Wheel Of Fortune / Tropes E To O

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E

• Early-Installment Weirdness: Oh, boy.
  • Pilots:
    • The 1973 pilot, Shopper's Bazaar; Lin Bolen thought a shopping element could make the show stand out, but this pilot took the idea a bit too far. The set was made to look like a department store, and the intro featured the three contestants being introduced by browsing through the "store" while the announcer described their prizes, whilst simultaneously playing their first turns each. Among other things, there was a motorized carnival-style Wheel (with a mind of its own at times, as well as Free Vowel and $0 spaces), a rotary telephone to dispense clues (if a contestant landed on the "Your Own Clue" wedge, and only basic things like Person, Place, or Thing), an ugly pull-card puzzle board, a way-too-easy first attempt at a Bonus Round, a way-too-hard to understand scoring system, a rule where the contestant that won a round started the next one, a set that Bolen called "old-fashioned", and instrumental versions of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and "Spinning Wheel" as the show's main theme and commercial outro cue respectively. Merv himself would later state that "everything about it was WRONG". Once thought to be a Missing Episode (only about four publicity shots ever turned up in specials and retrospectives, only one of which was in color), the pilot finally surfaced in 2012 on YouTube and quickly began circulating among collectors.
    • A better-received (although not by much) pair of pilots were taped in 1974, with Edd "Kookie" Byrnes as the host. A few differences were seen from these shows and the eventual premiere, including the host generally giving a clue rather than a category (e.g., "the name of something good to eat" for the puzzle SPAGHETTI, rather than the more generic categories that would be used by mid-July 1975), a consistent set of prizes to choose from throughout the episode (as opposed to going to a different platform of prizes in a subsequent round). Although there was still lots of criticism, Lin Bolen put her job on the line and NBC accepted, under the condition that Chuck Woolery was host.
  • Daytime show:
    • When the show debuted in 1975, the "special" wedges (Bankrupt, Lose A Turn, Free Spin, and Buy A Vowel) had white outlines on the lettering and white borders, and spaces on the Wheel went as low as $25.
    • There originally was no rule for solving the words to a puzzle in order. After one contestant got credit for transposing the first and third words of TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE, this rule was added. The only time it doesn't apply is when a Crossword Round is in play on the nighttime version.
    • Also during the first year, the Speed-Up round (the round so-designated by the "Final Spin") was timed at 60 seconds (or sometimes, 2 minutes), and the contestants could not call vowels. Although not known based on existing episodes that circulate, this led to the possibility of puzzles going unsolved if the time limit expired. In late Summer or early Fall 1975, the time limit was lifted and the "no vowels" rule was modified by allowing contestants to call vowels (at no charge) after 30 seconds. By early 1976, the Speed-Up round rules as we know it came into play.
    • In the earliest days, contestants played puzzles to the last consonant and rarely bought vowels. Lin Bolen, then NBC's vice president of daytime programming, insisted on this so contestants would have more money to shop with — she thought that putting more emphasis on shopping would help the show appeal better to the female demographic. Once she was ousted in 1975-76 for poor programming performance and replaced by Earl Greenburg, contestants began playing puzzles at their own pace. Also during the earliest months, each contestant (prior to the show) selected which showcase they wanted to shop first if they won the first round, with the first-round winner's choice told after the round was completed.
    • Even the Bonus Round underwent changes prior to the permanent version being implemented in December 1981. While these prior versions had the same basic rules as the ones that would become most familiar to contestants, the player chose only four consonants (plus the vowel) and did not know the category until after the chosen letters were revealed (if any). The one major difference with the hour-long and Star Bonus versions, however, was that the puzzle the player faced had everything to do with the prize s/he chose to play for – that is, if you picked the Cadillac Eldorado parked onstage, you could be assured of facing a very difficult puzzle (one with few of the common consonants in it), while if you played for just a living room set, the puzzle would be fairly easy to guess with the right pick of letters. The difficulty of the puzzles starting in 1981 would have nothing to do with the prize selected.
    • During the first few years after the Bonus Round became permanent, contestants often played for lower-tier bonus prizes such as children's room furniture, a washer-dryer, a video camera-and-VCR package and a bedroom set (all in 1982-era episodes); there was speculation that the producers wanted to have contestants win at least twice before playing for the more expensive trips, cars and other grand prizes (although even then, cars and such were available during the regular rounds). Once the syndicated version took off - where contestants played for cars about 75% of the time, with expensive jewelry a distant (surprising) second - contestants on the daytime show began playing for the larger-ticket prizes on their first day more often.
  • Yet another mannerism that was phased out around 1985 (at least, in the US): contestants almost always used to call their letters out phonetically (for instance, "C as in Chuck"; this is still a common practice among foreign versions), but this supposedly annoyed Merv. The producers prefer that contestants say only the letter to help minimize confusion (except when absolutely necessary, for clarification), but variants on "Can I have a(n)..." or "Is there a(n)..." aren't rare.
  • After the daytime show moved to CBS, $50 and $75 were used again, and diamonds were added to these wedges on the next show. The minimum dollar value was increased back to $100 after just two months.
  • In its first two seasons of use, the Jackpot wedge was modified six times.
    • To a lesser extent, the Surprise wedge and $10,000 prize wedge similarly went through redesigns shortly after they were introduced.
  • The "Preview Puzzle" only lasted one season before getting replaced by Toss-Ups. For their entire first season of use, there were only two, both valued at $1,000; there was also no Split Screen during said rounds, meaning that home viewers had no visual indication as to who had rung in. After that point, they gained a split screen, a third one was added, and the values were shifted to $1,000/$2,000/$3,000.
  • The $25,000 sign introduced during the Big Month Of Cash and used for the rest of that season had a different design than the one used for the rest of that sign's existence.
  • The cash prizes on the Bonus Wheel other than the $100,000 were all $25,000 for the first season it existed. In the next season, values from $30,000 to $50,000 in increments of $5,000 were introduced permanently (they were previously used for a Big Money week in the season of its introduction).
  • Countless cash wedges have temporarily used different fonts, such as this $5,000 wedge with a wide font◊. This was much more common early in the show's run.
    • Additionally, mistakes in placement of wedges seemed to be much more common early in the show's run.
  • For much of the early seasons, it was not uncommon for the bonus puzzle to be the longest one of the day, or for it to take up all four rows (even if it could reasonably fit on just two). From about Season 6 onward, the puzzle lengths became more balanced.
  • On some Season 1 nighttime episodes, the Promotional Consideration plugs were pre-recorded by the company instead of being read by The Announcer. However, this reverted in the mid-90s.
  • The first six taped episodes of Season 25 had different graphics used for the scoreboards. The contestants' names were placed on top, and flashed when they had control or rang in on a Toss-Up. The score itself was in a very tall font that was hard to see because of the Wheel's pegs being in the way. For the rest of the season, the names were removed, and the scores were moved higher up to only occupy the top half of the scoreboard. Identifying who had control was also made much clearer with the addition of two blinking arrows on the bottom half.
    • Additionally, the Big Money Wedge worked much differently. Any cash amounts claimed from the wedge were treated as prizes. When this happened, two green vertical bars labeled "BIG" and "MONEY" flanked the sides of the scoreboard. After the first taping, the cash awards were added to the score immediately, but were not multiplied if the letter chosen appeared more than once.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Contestant Tony Harrison was on the show on December 1, 2017, winning $25,714 in the main game but losing $35,000 in the bonus round. However, after his episode aired, the producers determined that his bonus puzzle ON THE HIGHWAY had been put in the wrong category (Phrase instead of Place), so he was invited back to compete again. He fared even better the second time around, winning $48,831 in the main game (despite having not one, but two puzzles thrown out due to technical difficulties)... and solving his bonus puzzle correctly this time for $45,000 more.
• Ear Worm: Pat often comments on the Speed-Up music as such.
• Easter Egg: Throughout Season 30, Sheldon the ceramic dalmatian was hidden somewhere on-set.
• End-of-Series Awareness: The Round 1 puzzle on Rolf's final daytime show was TALK TO THE POWERS THAT BE. When the episode was taped, CBS had not picked that version up just yet.
• Enforced Plug: The Jackpot round was sponsored by various products, which got a plug at the top of the round. After the Jackpot's retirement, the Mystery Round inherited its sponsors. Some companies regularly place $1,000 gift cards on the Wheel as well.
• Episode Code Number:
  • The daytime show used strictly sequential numbers for most of its run. After the Channel Hop to CBS in 1989, a new format of "CXXX" (e.g. C001) was used, the "C" standing for "CBS". After the second Channel Hop back to NBC in 1991, the format was changed again to "DTXXX" (e.g. DT001), the "DT" standing for "daytime".
  • The nighttime show uses sequential numbers prefixed with "S-" (presumably for "syndicated") to distinguish it from the daytime show. The "S-" prefix remains on the slates to this day, despite the daytime show being long gone. Rerun versions of episodes have "RR" after the number (e.g. S-7451RR). Last-minute revisions append "Rev" (plus "Rev2", etc. if necessary) to the number. However, "S-" is often omitted outside of the slates, since it is no longer necessary. Also, unlike most TV shows, any time an episode swaps air dates with another after taping, their production codes are also swapped for consistency and given a new slate.
  • On the syndicated version, the last digit of the production number is indicative of what day of the week the episode originally airs, with 1 or 6 being Monday and 5 or 0 being Friday. The only exception was Season 34's Veterans Week, where episodes #S-6477 through 6480 were rescheduled at the last minute to air from Wednesday to Saturday rather than Tuesday through Friday. In the rare case where a week does not have five first-run episodes, that number will be skipped entirely for consistency. For example, the final two first-run episodes of Season 37 aired on a Tuesday and Thursday, and were numbered #S-7207 and 7209, with 7206 and 7208 skipped. Because of this, the number is not the exact syndicated episode count (see Missing Episode in the Trivia section for more info on skipped production numbers). As of 2024, the production count is believed to be 44 greater than the actual count (confirmed to be at least 43).
  • Celebrity Wheel of Fortune does not use sequential numbers like the other two versions, instead using "PT-XYY", with "PT" presumably for "primetime", "X" being the season number and "Y" being the episode within that season (e.g. PT-301). This is because ABC uses the "XYY" format for all of its shows. In Seasons 1 and 2, the numbers were based on the order in which the episodes were planned to air (with only one deviation when two Season 1 episodes swapped air dates at the last minute), which was radically different from taping order. Starting in Season 3, primetime episodes are now numbered in taping order. The "PT" prefix is only used in Wheel's records to distinguish the show from the syndicated series.
  • The not-for-broadcast 2012 Lottery Experience games were numbered sequentially with prefix "#MDI-" (named after lottery game licensing company MDI Entertainment). The 2017 equivalents were simply labeled "Second Chance Lottery Promotion Show #X".
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: The top dollar amount in each round is always on a sparkly wedge (except for the now-retired $1,000 before 1995). The Million-Dollar Wedge is sparkly, as were most iterations of the Jackpot wedge before it went neon. When the show went HD in 2006, sparkly outlines were added to all letters and numbers on the Wheel. The Wild Card is sparkly as well, along with the former Surprise Wedge (the lettering on its second iteration and the background on its third) Free Spin, Double Play, and Star Bonus tokens.
• Extra Turn:
  • The Free Spin, which allowed a player to keep control if they lost their turn. Originally, the wheel had a wedge that awarded a Free Spin token every time it was hit; players could rack up multiple tokens in a single game. The wedge was later removed in favor of a single token attached to a $300 space, which had to be claimed by hitting it and calling a consonant in the puzzle. Starting in Season 27, the Free Spin was eliminated altogether and the Free Play wedge was introduced, which gave the player a chance to call a consonant at $500 a pop, call for a vowel at no charge, or try to solve the puzzle. They were guaranteed to keep control no matter what. Free Play was phased out at the end of Season 38.
  • The Wild Card is also one to an extent, allowing the contestant to call a second letter on a spin.

F

• Foregone Conclusion:
  • Before $1,000 was added to the Final Spin, having it land on a lower value could guarantee the current leader a trip to the Bonus Round.
  • If a contestant has a lot in their bank already and/or is holding something significant like the Million-Dollar Wedge, then it's pretty obvious that they will not flip over a Mystery wedge. Especially true on October 11, 2013, where a contestant got $11,000 from finding eleven M's at the wedge's $1,000-per-letter face value, meaning that flipping it over actually had less of a potential reward than taking the per-letter amount (since the per-letter amount is forfeited if you choose to flip it).^note It turned out that the Bankrupt was on the other side, anyway. The puzzle was SUMMERTIME SUMMERTIME SUM SUM SUMMERTIME.
  • If a contestant hit the Jackpot wedge with very little help in the puzzle, it was pretty much a given bet that the contestant wasn't going to solve. Subverted with the very first Jackpot win where a contestant won the $5,000 base value for solving GREEN EGGS AND HAM BY DR. SEUSS with only the G's showing.
• Foreign Remake: Pole Chudes ("Field of Wonders", an interesting choice taken from Alexey Tolstoi's Buratino...a foreign remake of Pinocchio) is very similar, except the word is an answer to a question, you can't buy a vowel, there's Black Box instead of Mystery Wedge (you can either immediately quit the show with the contents or keep playing, it can contain anything from a house to a cabbage), but the most important and memetic part is the fact that most contestants come from pretty obscure and interesting places all over Russia and bring their local crafts and so on along with them to give to the host - they are then placed in the Museum, which is seriously a lot like an ethnography museum at this point, especially considering this remake has run for 25 years and counting.
• Freudian Slip:
  • On the first episode after the retirement of shopping, a contestant accidentally asked to buy an owl. Pat instantly quipped that they no longer sell birds on the show.
  • On a 1989 episode, a contestant's attempts to figure out the bonus puzzle FANCY THAT accidentally led to her using "twat" in one of her guesses, which was censored by the Pyramid cuckoo of all things. Notably, Pat didn't even try to crack a joke at it.
  • Many repeated letter calls over the years seem to be due to a contestant clearly having one letter on their mind but accidentally blurting out another.
• Frickin' Laser Beams: In 2022, the puzzle board was revamped into a massive LED board that uses LIDAR technology to keep track of Vanna's hands so it knows where she's pressing on the board. It specifically projects an invisible grid of lasers to do this, to the point an article about the changes namechecked the trope name.
• Funny Background Event:
  • Sometimes in the 1980s, Pat would scramble the letters in the bonus puzzle while announcer Jack Clark was reading the fee plugs, so that once the board was seen again near the end of the credits, it would say something funny (e.g FRANK SINATRA becoming RANK RATS or NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS becoming NEW GLAND).
  • For a while in the mid-2000s, the Jackpot round was introduced with a shot of the contestant area with the Jackpot logo superimposed over it. Sometimes, Pat would do something funny in this shot, such as read a newspaper or "fight" Vanna with a styrofoam sword.

G

• Game Show Host: Chuck Woolery, Edd Byrnes, Pat Sajak, Rolf Benirschke, Bob Goen, and David Sidoni for the American versions. Ernie Sigley, John Burgess, Tony Barber, Rob Elliott, Steve Oemcke, Larry Emdur, and Tim Campbell for the Australian versions. Nicky Campbell, Bradley Walsh, John Leslie, and Paul Hendy for the British versions. Jorge Fernández for the Spanish version.
• Game Show Winnings Cap:
  • In daytime, contestants could stay for up to five days, later reduced to three. In nighttime from 1983-89, contestants were one-and-done, and from 1989-96 nighttime had a three-day champion rule. This was changed in 1996 to "Friday Finals", where the three highest winners from Monday-Thursday competed against each other on Fridays, and whoever won on Friday received an extra prize. Nighttime returned to one-and-done in 1998. Although the show has claimed that the enormous amount of contestant applications saw the need to remove any sort of returning-championship format, Pat said on the Sony Rewards website that the show doesn't have returning champions because the most skilled players are not always the big winners — a good puzzle solver could end up hitting an endless string of Bankrupts, while a lousy puzzle-solver could stumble his/her way into a runaway lead.
  • Nighttime also had a $200,000 cap on winnings prior to the adoption of the Million-Dollar Wedge, which would've not only required a $100,000 win in the Bonus Round but also a six-digit win in the main game. Needless to say, the cap was nothing short of impossible to attain.
  • The show's official contestant application states that there is no such thing as a repeat appearance — if you have ever appeared on any version of the American Wheel, regardless of host (including Wheel 2000), you can't come back.
• Genki Guy: Marty Lublin, the traveling host for Wheelmobile contestant auditions. As he's scouting out energetic contestants, he does a lot of yelling and running around onstage.
• Glass-Shattering Sound: Referenced in the September 20th, 2022 episode, where, during the post-game talk with Vanna, Pat jokes that three audience members' glasses broke from how loudly the winning contestant was screaming after having solved the bonus puzzle.
• Golden Snitch:
  • Sometimes invoked if Pat hits $5,000 in the Final Spin. With a $1,000 bonus in later years, that's $6,000 per consonant in a game that usually averages $10,000-$20,000 for the winner. Also invoked if the Prize Puzzle prize is particularly expensive (they start at $7,000, but can be upwards of $12,000, especially during team weeks). In one particularly egregious example, a contestant went into Round 4 with $27,600 but still ended up losing because an opponent benefited greatly from a $6,000 Final Spin.
  • On the other hand, another contestant who had only $5,000 from the second and third Toss-Ups got $30,000 in a $6,000-per-letter Speed-Up, but still lost to someone who had $37,400.
  • In one episode, a contestant whose only two spins had both landed on Bankrupt, and whose only winnings were from the $3,000 Toss-Up, managed to pull a come-from-behind win with a low Final Spin value of $1,550.
  • Another weird variation came in a Spring 1984 episode, where a female contestant who had no money to that point hit $5,000 in Round 3, called a single letter, and solved. It was the last puzzle. Her opponents had $4,925 and $0, so she went from $0 to winner in literally the span of a single spin!
  • Yet another weird zig-zagging came on a 1996 episode where a contestant managed to go from $0 to victory in Round 4 without ever hitting $5,000.
  • The Prize Puzzle is usually a guaranteed victory, since the prize is a minimum of $7,000 on top of the normal winnings from the round. Winning it off of a successful Express run renders the entire rest of the game pointless; even $6,000 Final Spins have failed to catch players who swept up a windfall from that scenario.
  • Winning both halves of the ½ Car, when it existed, would usually do the same by adding a roughly-$15,000 car to the winner's total.
  • Also a good way to earn a lot of money in a hurry: Wild Card + multiple letters on $2,500 or $3,500.
  • The Jackpot, when it existed, often got north of $10,000. Most of the time, a contestant would already have some money banked before claiming the Jackpot, so winning it often meant a pretty big total in that round.
  • For the primetime Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, the Triple Toss-Up and Round 3 puzzle are this, both to increase how much will be given to charity and to keep all the celebrity contestants in the game. Each response in the Triple Toss-Up is worth $5,000 apiece, and the bonus attached to solving the Round 3 puzzle is a whopping $20,000 on top of any money earned in the round.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • When the show announced it was adding a $1,000,000 prize in 2008, many game show fans scoffed at the complex Luck-Based Mission required to win it. It was won less than six weeks after its addition.
  • For a special week in April 2021, the show had a $375,000 house up for grabs in the Bonus Round. Only one of the 24 envelopes contained the prize, but the contestant could make it two if they carried a special wedge. The house was won on the second day it was available, without the contestant adding the second envelope.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Pat is of Polish descent, and will often speak Polish to contestants who are fluent in the language and/or are of Polish decent as well.
• Guest Host:
  • Alex Trebek filled in for both Chuck Woolery and Pat Sajak (having done the latter for one daytime episode in 1985 and the April Fool's Day '97 show).
  • Summer Bartholomew filled in for Susan in 1977 after she hurt her back, as did Arte Johnson. In 1979, Susan dislocated her shoulder in a car accident, so Summer and Cynthia Washington (ex-wife of San Francisco 49ers' Gene Washington) filled in for her for just over two weeks.
  • Summer, Vicki McCarty, and Vanna filled in between Susan's departure and Vanna's first official episode. Susan returned for a daytime Teen Week in June 1986 so Vanna could recover from the death of her then-boyfriend.
  • Tricia Gist, then-girlfriend and now-wife of Merv Griffin's son Tony, filled in for two weeks in January 1991 to accommodate for Vanna's wedding, and again two months later due to Vanna having a bad cold.
  • Charlie O'Donnell filled in for Jack Clark for a few weeks in 1985 due to Jack having schedule conflicts (which ultimately led to Jack leaving The $25,000 Pyramid). Charlie returned from May-June 1988 due to Jack being stricken with bone cancer, which ended his life on July 21. Until about September, Charlie and Johnny Gilbert took turns filling in on daytime before M.G. Kelly was hired. And of course, when M.G. was let go in February 1989, Charlie came back.
  • Don Pardo, whose most recent game show work at that point was Jackpot in 1975, served as announcer when the show went to Radio City Music Hall in November 1988.
  • Johnny Gilbert also announced two weeks of shows in 1995.
  • And after Charlie's death, several guest announcers ^note (Lora Cain, Joe Cipriano, John Cramer, Rich Fields, Johnny Gilbert, and Jim Thornton) rotated until Jim Thornton was chosen as the permanent replacement.
  • A rare example of a guest director. Longtime director Mark Corwin died after directing only two weeks of Season 31. As his death came right before a set of episodes was to be taped on location in Las Vegas, Jeopardy! director Kevin McCarthy, a friend of Corwin's, filled in for him. Meanwhile, subsequent tapings in Culver City used associate director Bob Cisneros, followed by a two-week batch done by technical director Robert Ennis before Cisneros was promoted to full-time director. Ennis also directed two weeks in Season 32 due to Cisneros recovering from neck surgery at the time of taping, and became the permanent director at the start of Season 33.
  • Due to Pat requiring emergency surgery, Vanna hosted three weeks of episodes in Season 37. The first two had costumed Disney characters in Vanna's usual role (they were part of a Disney-sponsored Christmas week), while the third had Pat's daughter, Maggie, as hostess.

H

• Halloween Episode: Since 1997, they almost always have a specifically-themed Halloween week, often with spooky music, smoke machines, animatronic gargoyles, and even various "scary" sound effects when a contestant picks an envelope in the Bonus Round.
• Helium Speech: At the end of a 1998 episode, the set was decorated with balloons, and neither Pat nor Vanna could resist. The clip can be seen on the ceremonial 3,000th and 4,000th episodes.
• Hilarious Outtakes: These shown up in a few special episodes, or during the post-game chats. One has Vanna repeatedly tripping over the line "What's with all the exclamation points?" when shooting a bumper for a local affiliate, followed by Pat snarking, "Don't make me come over there." Another one involved Vanna repeatedly screwing up the line "Highlight your night life" when shooting footage of herself modeling a car; one of the takes had "Highlight your knife light."
• His and Hers: In the late 1980s to early 1990s, his-and-hers cars were sometimes up for grabs in the Bonus Round. On one 1989 episode, a female contestant actually liked the "his" car better, so Pat responded by swapping the "his" and "hers" signs.
• Home Game:
  • Several board games, video game versions as early as the NES, and several PC versions as well, most recently on the PS4 and Xbox One.
  • One was intended for the Atari 2600, along with six other game shows, but was canned due to The Great Video Game Crash of 1983. No prototypes of any are known to exist.
  • There was an arcade version in the '80s, which even had a miniature, spinnable Wheel on its console. Then there's the redemption game version made by Konami which also had the miniature spinnable Wheel.
  • Tiger Electronics produced a fairly cumbersome handheld game of Wheel (the QWERTY keyboard took up most of it). This release was notable for its inclusion of game cartridges, each of which contained about 200 puzzles.
  • There's also a Facebook version.
  • The 30th anniversary of the first evening show saw the release of a mobile phone game in which the player's victories grant access to use of the show's old sets.
• Home Participation Sweepstakes:
  • In the mid-1990s, home viewers could enter sweepstakes for various things, including several variations that involved unscrambling words spelled out by differently-colored letters on the puzzle board.
  • The Prize Puzzle rounds qualified — after each, the SPIN ID of a random home viewer was drawn, allowing them to win the trip associated with that puzzle. This was retired in Season 30 for "5K Every Day", which instead awards $5,000 cash to a randomly-selected viewer. Since their inception in 2004, the SPIN IDs are sometimes used in home sweepstakes.
  • Many sweepstakes have involved submitting bonus puzzles for a week (originally on a paper form availble in newspapers or at certain retailers, later moved to online forms) to enter a prize drawing.
• Hotter and Sexier: Season 1 of Celebrity Wheel of Fortune had several provocative puzzles that would never even come close to being used on the TV-G-rated syndicated version, including: FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS (People), ABSOLUTELY NOTHING (What Are You Wearing?), and BRAZILIAN WAX MUSEUM (Before & After). For Season 2, the puzzles are more on par with the syndicated version aside from an occasional negative-skewing puzzle (which the syndicated show almost-entirely avoids except on Halloween-themed episodes), though Celebrity Wheel is still rated TV-PG. A Season 3 episode managed to sneak in GILMORE GIRLS GONE WILD.
• Hurricane of Puns: Jim Thornton likes to ad-lib all sorts of puns pertaining to the Prize copy or, occasionally, Bonus Round prize.

I

• I Always Wanted to Say That: In the episode where Pat plays as a contestant, he says he is "very excited" to finally utter the phrase "I'd like to buy a vowel."
• Idiosyncratic Wipes: The category graphics at the bottom of the screen are usually given special wipes pertaining to that week's theme (for instance, a school bus "drives" across the category graphic on Teacher's Week). There are also wipes for the Toss-Ups and Final Spin on every episode (the Prize Puzzle one was dropped after Season 29).
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • Edd Byrnes stated in his memoir Kookie No More that he had a few before doing the 1974 pilots. For the first pilot he was "crazy drunk", badgering a contestant who wanted to solve for $1,300 into spinning again; he kind of improved for the second pilot to "happy drunk", saying "Whee!" at some points.
  • In January 2012, Pat Sajak revealed he and Vanna used to get drunk during their two-and-a-half-hour breaks between taping during the Burbank era. He later revealed that this was an exaggeration.
• Inflation Negation:
  • Buying a vowel. The cost was $250 in 1973, and it is still $250 in the syndicated version. As of Season 32, the minimum cash wedge on the wheel is $500, enough to buy two vowels.
  • The vowel price was reduced to $200 when the daytime version moved to CBS in July 1989 and cut to $100 sometime in the first half of 1990, due to that version's lower stakes.
• Instant-Win Condition: Subverted if the contestant fills in the puzzle completely; he or she still has to read it off correctly. This has backfired more than once, as a few contestants over the years have been ruled incorrect for misreading a fully-revealed puzzle.
• Irony:
  • The lady on a 1985 episode who called a wrong letter on THE THRILL OF VICTORY AND THE AGONY OF DEFEAT and lost over $60,000 is probably one of the most prominent examples.
  • One contestant at some point failed to solve YOU WIN in the Bonus Round.

J

• Joke and Receive: On October 27, 2011 (an episode with a Fictional Family puzzle), Pat joked that the category had only been used eight times. At the end of the show, he was told that it actually had been used only eight times...except that was wrong as well - it was the category's tenth appearance.
• Jump Cut: Present in the days that the mechanical puzzle board was used. Right after "Our category is...", they would Jump Cut to the blank puzzle board and category reveal. What the home viewer didn't see was the puzzle board getting rolled back into the studio after having that round's puzzle loaded onto it.
  • A rather blatant one shows up in a nighttime bonus round on May 5, 1986: the contestant says the first part of the right answer (AT MY WIT'S END) just before the buzzer, then the rest of it during and after said buzzer. Since they don't have another commercial break, the only option was to stop tape before declaring that he won the Pontiac, resulting in a very sloppy edit:
    Pat: To my ear, it was very tight. We're gon—
    (jump cut)
    Offstage voice: —winner.
    (contestant screams and jumps up in air)
  • Earlier, however, the contestant made a guess that has shown up in many specials. The audience was originally silent, but Wheel added laughter to the clip for the ceremonial 4,000th nighttime show; they also added a buzzer right afterward.
  • Jump cuts are also present if Pat hits something other than a dollar amount on the Final Spin, or if three (or six) consecutive wrong letters are called in the Speed-Up.
  • When a round starts with a cycle of three consecutive lost turns that were edited out, the wide shot of the first spin is that of the original spin whose corresponding letter call was edited out, which always results in a jump cut with the Wheel landing in a different area than where it was originally headed. For example, if the first spin looks like it's about to land on Lose A Turn but ends up on the other side of the Wheel.
• Just Following Orders: Pat tends to say this when he has to take away a wedge or token, or show Bonus Round players the prize they lost.

L

• Large Ham: Some of the celebrities on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune can be this, especially Jeff Garlin on Season 2, Episode 3 (#PT-203). He frequently interrupted the pace of the game to make comments, and made multiple insincere, nonsensical solve attempts during main rounds. He also stated that his goal was to break the record for most Bankrupts (loudly celebrating when he got one), and at one point when guessing a wrong letter, told the "buzzer person" to shut up, being met with a second buzz. At one point, Donny Osmond had to tell him to stop talking and spin.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • During the second 1974 pilot, contestant Roseanne is pressured twice by host Edd Byrnes to keep spinning when she wants to solve. She solves three out of four puzzles, but loses by $90 (although she would have lost by only $40 if not for a scoring error).
  • Matthew Fenwick, wanted for two counts of child molestation, appeared on Wheel on March 18, 1998. He won $4,400, but one of his victims recognized him while watching his show and alerted the authorities. Fenwick was arrested two days later and served 6½ years in prison.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The show's social media pages post at least one video highlight from the current day's episode at 8:00 PM Eastern time, immediately after the show has aired in all East Coast markets. Viewers who missed or in West Coast markets can infer the Bonus Round outcome based on the content posted. In general, if the clip is the Bonus Round, or a "Best of (contestant)" montage, the Bonus Round was won. If the clip is anything but the Bonus Round, especially something mundane like a contestant's interview or Pat and Vanna's chat at the end of the show, or if no clip is posted at all, it was most likely a loss. When the clip is a win, expect comments from West Coast viewers complaining that they haven't seen it air yet.
  • The show began partially averting this starting in Season 41, where they will often post Bonus Rounds even if they're lost. However, it can usually still be inferred if it's a win or loss based on the title, caption, or thumbnail. Wins typically use a photo of the contestant celebrating with their guests as the thumbnail, while losses usually use a random photo of the contestant taken during the main game under the title "(contestant's name)'s Bonus Round". The formula of non-Bonus Round clips being posted at 8:00 PM if the Bonus Round wasn't won still holds true, however.
• Laugh Track: Before the mid-90s, they very obviously used an applause machine. The "ooh"s whenever someone landed on a prize wedge or the top dollar, "Aww"s when someone hit Lose a Turn or Bankrupt, or called a wrong letter, et cetera. The show started using an applause machine again in the mid-2000s, but it's a bit harder to discern.
  • From the show's beginning in 1975, every time the Wheel was spun, a loud loop of an audience shouting would play for the entire spin, and fade out when the Wheel stopped. This was replaced with normal applause upon the move to CBS Television City in 1989, but due to using CBS's applause tracks instead of NBC's, it now resulted in a new cheering loop that played at the beginning and end of every segment, or whenever someone called a high multiple, made obvious by a loud whistle that would sound every few seconds. CBS's sounds also included the loud "aww" that was used after almost every penalty spin or incorrect letter. Both of these sounds were also used just as often during the Ray Combs era of Family Feud.
  • In the 80's, the famous "Look at this studio!" intro was filled with canned reactions to the prizes. One of the most noticeable ones was the sound of men shouting "Yeah!" and "Ow!".
  • In the early-to-mid 90's, an "Oooh..." would often sound when the top dollar or prize wedges would whiz by in the overhead shot, even if the Wheel stopped several wedges past.
  • In the "AT MY WIT'S END" Bonus Round, the "audience" groaned loudly in sync with the buzzer even as the contestant solved.
  • Canned audience sounds are becoming more prevalent in The New '10s with the occasional delayed gasps when a contestant just misses a Bankrupt, or "ooh"s if someone hits the Million Dollar Wedge.
  • The show's social media pages will sometimes upload clips of closing segments. These usually do not contain the extra laughter and applause sounds added in when the episode is shown on TV. One segment involved Pat trying to reveal a letter on the puzzle board to no avail. When it aired on TV, raucous laughter was heard as Pat tried to reveal the letter, but the clip on the show's YouTube channel was the segment exactly as recorded in the studio, which had no laughter at all.
  • Since the coronavirus pandemic, canned reactions have become more prevalent, especially on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, with obviously dubbed-in applause when the celebrities talk about their charities. Audiences were brought back starting with syndicated Season 40 and Celebrity Season 3, but are obviously sweetened with even louder canned applause than previous seasons, made particularly obvious by Season 40 intros having loud cheers up until the chant, while the audience had been silent during the pre-chant music since Season 28.
• Let's Just See What WOULD Have Happened:
  • On at least one daytime episode (June 7, 1976), a contestant who solved the Round 3 puzzle early was asked to spin the Wheel to see what she would have landed on; she landed on $1,500 (then the top dollar amount).
  • On some early nighttime episodes, if the bonus puzzle was not solved, Pat would sometimes ask if anyone in the audience knew the answer before having Vanna reveal it.
  • If a contestant opts not to flip over a Mystery Wedge and solves immediately afterward, Pat will often ask the contestant if s/he wants to see what was on the other side.
  • After the bonus round, the prize the contestant was playing for will be revealed whether the contestant actually won it or not (except for the first episode with the W-H-E-E-L envelopes, and a random 2003 episode where Pat simply forgot). Additionally, if they could have won the million dollar prize but didn't land on it on the prize wheel, Pat will usually reveal which space on the wheel held the million after the bonus round is over.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Parodied on a 1997 episode where, in the final segment, Pat and Vanna are at a table, respectively reading a newspaper and knitting. They both joke that people often interpret them as a married couple (even though in Real Life, both are happily married to different people), with Pat nodding and bluntly finishing all of Vanna's sentences.
• Literal-Minded: One contestant, after being told by Pat to "throw to commercial", literally throws the Prize wedge she won, much like Pat in the 1980s-90s, actually.
• Loads and Loads of Rules: The game has become increasingly complex in the 2000s, with the likes of the Jackpot, Gift Tag, Toss-Ups, Mystery wedges, Wild Card, Million Dollar Wedge, Free Play, ½ Car tags, etc.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Attempted on the Megaword puzzle PROLIFERATION. When asked to use it in a sentence for a $500 bonus, the contestant said "The contestants did not know what the word 'proliferation' meant." It bizarrely didn't work.
  • On November 10, 2015, contestant Nura went viral for calling obviously wrong letters like Q or getting buzzed out on every turn she got in the Speed-Up. Consensus seems to be that she did this on purpose to allow one of her opponents to win money.
• Lovely Assistant: Susan Stafford from 1974-82, followed by the former Trope Namer, Vanna White, after two months of rotating guests. The latter's popularity skyrocketed in the 1980s in what was unofficially described "Vannamania". In the Australian version, Adriana Xenides was the most well-known letter turner, followed by Kerrie Friend, then Sophie Falkiner, then Laura Csortan, then Kelly Landry. In the UK: Angela Ekaette (1988), then Carol Smillie, Jenny Powell, Tracy Shaw, and Terri Seymour. In Spain, Paloma López from 2006-2015, followed by Laura Moure. Olympic rhythmic gymnast Barbara Gonzalez subbed for Laura when she was out with an injury in 2016. Also in a unique example, Tanika Ray did the mo-cap and voice acting for the animated assistant "Cyber Lucy" on Wheel 2000.
• Luck-Based Mission: Whenever a contestant lands on a Mystery Wedge. One contains a $10,000 cash prize (previously, it could contain a compact car or other prize in the $10,000 range) on the flip side, and the other contains a Bankrupt. The contestant may choose to take its "face value" of $1,000 (originally $500) per letter, or forfeit that amount and flip it over. If one is flipped over, the other one functions as a regular cash space for the rest of that round.
  • Depending on the game the Bonus Puzzle can be this. Picture it, you get to the last puzzle with a prize on the line, the puzzle is typically something general (typically "Thing(s)") depending on where the R,S,T,L,N,E end up and how many vowels are in the puzzle (you only get E and one of your own) you could end up filling the whole thing in yourself or end up with an unsolvable puzzle with only a few letters showing on the board.
• Lucky Charms Title: In the show's two-line logo, the "o" in "of" is rendered as a wheel.
  • During Tennis Week in 2018, the "o" in "of" was replaced with a tennis ball, while the wheel-shaped "O" was moved down to replace the one in "FORTUNE".

M

• Mad Libs Catch Phrase: Nearly all contestants who are married with children follow the same format when talking about their family: "I'm married to my [adjective] [husband/wife] [spouse's name], and we have [number] [adjective] kids, [list all kids' first names and ages]." One 2019 contestant had fun with this and (jokingly) used negative adjectives to describe his marriage and kids. A 2011 contestant once started the spiel, then stopped and said, "No, that's somebody else's life. I'm single."
• Metaphorgotten: At the end of an episode from the first week of Season 21, he and Vanna reminisced on how long they were doing the show. Pat then said, "It's like riding a bicycle: I'm all sweaty and my rear end hurts."
• Missing the Good Stuff:
  • Although Wheel is a syndicated program, it is only scheduled to air in the hour before primetime, and never earlier than 7:00 PM Eastern (except in Canada). This often results in the show getting pre-empted by sporting events (mostly pregame coverage), award shows, or local special programming. In Boston and Nashville, Wheel is pre-empted at least once a week during football season in favor of locally-produced shows on the cities' NFL teams.
  • The premiere episode of Season 41, Pat Sajak's final season as host, got pre-empted in more than 20% of the US due to ABC adding pregame coverage before any of its national broadcasts of Monday Night Football. This was also the case for the second and third Monday episodes of the season, and a few others afterwards. Since Nashville also airs Wheel on ABC, combined with their local Tennessee Titans show, that market missed out on the Monday and Tuesday episodes for the first three weeks of the season. Backlash was so bad that Pat had to apologize on social media.
  • Since the Toss-Up era, Wheel kicks off gameplay almost immediately after the famous opening chant, typically no more than 45 seconds into the show. Some local stations, especially ones that schedule it after local news, have a habit of starting Wheel a bit before the official time slot (usually immediately following the newscast's signoff with no commercials in between), meaning that if one tunes into the show a mere 60 seconds late, or DVR's the show starting at the even X:00/X:30 minute, they would likely already miss the first puzzle. Dallas affiliate KTVT often starts Wheel at 6:27 PM.
  • On February 7, 8, and 9, 2022, the Bonus Round had three $100,000 winners in a row, which had never happened before, and likely will never happen again given the microscopic odds. On most NBC affiliates that carry Wheel, the show does not air for at least two weeks during the Summer and Winter Olympics, the latter of which was underway when these episodes aired. Many affiliates did not air these episodes at all (such as WCNC-TV in Charlotte), or aired them in the middle of the night (such as KSDK in St. Louis), or on lesser sister stations or subchannels (such as WTHR in Indianapolis moving the show to MeTV affiliate WALV).
• Mission-Pack Sequel: One of the computer game adaptations, Wheel of Fortune 2003, is pretty much the exact same game as Wheel of Fortune 2nd Edition, with a different puzzle bank and with Vanna's FMV clips redone. Otherwise, it's aesthetically exactly the same, down to all the theming, menus, music, and everything else.
• Moon Logic Puzzle:
  • Some of the bonus puzzles practically seem set up to be lost. In the 1990s, it wasn't rare to see three- to five-letter answers, often compounded in difficulty by not having any RSTLNE in them. BABY BOY, WIG, WAX, and ZOO all occurred in October 1992 alone (and amazingly, all but WIG were solved; BABY BOY in particular was solved with no letters showing). YO-YO and I DO (1993 and 1996, respectively) were also solved.
    • Since about Season 20, the difficulty is usually ramped up by relying heavily on rarely-called letters (e.g. JAZZ BAND), vowels (e.g. OAK BUREAU), arcane and outdated phrases (e.g. WHAT A BUSYBODY), completely arbitrary noun-adjective pairings (e.g. FAVORITE MUG, AVID HIKER, WILDLY HAPPY GUY, WACKY NEIGHBOR(S) {twice!}), or some combination of the above (e.g. JACUZZI BUBBLES).
    • Pretty much any bonus puzzle with the word QUIZ in it.
    • In rare occurrences, RSTLNE will reveal only the S at the end of a pluralized puzzle (e.g. HIGHWAYS, WHIZ KIDS).
  • A Clue puzzle in 1993 reading SILENT BUTLER'S TARGETS proved to be this, as none of the contestants or Pat knew what a silent butler was.
  • Defied by the bonus puzzle NEW BABY BUGGY on March 19, 2014, a typical example of the "random adjective/noun pairing" style of bonus puzzle. After picking three more consonants and a vowel, the contestant was still faced with only the N and E… and solved it in about two seconds.
• Ms. Fanservice: An arcade edition of Wheel released in the late 1980's featured a very busty "Vanna", resembling a blonde Jessica Rabbit. Her sprites even featured Jiggle Physics whenever she clapped.
• Multiple Endings:
  • The week of November 13-17, 1989 contained information on how to enter a sweepstakes to win a trip to an upcoming show taping at Walt Disney World. However, not all markets participated in this promotion, so two endings were filmed for all five episodes. One ending featured Pat and Vanna standing at the Wheel and plugging the sweepstakes, with more details appearing on screen during a shorter-than-usual credit roll. The alternate ending, meant for non-participating stations, had generic closing segments and had the usual credits with Pat, Vanna, and the winner standing at center stage. One of these alternate endings was the famous segment in which Vanna plays a round of Wheel solo for charity. Despite the existence of the latter, GSN airings of these episodes were the versions with the sweepstakes plugs, which were then edited out.
  • The March 7, 1997 episode ended with Howard Stern making an appearance to promote Private Parts. Reruns of this episode, including GSN airings, featured a generic closing segment.
  • Three episodes in Season 30 each had two closing segments filmed due to one of them featuring a celebrity promoting a network television program despite Wheel being syndicated; the other was the usual generic conversation between Pat and Vanna. Whichever one aired depended on the network affiliate.
    • November 1, 2012: Tom Bergeron promotes Dancing with the Stars; aired on ABC affiliates only.
    • January 7, 2013: The cast of Shark Tank promote their new season; aired on ABC affiliates only.
    • March 1, 2013: Julie Chen promotes The Talk and Big Brother; intended for air on CBS affiliates only, but ended up airing on all stations in the U.S. and even Canada. However, the episode reran over a year later on May 3, 2014 with the other closing.
  • The original closing for the November 5, 2010 episode (with the famous I'VE GOT A GOOD FEELING ABOUT THIS solve) never aired, as it was replaced at the last minute with a tribute to Charlie O'Donnell, who passed away earlier that week. The episode reran in September 2011, but still with the tribute.
  • When the May 29, 2013 episode reran that September, the original closing was replaced with a tribute to director Mark Corwin, who passed away in July.
  • The final Secret Santa episode of Season 38 had Pat promoting a second giveaway in July. This episode's rerun that month used a new closing with Pat and Vanna commenting on the July version of the giveaway.
  • The April 25, 2022 episode's original airing ended with a tribute to Vanna's cat that had recently passed away. A rerun of the episode in September 2023 had a different closing where Pat brags to Vanna that he has two Wheel of Fortune pinball machines in his house.
• Musical Gag: On a 2004 episode, the Theme Tune of the then-still-airing Australian version was used as a music bed when Charlie described a trip to Australia which was that day's Prize.
• Must Make Amends: On several occasions, contestants have made repeat appearances due to game-changing errors on their first episode. This includes the following:
  • At least three confirmed instances in Season 6 alone. While the reasons behind the other two are unknown, one contestant who appeared on the season premiere in September was brought back in February after it was discovered that the buzzer had accidentally sounded too soon on a Speed-Up turn on his original episode, thus denying him the ability to solve and win.
  • In late 2000, contestant Fely called P in the first round; there was a P in the puzzle, but the judges misheard her call as B and she lost her turn. Because of this, she competed again in April 2001.
  • One contestant named Heather was brought back in 2004, but her reasoning is unknown.
  • In 2008, a contestant named Hannah was brought back because on her original episode, the judges unintentionally accepted a wrong answer from one of her opponents on a Toss-Up.
  • A contestant in 2018 was brought back due to a Toss-Up buzzer malfunction on her original episode in 2017.
  • Tony Harrison was brought back due to his original episode's bonus puzzle having been in the wrong category.
  • In June 2021, a contestant was brought back because on his previous episode in 2017, one of his opponents was allowed to buy a vowel during the Prize Puzzle round despite the buzzer having sounded before she could do so.
  • Unrelated to the above, an example also occurred on a Bob Goen episode. The Clue puzzle SINGING GROUP OR STATE was intended to have Alabama as a correct response. One of the contestants guessed Kansas, which initially was not accepted — until after the commercial break, when the judges decided to accept that answer after all (since there is a band named Kansas).
  • Similarly, on September 24, 2001, a contestant was faced with the Next Line Please puzzle TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR and guessed "how I wonder where you are" instead of "how I wonder what you are". Later in the episode, Pat pointed out that since the lyric "twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder where you are" occurs in the song "Little Star" by the Elegants, he would be awarded the $3,000 bonus.

N

• Negated Moment of Awesome: Any time contestant racks up a huge total in a round and loses it to Bankrupt or getting stumped on one word in a puzzle.
  • Season 3 (1985-86, nighttime): According to multiple recollections, a contestant with a $60,000+ bank incorrectly solves the puzzle STAR LIGHT STAR BRIGHT FIRST STAR I SEE TONIGHT by leaving out the seventh word.
  • December 5, 1985 (nighttime): A contestant misses out on winning $62,400 by guessing an "S" in the puzzle THE THRILL OF VICTORY AND THE AGONY OF DEFEAT. She then misses out on another $10,000 in the Speed-Up round.
  • September 19, 2007: A contestant loses $39,746 ($33,450 in cash and a $6,296 Prize Puzzle trip) by pluralizing the puzzle. The audience cheers but then stops after Pat announces that she's wrong.
  • April 23, 2008: A contestant lands on the Mystery Wedge on her first spin, and she flips it over to find $10,000. Her second spin nets her an additional $25,000 from the Big Money Wedge. Guess what she hits on her third spin?
• Nintendo Hard: In order to win the $1,000,000 prize, a contestant has to hit the million dollar wedge, guess a correct letter, solve the puzzle, never hit bankrupt for the rest of the game, win the main game, spin the million dollar envelope on the bonus round wheel, and then solve the bonus round puzzle. With all the steps involved and all the parts that are luck based, it's likely the hardest prize to win in all of game shows.
• No-Damage Run: Invoked if a contestant lands on Express on the first spin, and successfully fills in the entire puzzle with it.
• No-Hoper Repeat: In February 2024, ABC scheduled two consecutive repeats of Celebrity Wheel as counterprogramming against the Grammy Awards on CBS.
• No Indoor Voice: Lampshaded on the 4,000th episode, which showed a montage of screaming contestants set to "Shout" by the Isley Brothers.
• Numerological Motif: The week of May 27, 2013 was "Celebrating 30!", with contestants who had a connection to that number, many of whom were 30 years old. Most of the puzzles had to do with the number 30, the 1980s, or age — including PEARL BRACELET and GREEN BAY WISCONSIN on the 29th, which ended with Pat and Vanna talking about how they were connected to the theme ^note (A possible 30th anniversary gift and the 30th state admitted to the Union, respectively).
  • May 30 had the second $1,000,000 win, although the broadcast of the game had been rescheduled after being planned for the 31st (the date was leaked right after that week's taping session) because, you know, 30. (The final tally of $1,030,340 wasn't lost on Jim Thornton, though).
  • The sixth show of this taping day aired shortly afterward (and itself had a $100,000 win), but the contestants' connections to the number 30 weren't stated.
  • From Season 32 to Season 40, the minimum cash prize on the bonus wheel has been the season number multiplied by $1,000.

O

• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • Buying a vowel. From the 1973 pilot through most of 1975, there was a "Buy A Vowel" wedge (two in later rounds) on the Wheel even though players could buy vowels anytime through at least early September 1975 ^note (making this really obvious was that the 1974 pilots added the wedge in Round 2). The Milton Bradley home games had a rule where players needed to hit the wedge, but this most likely was never the case on the show itself. Regardless, contestants unfairly lost their turn by hitting it without enough money to buy a vowel (such as on the very first spin of the September 5, 1975 show), or after all the vowels had been revealed. By November 3, 1975, the wedges were finally just kicked out.
  • Apparently, there was not originally a rule stating that contestants had to solve the puzzle exactly as it appeared on the board, a rule which was supposedly added the day after a contestant was ruled correct despite transposing two words in the answer.
  • The two changes in the Bonus Round: first, by offering RSTLNE automatically, and second, by forcing the contestant to pick a random prize. The daytime version did not make use of the latter.
  • Reducing the cost of vowels on the daytime version after it moved to CBS to compensate for the drastically-lowered budget.
  • Originally, the Free Spin was a regular space on the Wheel, and could be landed on multiple times (the contestant was given a cardboard disc), meaning s/he could stock up several tokens. Many contestants ended up turning in Free Spin after Free Spin and therefore hogging the Wheel, including at least one daytime episode where the blue contestant never got to touch the Wheel at all due to an opponent abusing Free Spins (but still ended up winning thanks to a $2,000 Final Spin).
  • A 1992 episode had the puzzle BATHTUB GIN & FLAPPERS. The contestant who solved was asked to identify the most popular dance craze of the 1920s. He couldn't come up with the Charleston, so he said "The dance that goes like this" and danced the Charleston. The producer hesitantly took it as a correct answer. Immediately afterward, the rules were changed across the board to verbal guesses only.
  • Several puzzles in 1995 and 1996 consisted of lists of things, and sometimes used two spaces between words or even hanging indents to make the separation between words/items clearer. (Example, the "Where Are We?" puzzle PIKES PEAK OR BUST VAIL RIVER RAFTING had two spaces between VAIL and RIVER, and the words OR BUST and RAFTING one space further to the right, in an attempt to make it clear that "Pikes Peak or Bust", "Vail" and "river rafting" were separate elements of the answer.) This still confused contestants, and sometimes led to mocking from Pat, so they just stopped writing puzzles in that fashion.
  • The addition of Proper Name in 1996, ending more than two decades of "Person does not always mean 'proper name'." reminders (generally, the use of the disclaimer depended on whether or not it was a proper name - if it was given, it wasn't; if it was omitted, it was). Strangely, the reverse is now true: Proper Name can also refer to a business, sports team, college, etc. On Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, Pat will still often remind the players about the difference between Person and Proper Name.
  • Adding $1,000 to the value of the Final Spin in 1999 to reduce the number of Foregone Conclusions (although sometimes this can over-compensate).
  • The introduction of the Toss-Up to decide play order. Before, a number draw backstage determined the position of the three players, meaning the person selected in the red (1st) position was always guaranteed to start two puzzles during a game, and quite possibly the yellow (2nd) player as well, leaving the blue (3rd) at a disadvantage. The Toss-Up could also use one as well, since there are two to kick off the show: one before contestant introductions and then one to decide who goes first, which doesn't seem so fair to the person who solved the first one...especially since, no matter who got the first Toss-Up, the red player starts Round 1 if the second goes unsolved.
  • The rename of On the Menu (introduced in Season 21) to Food & Drink in Season 24 seems to be this. Previously, some food-and-drink puzzles were shoehorned into On the Menu anyway (such as BIG GULP, something even Pat called the writers out for), while other foods that wouldn't necessarily be found on a menu were called just Thing (as was the case prior to Season 21) or sometimes Around the House.
  • In Season 25, the Wheel had a "Big Money Wedge" that shuffled between penalties and flat cash amounts up to $25,000. Originally, there was presumably no rule about using the Wild Card for an extra consonant on one of the cash amounts. After one contestant managed to do this (albeit for a wrong letter), a rule was quickly enforced stating that the Wild Card could not be used on the wedge except in its post-claim $1,000-per-letter state. Although the show has many game-breakers, the potential to earn $50,000 from as little as two consonants was understandably not going to fly.
  • Starting in Season 30, landing on any cardboard (Wild Card, Gift Tag, Prize) awards both the extra and $500 per letter. Previously, it awarded just cardboard, which can be rather disappointing if one lands on the Wild Card and calls a letter that's up there several times.
  • In an October 2016 episode, a Crossword Puzzle used an arrangement of four horizontal words and one vertical word down the middle built entirely off of letters from the other four, making it difficult to discern. Although the contestant did include the vertical word when solving, there was a long pause before Pat ruled her correct, possibly not noticing the word himself. Later that season, another Crossword puzzle of this arrangement was used, and this time, the contestant did not include the vertical word and was penalized. After that episode, this type of arrangement was never used again.
  • On Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, the Same Name category was used once in its first season, and the celebrities had a very rough time understanding the concept, since the category is typically only known by fans or casual watchers of the show. After this, the category was never used again on this version.
  • Starting in Season 32, the Same Letter category began awarding a $1,000 bonus when the titular Same Letter was called. In a March 2019 episode, for only the first time, a contestant called the Same Letter on a Mystery Wedge, and Pat seemed confused on how the $1,000 bonus would be applied in this scenario (it was added to her score immediately, regardless of her decision to flip the wedge). This happened again in a September 2020 episode and was handled the same way, but when it happened a third time in a March 2021 episode, the $1,000 bonus was not awarded after the contestant found the $10,000 prize, then lost her turn on a forced spin immediately afterwards. After this episode aired, Same Letter became exclusive to Round 1, presumably to avoid having the bonus overlap with the Mystery Wedge.
  • Due to strict limitations in the UK, the British version originally had an either-or trivia question every time the Wheel changed hands; get it wrong, lose your turn. After at least the first two series, they realized it slowed games to a crawl and changed it to a toss-up question at the start of each round.
• Once an Episode:
  • It used to be that only some games had Speed-Up rounds, and having one was more the exception; since late 2000, every game has one to bring a definitive "end" to gameplay and level the playing field a bit.
  • When they were first introduced in Season 21, Prize Puzzles occurred at random throughout the week. Since the Season 23 premiere, they now appear daily.
• Once a Season:
  • Many of the theme weeks, such as Teacher's Week, Wheel Around the World, Great Outdoors, College Week (sometimes known as "College Road Trip"), etc.
  • At least one puzzle pertaining to Bruce Springsteen.
  • At least one puzzle of "THE BEST [noun] EVER", either as a Prize Puzzle or tying into the week's theme.
  • At least one Bonus Round puzzle of "[verb]ING AROUND".
  • At least one Bonus Round puzzle with the word "JACKRABBIT".
  • At least one Bonus Round puzzle with the word "JUICY".
  • At least one Bonus Round puzzle of "QUART OF _____ MILK".
  • At least one Bonus Round puzzle with some form of the words "QUICK" and "JOG". One contestant made note of this on January 26, 2023 after he failed to solve TAKING A QUICK JOG.
  • At least one Bonus Round puzzle with the word "WICKER".
• Opening Narration:
  • From 1975-89, over a shot of the studio the announcer told the viewer to "Look at this studio, filled with glamorous prizes! Fabulous and exciting merchandise! ^note (From 1975-77, Charlie would say something along the lines of "Wonderful and inviting items sure to dazzle the imagination." Sometime in 1977, he began naming three prizes at random, and beginning near the end of Woolery's tenure as host in 1981, Jack Clark would give a longer description of some select items.) Over [amount] thousand dollars, just waiting to be won on... Wheeeeeel of Fortune! And now here's your host: [name]!"
  • On August 8, 1983 (with the first use of "Changing Keys"), the show began using a pre-recorded chant of "Wheel! Of! Fortune!" at the very beginning over the show's logo, superimposed over the Wheel. From 1989-91, the daytime show kept the last part of the original intro.
  • For many years, the intro was just the chant, followed by "Ladies and gentlemen, Pat Sajak and Vanna White!" On road shows, it's extended to "From [venue], here are the stars of America's Game: Pat Sajak and Vanna White!" In Season 31, it was extended to "From the Sony Pictures Studios, it's America's Game!" followed by the chant, then "Ladies and gentlemen, here are the stars of our show: Pat Sajak and Vanna White!"