Wheel of Fortune/HQ words strategies

Wheel of Fortune/HQ words strategies Feb 10, 2019 21:43:14 GMT -5

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Post by StrangerCoug on Feb 10, 2019 21:43:14 GMT -5

I don't know about books or HQ, but I sometimes solve cryptoquotes, which are among the types of puzzles you might be interested in.

Letter and n-gram (especially digram and trigram) frequencies is a good place to start. A few good sites to look at are Oxford Dictionaries: Which letters in the alphabet are used most often?, English Letter Frequency Counts: Mayzner Revisited, and jnicholl.org: English Language Data.
As far as apostrophes go, count how many letters follow it when you find one. If it's one, the vast majority of the time it is either S or T (if it's the latter, than N is the last letter before the apostrophe); if both of those fail, it's likely D. If you see two letters after the apostrophe, they're probably RE or VE. If the apostrophe is immediately after the first letter and you've ruled out I'VE, it's probably someone's last name, in which case I personally would try O for the letter before the apostrophe first (with D or L as alternatives if that doesn't work).
Specific to Wheel (well, almost, but this bullet is tailored to Wheel): Be mindful of the category. If the category is plural, one of the words usually ends in -S; though don't rule out the word AND being in the puzzle unless it's obviously not there. As another example, the first word in a WHAT ARE YOU DOING? puzzle almost always ends in -ING. You don't need as much trivia knowledge to succeed in Wheel as you do in Jeopardy but having a knowledge of popular culture helps. If you're playing under older rule sets, be aware that sometimes the kinds of puzzles that get used with a category changes over time: Pat used to warn that "PERSON does not always mean PROPER NAME" until I think the early '90s; now I have to remember that PROPER NAME does not always mean PERSON.

Hope this helps

Wheel of Fortune/HQ words strategies

Post by keviniceskate on Feb 8, 2019 17:59:20 GMT -5

Post by StrangerCoug on Feb 10, 2019 21:43:14 GMT -5