I’m suddenly hungry.
This is Wikipedia we’re talking about. Chuck was most certainly the original host-I clearly remember him. His own Wikipedia page has 1975-81 (has it been that long?-28 years) again no definitive proof of anything but it does back up my memory.
Interesting.
I live on the north-east coast, and I’ve only ever heard “grow-ser-ree”.
Central Illinois. Most people say grow-shree. I do hear gro-ser-ee from some Chicago people.
When it got to the “that sounds means that time is running out so I’ll give the wheel a final spin…” part, Chuck was the man. He either got the $1500 wedge (the highest on the wheel at the time) or was pretty damn close.
It’s like Pat doesn’t even try.
I must have grown up on the cusp. I heard all of these pronunciations in West Texas. Can’t remember how people generally said it in Albuquerque when I lived there, but I do recall a TV commercial for Smith’s in which a family got everything done there they meant to – banking, birthday cake ordered etc – when the wife suddenly goes: “Oh! The groceries!” (gro-ser-ies) because they forgot to get those.
I say gro-ser-ies myself.
It’s two syllables here: gross - rees. You grosheries people are weird! WEIRD!!
In my house we pronounced it “food”
We say Feud
geud feud?
Ah. You’ve been to one of my family dinners.
For what it’s worth, I personally say GRO-se-ree, but I’ve heard both of the other variations (grosheree and grow-sree) here in the SE US.
I’m going to come out as someone who’d never heard of albacore tuna. I might have gone for m too. This might be a region-specific thing.
The UK version of WoF, when I used to watch it as a kid, did have a lot of really obvious answers that the contestants never seemed to guess. Obvious like ‘I _hink _herefore I am,’ not like the OP’s question. Since these contestants were able to speak, walk upright and, presumably, knew the alphabet, I presume the show put stress on them that meant that they weren’t able to guess such obvious lines.
(I do actually remember one which was Coron_tion Street. Even most non-Brits could guess that; the contestants couldn’t. The weirdest thing was that the missing letter should have been guessed in the earlier rounds anyway. Stupidity could not possibly be the explanation for that).
Note that the article linked to is for the syndicated Wheel, not daytime Wheel. Chuck Woolery was the original host of the daytime version.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_Fortune_(U.S._daytime_game_show)