Something about this 1975 WOF photo

We know it has to be at least Round 2 because I see $750 on there, three clockwise of the Bankrupt closest to the camera.

Well, well. Free Spin and two BANKRUPT spaces in Round 2? I guess it was some early weirdness in the series.

After analyzing the photos, it looks as if the template divides between the tan $50 and periwinkle $200 on one side and the light tan $100 and navy blue $300 on the other.

Combined with what I said about an hour ago, here is my attempt at recreating of the layout. Note some of the colors may be off, and again, I am not completely sure of all the values, notably the $200 clockwise of Lose A Turn as well as the $600 clockwise of Bankrupt.
www.deviantart.com/germanname/art/Wheel-of-Fortune-January-1975-Round-2-Likely-897404570

i didn't expect to see this when i woke up this morning, that's for sure

You're not the only one who had such a theory. After listening to that July 1975 episode back in 2015, I was also thinking that we may have already had the Round 2 layout from January 1975 without even knowing it (whether it'd be the one also used in Round 1 or Round 3). Even so, it sometimes feels good to be wrong, doesn't it?

And you have a point with scrapping such a template within a few months. This is certainly the shortest-lived template style apart from those used in the three pilots, and I wouldn't be surprised if they made no value increases whatsoever before replacing it with the Round 3 template. In fact, there's a possibility that the first day without this template may have also been the first day with $100 as the minimum value throughout the game.

Now another thing I thought I'd bring up is how the special spaces are arranged. There may have been some sort of pattern after all. Apart from single large areas of dollar amounts, most of the special spaces are almost at an equal distance from one another. Barring one instance where there were only three, Round 1 had a couple occurrences of four cash spaces separated by special spaces. Round 2 had groups of three consecutive cash spaces while Round 3 had only two. The number of special spaces themselves started at four and increased by one each round. So there were some aspects that carried over from the pilots, albeit with a few small changes here and there.

As for you, wheelgenius, you've done a fine job there with your take.

It's possible that all that may have happened at once. By the way, ever since seeing this layout, I noticed there were some similarities with the 1979-1986 Daytime Round 1 layout. Check this out.

www.deviantart.com/germanname/art/January-1975-Round-2-in-1980-Round-1-Style-898236471

That is indeed true. Another thing I noticed is that the top dollar values for each round is in the largest area of consecutive cash values.

And by the way, while I'm here, William, something I thought I'd point out. In regards to the $400 and $100 between Bankrupt and $750, I would recommend swapping colors.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Those oranges can really fool the eyes. The only other space in question is the $400 between $200 and $150. It's possible that one is actually gold but I think we have it right.

Great job again to everyone involved! A lot of holes from the early days have been filled in recently by way of photos and audio recordings.

I personally believe that Chuck has a number of 1975 episodes in his possession. Unless he decides to release these publicly, we may never get to actually see a full 1975 episode.

My computer doesn’t work at the moment, so I’m on my phone and can’t post pictures. But I’ll explain what I just noticed… and I can’t believe no one noticed sooner.

It’s another pretty glaring similarity between the 1974 and 1975 wheels. We’ve all known since basically the 3000th episode that the round 2 (74) and round 1 (75) were clearly based off each other, with similar wedge placement and colors. But it does go further than that.

When looking at the round 4 (74) and round 3 (75) wheels, there is a large stretch on both of them which feature basically the exact same values. These are, in the 1974 sequence:

$100
Bankrupt
$900
$650
$350
Buy a Vowel
$250
$600
$200
Lose a Turn
$800
$450
$50
Bankrupt
$1000
$700

The exact same values appear on the 1975 wheel, adding the second Lose a Turn and Buy a Vowel, but pretty much in the same order. Slightly differently placement to fit the altered wheel pattern, with the $100 and $700 receiving the most significant shifts in position.

Less notable are the similarities in the round 3 (74) and round 2 (75) wheels, but there is a slight pattern, again featuring only about half the wheel. In 1974, starting with the $750 and going counterclockwise, I’ll name off some values:

$750
Bankrupt
$100
$400
$200
Buy a Vowel
$150
$500
$350
Lose a Turn

On the 1975 wheel, if you do the same thing and go from $750 to Lose a Turn, those same values appear again and in almost the same order. There are two more values in this sequence on each wheel which are changed ($550/$700 —> $50/$200). There are no real big similarities on the other half of both of those wheels, with $300 touching Free Spin being the biggest commonality there.

So there you have it, all three of the first 1975 wheels were mostly modeled after their pilot counterparts. Has anyone else ever noticed this? Particularly my first example, the templates of which we’ve fully known for a decade now…