, and as the brother-in-law of two past contestants, I've often wondered what the best show strategy was. Who better to ask than the professionals themselves? Here is a Pat Sajak v. Vanna White April Fools episode from the late 90's:



Here are three strategies I gleaned:

1) By default, start your guesses with the 5 consonants they give you in the bonus round, RSTLN.

2) If you are not confident in what consonant to guess next, buy a vowel (Pat even commended a contestant for using this strategy on today's episode).

3) Even if you know the answer, keep going to get your maximum amount of money. Not necessarily guessing every letter, but definitely not solving right when you know it (you have an 11/12 chance of not losing your turn on the spin).

1 comment:

  1. Pretty interesting. I already knew about the most common letters thing, but the vowel buying and 11/12 statistic is useful too.

    Also, it's "gleaned", not "gleamed". Fire your editor, that's two misses in a row!

    ReplyDelete

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