So there's virtually no risk there, either. Even if you're not 100% sure, you could still buy vowels along the way to narrow your guesses down and could reasonably suss it out by the time more letters appear on the board. If you know the puzzle by that point, there's no risk. germanname brought up an interesting point: with Express, you're not immediately risking your turn any more than you would by guessing letters normally. Yeah, you lose it all to a Bankrupt if you miss along the way, and yeah, we've seen it happen, but realistically speaking you hop aboard the Express to remove the risk of hitting a penalty space if you were to spin again anyway. Here, there really isn't a good reason at all other than to give an advantage to a lucky player.Īs Keith of the Final Wager said, there's not enough risk involved. (One could argue the Speed-up Round does the same thing, but there's a specific reason for that, and that's to speed up the game when time is short so time isn't wasted watching the wheel spin.)

It shoves aside the element of the game that gives the show its name-the Wheel. We want to critique constructively, not whine about why the show does things the way they do without putting a new idea forward. Please try to come up with something a little more original. How do you make it less so?įor the sake of discussion, I have laid these facts out to prevent the same tired arguments from surfacing. Is this an exciting enough game element? Is there a compelling argument for NOT hopping aboard? There is no point to solving early unless only vowels remain, because that is just leaving thousands-literally-on the table. By hopping aboard the Express, the contestant does not spin the wheel. Express does not always come into play when hit, but can come into play multiple times in the same round. Express is always in Round 3, at the same time as the Prize Puzzle. Contestant may buy vowels or solve along the way, but a single miss results in a Bankrupt (what we've come to call a 'crash'). Contestant may hop aboard the Express and call additional consonants at $1,000 a pop, or continue spinning. Contestant hits wedge, calls correct consonant at $1,000 a pop. Inspired somewhat by a Twitter conversation I had with The Final Wager, who called it 'the worst thing ever.' Do you agree? Let's examine the facts.

Now that we're a couple of seasons in, I feel it's a good time to evaluate the Express wedge, and see if there's anything we can do to improve its mechanics.

Wheel of fortune 2002 mystery wedge