"Beat the Odds"

[TLEberle]

After watching the clip of the 1975 pilot, and looking over the Pilot web page, I think my friends and I would enjoy a home version of "Beat the Odds."  We tend to play a lot of word-games-that-aren't-Scrabble.  So, a couple of questions to toss out.

As for the letter wheels, what would be the best way to do that; stack of cards, Scattergories dice, black d12, twirl spinner from a teacher's supply store...

If I decide to go with the deck of cards, or spinner, are there any letters to not include, since they might make finding words harder?

I'm still trying to figure out what the purpose of the Whammy is.  If both players can call a word on every turn, having control of the game where you can lose your score seems really really dumb.  Is there something I'm missing here?

If anyone has any other thoughts they want to toss out, or if they've done this before, I'd sure appreciate it.  If there's enough interest, I'll post later to describe what I ended up doing.

Thanks,
Travis

[mmb5]

You keep your turn until you do one of four things:

1. Pass to the other team, where your score is frozen at the current level.
2. Hit a whammy, where your score is returned to the level where your turn started.
3. Fail to come up with a word.
4. Have your word challenged by the opponent.

The purpose of the Whammy, like in PYL, is to keep you from being too greedy.


As far as letter distribution, you probably want two buckets of 17 chips in it.  These came from a list I use for most common words available when playing Lingo as seen in Mike's Game Show Round:

Beginning Letters: A, B, C, D, F, G, H, L, M, R, S, S, T, T, W, Whammy
Ending Letters: D, D, E, E, E, H, L, N, R, S, S, S, S, T, T, Y, Whammy

Plus one die to determine the letters:
1-3+ letters
2-4+ letters
3-5+ letters
4-3 letters only
5-4 letters only
6-5 letters only

[The Ol' Guy]

I made a copy I play at home already based on the 60s Warren Hull version using letter cards from the PROBE word game. I sent a photo of it to Joe Van G, and I got a digital camera for Christmas that I haven't messed with yet, but if I can figure out how to post some shots, I will. I'll tell you this much -
Know how the MB version of The Joker's Wild has three cut-out windows in a cardboard platform? I made my own platform with two windows. The windows are surrounded, like the tv game show board, by a frame of boxes with numbers - indicating the number of letters necessary in your word. If you manage to find a 60s version of PROBE with the letter cards with different colors on the back, set aside the letters you want as MMB5 did above using two different color decks of cards. The PROBE cards have "blanks" with a small black dot on them. I made the dot the "nose" and drew a face of Sammy the Whammy on four cards, two for each window. In the upper corner of the cards you plan to use in the left window, put a small number between 1 and 6. Shuffle the two colored letter decks separately and place them face down in the windows. Take a standard board game marker and place it in any of the squares in the number frame. On your turn, turn over the top card in each window, then move the marker clockwise around the number frame the number of spaces indicated on the left letter card. If, for example, using the same setup as the tv show's game board I placed the plastic marker in the box in the bottom left corner, and I turned over the top two cards and got F (3) - Y, I would move the marker three boxes clockwise to the square that reads 6+ - so on this turn, I have to come up with a word that starts with F and ends with Y containing 6 or more letters. I'd say FRIENDLY and decide to go again. Putting the two revealed cards back face down at the bottoms of their piles, I'd draw the next two top cards and say they were D (2) - M. Move the marker to the 5+ square, say DREAM, and move on. Plays like the game show. One trick - give one deck of letter cards one more card than the other. That way, you won't get the same letter combinations repeating on you after you go through the deck. If anyone has any interest, let me know and I'll get a photo to you.