I don’t know that I’d expect everybody to know it (and certainly one person didn’t), but I’d expect most people to know it, and I’d expect most people who try to get on Wheel of Fortune to definitely know it.
Yeah, I’ve had frozen mocave on many occasions. Yum.
I think I yelled at the screen several months ago when WOF was on, only one consonant remained, the solution was incredibly obvious, and the dumbass chick whose turn it was shouted out:
“NICK JAGGER AND KEITH RICHARDS!”
I’m still yelling on the inside.
I don’t remember what the name of the show was but I once watched a gameshow where the idea was you were given two people defined by the first name and occupation and had to guess their common last name. One person was given this:
Singer Aretha and Patriot Benjamin
Now can you figure out the last name these two share in common? I’ll give you a hint - we can eliminate Washington because that guess was incorrect.
One that makes the rounds of the “Blooper” shows, mainly for Pat’s reaction:
A GROUP OF _ LL- _SH_RS
Contestant guesses “A group of pill-pushers?”
A group of well-wishers
And another I saw years ago:
PENNSYLVANIA _ _TCH
“Pennsylvania witch?” No…
Pennsylvania Dutch
A M_SS _S AS GOOD AS A M_LE
“A miss is as good as a…mule?”
I cringed at “alfacore tuna”, but what was bugging me more about that particular contestant was that she would rack up a huge amount of money and then spin, spin, spin for each letter until they were all up on the board. Meanwhile, everybody else is going bankrupt on every turn. I was pulling my hair out.
Anyway, if she didn’t know what the last letter was she could have just solved the puzzle and mumbled the answer. 
For what it’s worth, I would have got it.
I also know the word but only because it’s a fish in World of Warcraft. :smack:
There’s a whole bunch of stupid game show answer clips on YouTube. I was bored one evening and went through them all, and ended up laughing so hard I cried.
According to Dave Barry, the problem isn’t that contestants are stupid. They just find it hard to think under pressure.
The worst one I saw was also a question. In this case though it wasn’t a case of a stupid contestant, but a stupid question. “The country formally known as Siam?” No, Thailand is the country formerly known as Siam, not formally.
(This was the Australian Wheel of Fortune. For what it’s worth, I had not heard of albacore tuna until this thread either. Either we don’t have it here or it’s called something else.)
These people are idiots! it’s COUNT RUSHMORE!!!
Joe(y)
“Name something you feel before you buy it.”
<long pause>
“Excited!”
Bwa ha ha ha!
There is the now famous case of David Tua (heavy weight boxer, in Don Kings stable, once a contender for heavyweight title)
He was on a celebrity wheel of fortune in New Zealand (yes he is a kiwi shame) “Uhhh…I’ll have an O for Awesome please”
(Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaIZF8uUTtk)
Now my favourite saying is “Well that’s just O for Oarsum”
Why? Whichever is thought to be the stronger lead-in for a given area is what is chosen to air first.
Anyway, I have you all beat for contestant failure. Back in the Eighties, I guess, there was a board that read…
FRESH FROM YOUR GROCER’S SHELF
And the player said “Fresh from your grocer’s store, no, shelf, OH!” (nope). So the next player got to take it, and said…“Fresh off your grocer’s shelf”. So the third player got to try, and she said “Fresh from your grosher’s shelf”, and we were left in suspense as they headed into commercial, as the judges conferred. When they came back, it was announced that “grosher’s” was a regional variant, and that they were cool with those. Too bad, as that could have been the unlikeliest second chance story of all time.
Shawn1767 said:
Chuck Woolery was originally host? Wiki says otherwise.
They did have rules that you had to spend most of your money till you were down to less money than any of the prizes, or close to it. At first I was a little sad when they lost that, but then realized that part was kind of a drag - who cares if they get the refrigerator or the sofa? More puzzles was better.
Well, to make up for the letters they increase the challenge with the bizarre categories like Same Name or the aformentioned run together one.
Merijeek said:
Yeah, do they really not know what the answer is and need another letter, or are they just trying to confirm before they guess? Because either way, if they are wrong they lose a turn. But if they are right, they’ve just spent $200 (IIRC) from their prize pool, and sometimes those are in small digits already (a round of bankrupts late in the game is painful). I have to think they are buying the one letter they know is there (the O in “FROM”) to figure out the words they don’t know, and are stuck in some brain freeze that they can’t parse W_M_N.
Musicat said:
That was my response when I first saw the “touch” letters. But they need her to banter with Pat. :dubious: Besides, they couldn’t be so heartless as to fire her just because technology improved. :eek:
mshar253 said:
Don’t they have a category for “Slogan” where you answer the company that has that slogan? I just checked the WoF homepage, but it is surprisingly unhelpful. No information whatsoever on the actual game.
AppallingGael said:
Well, the store is typically pronounced around here as a “groshery store”, so I imagine the person running it would be the “grosher”.
Where’s that? I’ve only ever heard it pronounced as “gross-ery.” Groshery sounds like a speech impediment.
I’m in the southwest United States and I’ve never heard anyone pronounce “grocery” with a soft c. It’s always been the sh sound.
From Canada (the Eastern end - so about as far from ‘Southwest US’ as it’s possible to get without leaving the continent), and I’ve never heard ‘grossery’ either.
I try to avoid watching this show as much as possible because the contestants make my brain hurt. There was one where I think it was a college kids episode and the puzzle was German Chocolate Ca_e. What did the girl guess? German Chocolate Cafe!
WTF?!