Close calls....narrow escapes.....

[tvmitch]

This is great feedback, thanks to everyone for sharing.

I guess what I'm getting at is that there was a significant advantage to W! contestants being able to watch from a green room, because so much of the format was about strategy. Even one extra block gained from knowledge about a contestant's charging pattern could swing the game.

To an extent, this would also be an advantage on J!, but only to the extent of plotting strategy against a champion with odd habits, like category jumping and the like.

For shows like Password and others, I don't see as much of an advantage.

If you had Whew! as #1 on the list of Shows Where Green Room Contestants Got A Notable Advantage, I am not sure what would unseat it.

[Bryce L.]

If you had Whew! as #1 on the list of Shows Where Green Room Contestants Got A Notable Advantage, I am not sure what would unseat it.

This is a choice with an asterisk, but J! during tournaments (since if you see the opening round games ahead of yours, you can fudge your FJ! bet to just squeak through to the next round as a wild card [i.e. you know what the cutoff score is to that point], if you know you're not likely to win your game [say, if you've had a shaky DJ! round]).

[vtown7]

If you had Whew! as #1 on the list of Shows Where Green Room Contestants Got A Notable Advantage, I am not sure what would unseat it.

This is a choice with an asterisk, but J! during tournaments (since if you see the opening round games ahead of yours, you can fudge your FJ! bet to just squeak through to the next round as a wild card [i.e. you know what the cutoff score is to that point], if you know you're not likely to win your game [say, if you've had a shaky DJ! round]).

Two things:
1. Just to clarify - unless I'm mistaken, J! tournament participants in a quarterfinal day of taping are in the green room until they tape with no feed/link to the other episodes.  This would make going later in the week a huge advantage.
2. Which makes Wheel's Friday Finals season (96-97) and other self contained weeks similar to it a bit bonkers then.  I was on in May of 97 and was randomly selected to be in the yellow position on the Thursday episode.  As such, not only did we get to watch the Mon/Tues/Wed episodes tape and thus I knew what I had to beat to make it to the Friday show but the total to shoot for was announced by Pat on the show itself.  This always felt a bit off for me but I was lucky enough that I could 100% take advantage of it, make enough, and enjoyed being one of the last people to be a "returning champion" on Wheel.  (Side note: I'm a full believer that yellow was always the best position for you to play from in the pre-toss up era of Wheel - if you're red and you lose your turn early, you might not get it back until round four for example.  Yellow, on the other hand, can run the table in rounds one and two).

In regards to other shows - nothing else that I've done gave an advantage by watching from the audience/from the feeds but most would seat contestants in the audience.  The only ones that tended not to were those that were taped on a very small set and audiences really didn't have the setup/the space.

Ryan

[Bryce L.]

If you had Whew! as #1 on the list of Shows Where Green Room Contestants Got A Notable Advantage, I am not sure what would unseat it.

This is a choice with an asterisk, but J! during tournaments (since if you see the opening round games ahead of yours, you can fudge your FJ! bet to just squeak through to the next round as a wild card [i.e. you know what the cutoff score is to that point], if you know you're not likely to win your game [say, if you've had a shaky DJ! round]).

1. Just to clarify - unless I'm mistaken, J! tournament participants in a quarterfinal day of taping are in the green room until they tape with no feed/link to the other episodes.  This would make going later in the week a huge advantage.

Correct. If you were able to see the shows as they were taping, you'd have that advantage. Thus a wise move in sequestering them, to not slant the Thursday and Friday shows.

[golden-road]

I was a contestant on the short-lived Mall Masters at Mall of America GSN original, taped in the fall of 2000. While it may have had to do with the show being pretty low-budget and not shot in a traditional TV studio, the future contestants were the audience and sat just behind the cameras watching episodes being taped. Since there were only a dozen or so of us, the majority of the audience sounds heard on the show were added in post-production.

I've wondered if it was actually taped inside MoA?

[splinkynip]

Back in the 80's and I assume the 90's, Wheel of Fortune Teen Week allowed all the week's contestants to sit in the audience,  whether or not they played yet. I was on the Monday show and didn't think it was fair that the others knew the top scores for the week to try to get into the Friday final.

[knagl]

I've wondered if it was actually taped inside MoA?

It was indeed, on a stage inside a small playhouse theater in then-Knott's Camp Snoopy (now Nickelodeon Universe), the amusement park in the middle of the mall.

Here are a couple of behind-the-scenes photos which I believe were taken by none other than fellow Game Show Forum member narzo.

[BrandonFG]

And of course it's not compatible with QuickTime. I can hear the MIDI theme playing in my head...that takes me back.

I threw it onto onlinesequencer.net and messed with it for about 3 minutes.   If you don't like my instrument choices, jump into edit mode and tweak it to your taste.

https://onlinesequencer.net/2306009

Finally got to listen. Sounds great…thank you!

[JMFabiano]

Don't know if it happened before, but today we saw what happens when a contestant gets all the bloopers wrong/gets blocked on one level. They just jump to the next level.

And $100,000?  Wrong show, Tom.

[NickintheATL]

Don't know if it happened before, but today we saw what happens when a contestant gets all the bloopers wrong/gets blocked on one level. They just jump to the next level.

Yes, it's happened a couple of times. The show rules do address this as well and that is what happens.

[Bryce L.]

Is that the first time someone's gone one for ten on the Gauntlet? No, that's not a typo.

[weaklink75]

Is that the first time someone's gone one for ten on the Gauntlet? No, that's not a typo.

And I think the only one he got right was the very first one he answered...that was a long 60 seconds or so..

[KrisW73]

Is that the first time someone's gone one for ten on the Gauntlet? No, that's not a typo.

To my knowledge yes.

[MSTieScott]

As we watched the mini-marathon, we figured out that there were actually two game boards. On one board, the backlit 3 on level three was installed upside down and backward; on the other board, it's installed correctly. During the first week, there was also a different bulb out along the right side of each board's chase lights.

It appears that sometime along the way, they figured out how to play the game on just one board. Because the same light bulb has been out on the right side of level 5 for weeks now, and I'm assuming that one random bulb wasn't out in the same location on both boards.

Right now, my obsessive personality is fixated on the selection of villain portraits as blocks are placed. I've determined that the villain portraits either replace or are placed over the blooper -- individual squares aren't consistent in which villain they contain. But why then, I wonder, will the same villain sometimes show up twice during a round? If the blocks are being attached to the board, then why wouldn't the stagehands have six different pictures in order to avoid duplication?

[TimK2003]

Right now, my obsessive personality is fixated on the selection of villain portraits as blocks are placed. I've determined that the villain portraits either replace or are placed over the blooper -- individual squares aren't consistent in which villain they contain. But why then, I wonder, will the same villain sometimes show up twice during a round? If the blocks are being attached to the board, then why wouldn't the stagehands have six different pictures in order to avoid duplication?

One of the episodes seen within the last week had two Frank (without his little friend Stein) blocks next to each other on level 1 (the $20 & $30, IIRC).  And I have seen other episodes where there were duplicate Gauntlet character blocks on the same board.  So it does happen regularly.

Is Nero the only official "Long Shot" block they use?