Confirmed Season 32 Changes

This $1,000 bonus, is this a bonus that can be lost to Bankrupt/needs to win the round to actually claim it?

Good question. Almost like the Same Letter is a semi-bonus question (What's the Same Letter?). As for the $32K prize...this will only last for season 32, right?

The $1,000 bonus for guessing the Same Letter would be quite interesting, I think.

Personally, both of these changes strike me as... odd.

The raising of the BR minimum to 32K is just an awkward number in general, hanging out there in the no-value's-land between 30K and 35K. I seriously hope that this is not a recurring thing from here on, and that they retire it by increasing to $35K. Not that there was anything wrong with 30K, but I severely doubt that they'll drop that number back down, because it would reek of cheap even to the casual viewer.

As for the Same Letter bonus, that shouldn't even be a thing in my opinion. This is supposed to be a letter that's in the puzzle a minimum of three times (only very rarely is it only two, generally in the late rounds before the Speed-Up). Plus, the minimum wheel value was just raised to $500 - that's already a $1,500 minimum score pickup just for calling that letter, before this shoehorned bonus. They don't need to sling in another thousand bucks on top of that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to seeing players win more, when it's done right. These two changes are pretty much the opposite of that... I feel like the production staff is trying to make the game more exciting by throwing money at it.

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If they really absolutely could not stay away from adding money somewhere in here, this is what I would suggest instead:

In place of a Same Letter bonus - Put some regular four-digit values on the wheel, for the love of Merv Griffin. Just having $500-$900 out there this season is going to get boring as heck to watch in a hurry, broken up only by the rare gimmick or top dollar wedge hit. It doesn't have to be a bunch of wedges, but throw us a bone and put a $1,000 or $1,500 spot out there with no gimmicks attached to it for the first time in almost 20 years. You never know, getting that fourth digit on a wedge or two might just turn a couple heads now and then.

In place of the $32K Bonus Round minimum - Leave the minimum at $30K. It wasn't broke, don't try to fix it this way. What you could do, though, is slightly increase the number of higher amounts on the wheel (change some 30K envelopes to more 35s and 40s). After all, you control the difficulty of the puzzles... it won't matter how high of a number is in the envelope if the Bonus Round isn't solved, but you at least have made an effort to stop looking so samey with $30K being hit every other show.

Of course, all this is just my own $0.02... that and a dollar gets you two uses of a pay phone. If you can find one.

For the BR, would it be practical to include $5K increments of each amount from $30K to $100K?

MarioGS, did the contestant mention anything else (doesn't have to be confirmed).

The answer to everything above is yes.

Vowels are still $250. Now, you can buy a minimum of two vowels with any one consonant! Oh, joy!

The round structure has not changed. "Express" is still alternatively known as "If you don't mess up, you win as long as Pat doesn't hit $5,000!"

No new categories (as far as the person knows).

That seems to be the case, germanname.

Those are the most random changes I've ever seen. I could understand bumping $5K up to $6K for that particular week of shows but bumping $30K up to $32k for an entire season is just like... da fuq.

The $1k bonus for Same Letter is really unnecessary too.

As everyone else here has uttered. The vowel prices is the one thing that needs changing especially with the upped minimum wedge value.

The bonus wheel could have $75K thrown in there. It's random, yes, but when you only have one out there like $100K and $50K it's not gonna show up enough to really hurt anything.