Official Season 29 Information (SPOILERS)

The first week of the season is themed "Home Sweet Home" and is a family week. Here is a picture of contestants rehearsing:



Note the scoreboards corresponding to the theme, and the house from the Halloween set. Looking closely at the wheel, it appears that all the add-ons are still the same (I was hoping we could finally say good riddance to those stupid gift tags...).

The gift tag is useless. I don't see any uses for the gift tag.

Starting with a couples week? That's new after the first couples week was... February last season.

I welcome any new categories, although honestly for WOFTracker's sake, I'd like no trivia... WHAT'S THAT SONG only showed up like 4 times, so what's the point?

I was expecting no wedge changes... sounds like no vowel cost change either... eh.

I wouldn't say I hate the gift tag, but it's really just an excuse for another sponsor.

Also, there's no way a 6th show week was taped first. A 6th show week is the 6th taping of several other weeks. Come on now...

I liked the trivia categories, though, but the operative word is "categories". I never understood why some foreign versions of the show had buzz-in trivia questions to determine who starts a round. The toss-up rounds fit this purpose much better in my opinion.

Edited for clarification.

I suppose I'll add my $0.02 on the gimmicks:

Gift tags: First time I saw them, I didn't much care for them. I've gotten a little older and wiser since then, and I recognize the necessity of having a little variety on the wheel. I would, however, add cash to it in the vein of the Free Spin's final season as some members have suggested. That way, when multiples of letters are called on a tag, the value per letter doesn't end up being less than the supposed minimum of $300 (e.g. 4 of a letter when on the tag = only $250 per letter presently).

Prize Puzzle: I would love nothing more than to see this one go. Even when the game ends up as a total blowout, the PP still has that air of Golden Snitchiness about it. Adding a second prize to the wheel instead would make players EARN that nice trip (winks at Budget Dept.) but wouldn't affect show timing overmuch.

And we're definitely overdue for some 4-digit amounts, if nowhere else, at least in the later rounds. Comparing the Round 4 wheels from the Big Month of Cash (1987 for those less historically inclined) and the present day, the BMoC wheel actually has $200 MORE overall on it than the current wheel (that's not counting Free Play though). But that's just this lone fan's opinion...

I agree Whammy about having a second prize tag on the wheel rather than the Prize Puzzle. It would also be nice if they were more things than just trips sometimes.

$1,500 would be great to have again, and perhaps a $2,000 space in rounds 2-4+ also. Moving $5,000 to round 3 would be nice too, and have a $6,000 space for rounds 4 on.

I think this is a family week. That looks like two ladies in the yellow position.

Moving $5,000 to R3 sounds like a good idea. Guess I'll be able to tell you more when I'm on! (Not on yet, but I'm not giving up hope.)

I wonder why they have to have a similar set for a random week though. It's understandable for instance all the years that Halloween and Happy Holidays were taped back to back, but why Halloween and this random season premiere week. And even if they are similar, I wonder why out of order.

Also, I wonder how they're going to do Halloween week this year. I hope they don't do what they did last season and have a week tape 4 episodes while Halloween tapes 6 back to back and the 6th isn't part of a compilation week. With Halloween on a Monday this year, what I hope they do is have the full set week October 24 - 28, and October 31 - November 4 is the first compilation week with the Halloween show on Monday.



Do you know if the animations will continue? Or like Season 27 and back, it'll be a fixed logo related opening theme. I'm guessing the latter since the animations were to promote the show being on Wii, which is no longer new. And are the category strips changing? Or are we, for the first time since mid-Season 14 - Season 17, have category strips last more than three seasons?



That's great, though I wonder how that'll be if the theme name isn't exactly three words, especially more than three words. Also, there doesn't seem to be any red, yellow, or blue in the scoreboards. I really hope that doesn't mean that the classic colors and way of identifying the contestants is gone! Or, like Lose-A-Turn and Bankrupt, I hope it's just for a few seconds that they should get rid of it, and that shot just happened to be taken in those few seconds.



How can you tell from that little shot that's not a real closeup of the wheel? And I don't notice a gift tag in that shot! Though I do trust that the gift tags are still there for other reasons, and I personally don't mind the gift tags. In fact, I was a bit disappointed when they reduced the amount of gift tags from 3 to 1.



Actually, it's not new; it just hasn't been done in a long time. In honor of Labor Day, Seasons 15 and 16, from the Ohio State Fair and Pittsburgh, respectively, started with Wheel of Fortune Salutes the American Working Family.



What makes you think Halloween week is a 6th show taping week? It never has been before! It's just a week in honor of Halloween. It just happens to be the 6th week of the season (or maybe 7th if it is October 31 - November 4 rather than October 24 - 28, which as I said makes more sense with the 6th show taping on Halloween at the start of the 7th week, while November 1 - 4 are 6th show tapings of four of the five September 19 - October 21 weeks.



I think that'd make sense if Round 4 on was $7500. The rounds that should go to Speedup need an amount that isn't in Rounds 1 - 3. And that would make sense since that would avoid Rounds 2 and 3 both having $3500, which makes no sense. And I think the $7500 should be the silver that $5000 is now, while the Round 3 $5000 could maybe be a ruby red color, or maybe some kind of orangeish yellowish brownish goldish color.



I agree with that. And the same should be done with the Wild Card, MDW, and R1 prize. And btw, it was actually during the Free Spin's final two seasons, not just the final season.




No, that would not be fair to get rid of the Prize Puzzle. It's become a classic, and it's the one thing that viewers can also earn in every single episode. Though the crazy thing they did to it last season was not allow it to be in Round 1. If anything it should be in a fixed Round 1, since it's sometimes the easiest round. If the reason for that was so that it can't be the Jackpot Round, that I'm all for, since the Jackpot and Mystery Rounds should be about the option of contestants spinning as much as they can to try to win those prizes, while as for the Prize Puzzle, to quote Pat sometimes to contestants, "why did you solve that puzzle so quickly? Ooooh, it's a Prize Puzzle!" But a good thing to solve both the Jackpot and R1 PP problem is to move the Jackpot Round back to R2 and make the PP a fixed R1. Because the Jackpot and Mystery prizes make those rounds challenging, and it makes sense to build up tension to the rounds with those special prizes. As great as the PP ding is echoing the category reveal clue is, if this happened, Jim could instead follow up the R1 prize reveal with "and one of you could win another prize in our Prize Puzzle round," followed by Pat's reveal of the category. Also, if this happened, they should go back to what they had in Season 27, having a BEFORE & AFTER or SAME NAME in every single episode, in either Round 2 or 3. I think that was a great addition, as it's a challenge for contestants to have a one word, one mention, two contexts type of puzzle in every episode, and those two categories were rarely in R1 last season (BEFORE & AFTER only in 3 episodes, SAME NAME in only one).



I agree with you on that. Maybe $1000 added in Round 2, $1500 added in Round 3, and $2000 in Round 4.

Consecutive posts merged.