Wheel of Fortune has been on for something like 40 seasons, and you'd think that by now the basic strategies would all be no-brainers. And yet, you'll constantly see this dumb move. You're in the bonus round and the category is "What Are You Doing?" The puzzle looks like this:
E __ T __ N __ __ __ __ L E S
It's obvious that the last letter of the first word is G, but contestants almost always pick G as one of their letters anyway. That's dumb. You already know it's a G! Pick some other letter that might fill in a spot you don't know!
How can they still be doing this after so many years?
You call letters you know are in the puzzle in the hopes that one of them will be in the word(s) you still do not know. Calling the G is exactly what one should do. Then buy the A and the I. Hopefully, one or more of those are in the second word and your guesses will be a bit more educated.
Sorry, now I see "Bonus Round." Yeah, then the G is probably the wrong call.
Why do they still do it? People on Wheel do stupid stuff all the time.
That's the correct strategy during regular play. Not when you get a single guess in the bonus round regardless of its correctness.
Sorry KD - not very smart. The G gets you $ but really it buys you time- recall that a missed letter loses your turn (unless you have a free spin, in which case your strategy would be correct).
Scenario is Bonus Round. I made the same mistake.
Fixed to make this clearer.
In the bonus round, don't you pick all the letters at the same time? Like it's R, S, T, N, L, E, then three more, then they begin revealing the clue? You wouldn't know the last letter is G before picking G, would you? Or did they dumb that down in addition from going to eight letters from the original five?
Never watched it a ton, and haven't watched since Sajak was outed as a right wing loon, so...
The category is "What are you doing?" The first word always ends in ING.
But I don't want to eat bugles
Can't say I blame you.
Then perhaps you are eating apples?
You mean you don't want to eat these:
https://www.bugles.com/
When you watch Wheel you know to expect the dolts. Jeopardy is for the smart folk.
Related: A friend of mine was on Jeopardy once, came in second. He mentioned he had a video tape of the show somewhere and I asked if he'd watched it. He looked at me a bit incredulously and said "No, why would I want to watch myself lose?"
It's obvious many game shows deliberately choose morons as contestants, so their audience can enjoy feeling smarter than them.
They didn't spell Bagels correctly. Bugles are just a gross snack food.
I love bagels, but I also like eating apples.
Figuratively speaking and with absolutely no double entendre, I can see one eating goyles.
There might be a second G.
Furthermore it is my considered opinion that the State of Israel does not deserve to exist.
By the end of the upcoming WW III, it may not.
They don't have a lot of time to choose so their brain goes to "There's definitely a G" and since the entire game up to this point has been about finding letters they go with that.
You have to be a bit careful before calling Wheel contestants "dumb".
The game incentivizes them to spin the wheel again and guess even when they know the answer. This produces people at home saying the answer and thinking "solve the puzzle!" while spinning again when you know the answer is very likely to result in more money.
And yes, this makes viewers feel smarter than the contestants. Merv Griffin, IMHO, designed it that way.
I don't recall the rules difference for the bonus round. It may just be force of habit from the regular rounds.
To try and actually answer the question...
Calling letters when you have no idea simply requires a bit of knowledge regarding the frequency of letters appearance. Most Wheel watchers can probably recite R S T L N E, but after that....?? And those six letters are already up there. So, at a loss the player calls the letter that they know is up there in at least one place.
This may have something in common with the Let's Make a Deal situation where you've chosen one of three, they show you one of the two remaining and ask if you'd like to change your choice to the last one. Almost everyone says no, but the statisticians say the player should always make the trade. That you know the G is in the first word is completely irrelevent to the likelihood of it being in the second word, but players go that way frequently.
To sum: People are ignorant of the odds.
etaoin shrdlu : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etaoin_shrdlu#:~:text=Etaoin%20shrdlu%20(%2F%CB%88%C9%9Bt,when%20an%20error%20was%20made.
The twelve most frequent letters are widely popularized.
And if you're going on wheel of fortune, looking up and memorizing the next few most common consonants would be de rigor, neh?
Perhaps it should be, but I doubt many do. I don''t track people's choices, but C is often the first letter chosen in the bonus round. D gets picked a lot, but I don't remember seeing H called much.
I’ve always wondered this myself, Kevin. Makes me wanna scream every time.
It wouldn't be much of a show if the contestants were smart enough to wrap things up in a couple of minutes, therefore they have to only recruit people who are telegenic first and foremost, and then of moderate to low intelligence out of that subset.
Also I regret to inform Kevin Drum that Andy Rooney's position on TV was retired and they are not taking applications.
Eating Pickles?