The contestant had whittled the puzzle down to this:
A STREETCAR NA_ED DESIRE
He decided to spin again in order to try and up his total. It landed on $600. And what letter did he call out?
“K!”
Yes, apparently he had never heard of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Or maybe there’s a pørņ version that I’m unaware of, but I suspect not.
I almost feel sorry for him. He’s going to be ribbed by his friends forever for this. Even if he goes on to win.
Christ, he just did it again. In the subject of “Sticky,” three of the words were spelled out: FINGERS, NOTE and RICE. The remaining word was _ICKET. He guessed “Picket.” When it was, of course, “Wicket.” Holy crap, how did he get on in the first place?
PAD
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Well if there isn’t a pørņ titled, “A Streetcar of Naked Desire,” there should be. That title should not be unused.
For that matter, “Sticky Wicket” itself is just waiting to be used for Ewok-themed pørņ.
Re: How he got on. At one of my many Jeopardy! tryouts, which when in LA take place just down the hall from WoF’s, someone asked the question “What happens if we don’t get any right (on the 50 question tryout test)?”. To which the response was “Wheel of Fortune tryouts are down the hall, third door on the left.”
And while it wasn’t for WoF, I have tried out for one game show where it was very clear that the people who scored highest on the general knowledge/trivia tryout test were eliminated. Some shows, and I suspect WoF is one of them, are much more interested in enthusiasm and how you come across on air than smarts.
I can attest to the latter point, if only through hearsay. Way back when I was in high school (and now of course I feel old for saying that), our Spanish teacher was something of an encyclopedic genius. Spoke, like, six languages IN ADDITION to English and Spanish, plus expertise in each of their cultures and histories, and highly educated beyond a typical college gen-ed level in a number of other fields ranging from physics to math to literature. He was slumming it at our school because, like all truly great teachers, he was doing it specifically for his love of teaching and spreading knowledge and educating future generations. How he subsequently dealt with “No Child Left Behind,” and now Trump, I don’t know, as I’ve not spoken to him in nearly two decades, but to quote our digital patriarch here on this site, “but I digress.”
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Teaching was his passion, but like anyone, he had dreams, and his big one was to win big on “Jeopardy” or “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”. And for years, he called in, took the online tests, took occasional trips to do in-person tests or auditions, and made a solid, concerted effort to make it onto national TV and achieve stardom (even if only the 15 minutes variety).
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And after those aforementioned years, one day he kinda gave up and shrugged it off. Apparently a producer had told him point blank “You’re too smart for this show. Yes, our program runs on smart people competing and paying them money for winning. But we don’t WANT you to win, you know? We want it to be a challenge. If you know everything, it’s too easy, and it’s not compelling TV. Plus, we’d rather not HAVE to pay you if we can avoid it.”
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I think it was “Millionaire” that told him that, not “Jeopardy,” but he said he was applying WAY less frequently to all of them after that. Didn’t seem the slightest bitter about it all, but I can’t imagine he wasn’t a little disappointed.
WWTBAM did have that rep for a bit after they went away from the phoneins (in part because those resulted in not particularly diverse demographics). They’ve changed a bit since, as last summer they did tryouts at the North American Trivia Championships in Vegas (let’s just say the total J! winnings in that crowd were well over $4 million…OK, Brad Rutter was there, but still) and a fair number of folk got very quick callbacks.
I sympathize with your teacher; I suspect I have either the most or close to it J! in-person tryout passes without getting on the show with around 15. I managed to get my 15 minutes by lucking into a perfect storm situation. I read online that Greed, Fox’s one season prime time game show, was being rushed to air to get on before the second limited run of prime time WWTBAM. They only had a couple of weeks to find contestants, and the format was such that they’d go through 12-18 a show so they needed a fair number. Basically, if you looked reasonably presentable, weren’t a complete jerk, spoke at a reasonable volume and didn’t exhibit stage fright, if you passed their no where near as hard as J! test, you had a really good shot at getting on. So I went down to LA, passed, and got the call. tl;dr I won $20K and for odd reasons am dead certain my “team” would’ve doubled that if our captain hadn’t chickened out and stopped.
I have tried out and passed the test twice for both “Jeopardy” and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” I was never called back on either one. (I miss the days when you just had to pass a couple of rounds of questions for “WWTBAM” and you got to be on the show.)
This isn’t quite the same thing, but, years ago, I was playing the home version of “Password.” The word was “honeymoon.” The first person said “wedding” and his partner answered “marriage.” My partner said “after” and I said “divorce.”
I was about 12 years old at the time. It’s now 51 years later and I’m still single.
I wonder how he would have done with the puzzle from South Park?
“People who annoy you”
N_GGERS
“I’d like to buy an ‘O’, Pat.”
“Noggers?”
“People who drink eggnog. I hate that stuff.”
I like Greg Proops’ take on the stupidity of WOF contestants: “A Stitch in Time Saves… I’m gonna go with ‘pork,’ Pat.”
The only problem with that example is that if you have all the other words in it, you have the whole phrase already. All the letters in N*I*N*E have already been guessed.
Yes, because the key to humor is overanalyzing it and pointing out all the logical flaws instead of just enjoying the joke. I wonder if you point out all the historical inaccuracies in MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL.
It’s Proops’ fault that the joke doesn’t hold together, James; not mine.
I saw that clip on a morning show and, about fifteen minutes later after the coffee kicked in, it occurred to me that not long ago we had a winter storm named Stella, which every comedian on television responded to by showing that clip of Marlon Brando yelling. And that guy might not* have had any idea what that was about.
*allowing for the possibility that he might actually know what A Streetcar Named Desire is and just have blanked on it from the pressure of being on television
They reported on the WoF incident in a snippet on NPR this morning. The NPR guy noted that, after another contestant gave the correct answer, Pat Sajak quipped, “But I’d rather see (his) play.”
Isn’t there a thing in WoF where it takes two different things and mashes them up together? Maybe he was confused and thought he was doing that?
Speaking of Wheel of Fortune, I was watching with my Grandma many years ago and all they had on the board was an apostrophe. I’m not sure why, but I said “Baker’s dozen.”
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Turns out I was right, by some miracle. But then it’s probably always easier at home.
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Which reminds me of another anecdote. When I was in high school, I saw an episode of Family Feud in which one contestant said, “this is easier at home”or words to that effect. Richard Dawson quipped in response, “would you like me to take you there?”
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Rick
There was that one episode where a guy had all the letters of “Mythological Hero Achilles” and all he had to do was read what was on the dámņ board. He enthusiastically yelled out “Mythological Hero A-chill-us!”