How to dominate season 35 puzzles on Wheel

I second this. Adjectives are essential. 

Also, obviously, consider tricky letters like Q, X, J, K and Z (again, adjectives with these letters!) but don't necessarily overthink it either. That helped me get FUZZY WARM GLOVES the other day.

Strategy hasn't changed for the most part - call logical letters that would fit in the most important slots of the puzzle and avoid calling letters that do not.

Certain letters are almost never the key letters to solve and so should not be called. The prime example for this is M as for some inane reason, contestants like to call it but it's frequently a dead letter or just simply not a key letter. Really few puzzles have M as the key (MAXIMUM AMOUNT comes to mind).

For more recent puzzles, I would favor calling one of the consonants with one of the rarer letters. K, W or Z would actually be valid choices (K-W puzzles tend to be frequent strangely enough), followed by F, J, or Y. Q and V should never be called really even if words like VANITY and QUIZ pop up. U is actually a solid vowel to call though.

And yeah, know your adjectives big time.

Here are the stats, season to date:

I counted all multiples separately, so these are raw totals:

A (125), O (122), I (99), U (59)
PG (57), BC (49), H (44), D (42), Y (39), W (31), FKM (27), V (17), Z (13), Q (6), X (3)

Default choices would be PG(BC) and A.

If however you remove superfluous (trap) ING's, THE's and AND's:

O (122), A (119) , I (91), U (59)
P (57), BCG (49), H (41), Y (39), D (36), W (31), FKM (27), V (17), Z (13), Q (6), X (3)

Default choices would be P(BCG) and O.

Given all that, you should pick P every time. If you can mentally plug in H after wherever G appears in the puzzle, you can skip H. I don't think anyone would fault you for going with PGH and O or A though. Use the Wild Card for whatever leftover consonant of BCG remains.

(NOTE - the below is up to CROWDED GYM so far in January. It does not include KINGS AND DUKES, which screws with the "A" perfection, but let's face it, no one was solving that puzzle anyway )


Interestingly... the A in AND has never been a trap this season (i.e. "A" appeared somewhere else in the puzzle 6 out of 6 times), while the D was a trap every time (i.e. 6 for 6 D was only in the AND)

The H in THE was only a trap one time out of 3. The G was a trap 5 out of 6 times. The I was a trap 4 out of 6 times. 2 out of 6 both the I and G were traps.

So, Call A regardless, do not call D if AND is in the puzzle, and do not call G if your category is WAYD?

^ Great advice re: taking your time. I stalled picking letters during my BR... gave me a good 20-25 seconds vs 10. Don't rush.