WML had a few tweaks with the format too over the first few weeks...
The first show had John Daly seated adjacent to the panel. The contestants signed in on a large pad of paper instead of a chalkboard. The panel itself was all local journalists. Only Dorothy Kilgallen would survive through most of the run of WML.
The "wild guesses" were also there. The first show also had one major problem... it was devoid of humor, and there was no comic relief on the panel.
It wasn't long until comic relief was added to the panel, including Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, Fred Allen, and numerous others. Mark Goodson also had writers supply panelists with questions that wouldn't help guess the occupation of the guest, but would get large laughs. Once the scandals surfaced, Goodson feared his supplying questions would be misinterpreted as "rigging", but at this point, the well established panel of Dorothy, Arlene and Bennett and others were well versed enough with the game to keep it entertaining.
The wild guess and extra look at the contestant was eliminated, mostly because almost nobody guessed an occupation on a wild guess. The panelists never took that portion of the game seriously anyway, so it was wisely eliminated.
The mystery guest portion originally worked just like the rest of the game, where the panelist questioned until getting a "no" answer, but Goodson realized this often lead to one panelist getting lucky and guessing the mystery guest without giving the rest of the panel a chance. This would be unfair to the mystery guest and the panel. So, they changed the questioning to one question per panelist in turn until they got 10 "no" answers. Sometimes the "no" answers weren't counted if they knew that there wasn't much time left in the show.
During the Bruner/Blyden run, Soupy Sales proved to be very apt at guessing mystery guests, whether it was recognizing something in the voice, or some other logic. Soupy was later told he HAD to be honest about how he was able to nail the identity so quickly. To avoid too much of this, Gil Fates introduced "Fate's Law", meaning that one incorrect guess of a mystery guest and you were out of the game. Not all mystery guests were under "Fate's Law", but Bruner or Blyden would warn "Fate's Law prevails" when needed.