Removing the clock from the main game would be a vast improvement. Keep the blocks, but have each incorrect or unanswered question count against the player. Three such "strikes" might be a little tight given the challenge facing the contestants, but maybe five "strikes" would be more realistic.
But the frantic pace of racing against the clock is what makes this game so exhilarating. Unless you're going to match the lack of a clock with either a steep increase in the difficulty of your average blooper or much stricter judging on the answer, I don't think you're going to get many contestants who are going to strike out on five bloopers. As long as the blocking rules remain what they were, there's inevitably an easy path up the board that's going to be free for the contestants to follow, and they'll get just over there if they're getting blocked or stumped on the harder side. It's not as much fun to watch the Chargers take the easy route, but when they've hit a couple of snags on the way up and the clock is ticking, I can't blame them for defaulting left.
And then there's the Longshot. If you're going to nix the clock and make it a five-strike limit or what have you, you're not going to hit nearly as many Longshot situations, which greatly reduces the tension in the game. I think the whole Longshot business was genius. A few snags out of the gate, and the Charger can put himself in a place where clearing the board in 60 seconds becomes impossible, so rather than render the venture futile, throw in a lifeline that can turn the game on its head, albeit with the odds generally (though not necessarily) against you. It's brilliant.
Like Jay's other shows, Whew! was ambitious and an imaginative concept, but it just didn't play to the audience.
To each his own, I suppose. I still think, in Whew!, Jay had the most innovative concept since Jeopardy! for turning the standard Q&A game on its head. There are definitely some issues with the way it was packaged. For instance, unless the Blocker is great at banter (and most weren't), the whole watching the Blocker place the blocks bit is pretty dull. For the amount of time it takes to setup the game and then race through it, there really is only about 5 minutes of actual gameplay in a 20-minute episode. You stack that against something like Pyramid, and it seems like the latter's got a lot more jammed into it, but Pyramid was only 8 minutes against the clock in a 22-minute episode. All in how you package it, I guess.
The biggest flaw, I see, from a production standpoint is that generally 70% of more of each game board is going unused, so you have to have an outrageous amount in your question bank for each game despite using so little of it; and because you package it in category boards with specifically-identifiable spaces, you end up with a lot of recycled categories due to a lot of recycled content. The cartoon shtick and the Gauntlet of Villains is nice window dressing to disguise up the holes and make your bonus round not look like a "10-in-60" repeat of the front game [though the 60+(d/100) formula for the bonus clock did this on its own, and I rather liked how playing for dollars in the front game could help your chances in the end game], but as it was with most Jay Wolpert productions, there's a lot dressed up here on a thin game underneath.
But even then, despite how thin the game is, I love it and would love it if somebody could find the way to package it for a new series. There's something about this "we give you the answer with one part incorrect that you have to correct" concept that's just begging to be exploited in an addictive and interactive game.
