Picture this, if you will. You are a contestant onWheel of Fortune,thesecond-longest running game showin television history, just behindThe Price is Right. You’ve done well. A bad spin here and there, one bad guess in the first round, but not one destined to go viral, likeTavaris Williams' NSFW attempt. Now here you are, in the Bonus Round. You could become only the fifth person inWheel of Fortunehistoryto win $1 million. You could be the latest in a long line of Bonus Round failures that leave fans at homedumbstruck in disbelief.And if you’re really lucky, the answer is “RESTLESSNESS,” a word that contains all 6 free letters given to you: R-S-T-L-N and E.
Prior to 1988, contestants in the Bonus Round were allowed to pick five consonants and one vowel, with 15 seconds allotted to guess the answer. Traditionally, the letters most commonly selected, perPat Sajakhimself in the YouTube clip below, were R, S, T, L, N and E. Nowwhywere those letters specifically selected?Strategically, they make a lot of sense. Those six letters alone account for around 45 percent of all letters in a standard English text, so, assuming the words being used in the answer weren’t in ancient Sumerian, the odds were pretty good at gettingVanna Whiteto spin at least one or two of them.
Why R-S-T-L-N-E are Free Bonus Round Letters in ‘Wheel of Fortune’
The status quo was shaken up with arule change in 1988. The selection of RSTLNE to that point was practically a given, much like howFamily Feudcontestants choose to"play" instead of “pass.“So, the decision was made to automatically give Bonus Round contestants the six letters free, and have them then choose three more consonants and one vowel. There’s no official reason as to why they made the change, but from the producer’s side, it made things more interesting. With everyone selecting the same six letters all the time, which was the case far more often than not, the Bonus Round lacked variety.By switching it up, the contestant is now trying to figure out which four letters from the remaining 55 percent in English textmightbe helpful. And there’s no guarantee that you’ve given Vanna any extra work whatsoever.
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Now the question is, has it helpedWheel of Fortunecontestants to have those extra letters?Given how there hasonly been a handfulofBonus Roundwinners, apparently not. And there may be a good reason for that, at least according toBen Blattin the previously citedSlate. Using answers from 13,000 puzzles in the show’s opening rounds and over 2,000 Bonus Round puzzles, Blatt determined a distinct difference between the answers in the opening rounds and those in the Bonus Round.
Do the Free Letters R-S-T-L-N-E Help on ‘Wheel of Fortune’?
What he found is that the letters RSTLNE only account for 29.6 percent of letters inBonus Round puzzles,compared to 44.7 percent in those opening rounds, which falls around that expected 45 percent of letters in English text as a whole. In short, the producers aren’t stupid. They’re selecting words and phrases that don’t utilize RSTLNE as much, so even though they’re giving those letters away, they’re not nearly as helpful as they used to be.The other change made to the Bonus Round rules in 1988 doesn’t help much either, with the time to solve cut down to 10 seconds from the previous 15.
But fret not. Blatt has, by crunching those numbers, determinedwhich of the remaining letters should be selected with the additional three consonants and a vowel for the best odds at guessing: H, G, B and O. O is the fourth most popular letter in the English language, and has a frequency of nearly 10% inWheel of FortuneBonus Rounds. And if HGBO had been guessed, that combination would have revealed 22.5 percent of all Bonus Round letters. All things going well, if 75 percent of a puzzle’s letters are revealed, the correct answer is guessed 83 percent of the time within the allotted 10 seconds.
Interestingly, RSTLNE took on a new meaning with the rise of theRyan Seacrestera. In what must be a fortunate moment of serendipity, the show determined that RSTLNE can beused as an acronymfor “Ryan Seacrest To Launch New Era.“Wheel of Fortuneis available to stream in the U.S. on YouTube TV.
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