Wheel of Fortune

Answer: FOOL AROUND

By Jonah Nan and Ben Coukos-Wiley

First, we compute how much money was won each round, accounting for multiplicity of guessed letters. We note the earned amounts range from $100 to $1000 in 100-dollar increments, suggesting an ordering. Using this to order the guessed letters gives TAROT PAIRS.

Turn Contestant Wedge Letter Occurences Total money
7 Alice $100 T 1 $100
10 Alice $200 A 1 $200
2 Bob $100 R 3 $300
9 Carol $400 O 1 $400
5 Bob $500 T 1 $500
8 Bob $300 P 2 $600
3 Carol $700 A 1 $700
1 Alice $800 I 1 $800
6 Carol $900 R 1 $900
4 Alice $1000 S 1 $1000

This clues that we should associate each answer with a pair of major arcana tarot cards:

Turn Answer Card 1 # Card 2 # Explanation
1 HELIOS The Sun 19 The Chariot 7 Helios drives the Sun Chariot
2 DIRECTOR KRENNIC Death 13 The Star 17 Krennic was the commander of the Death Star
3 ASU The Sun 19 The Devil 15 ASU's sports teams are the Sun Devils
4 DUMB WAYS TO DIE The Fool 0 Death 13 Dumb = Fool, Die = Death
5 THE ALOLA REGION The Sun 19 The Moon 18 The Alola Region is from Pokémon Sun/Moon
6 CAESARS PALACE The Emperor 4 Wheel of Fortune 10 Caesar was an emperor, Caesars Palace is a casino
7 NECROMANTIC Death 13 The Magician 1 Necromantic magic relates to death
8 POPEMOBILE The Hierophant 5 The Chariot 7 Pope = Hierophant, Car = Chariot
9 RUSSIAN ROULETTE Death 13 Wheel of Fortune 10 Russian Roulette involves death, Roulette = Wheel of Fortune
10 RESTRAINT Temperance 14 The Hanged Man 12 Temperance is a synonym for restraint, The Hanged Man is restrained by his ankle

Noting that the dollar amounts on the wheel range from $000 to $2100 and the major arcana are numbered 0 to 21, we can associate each card to a wedge on the wheel. Thus, a pair of cards matches a pair of wedges. Keeping in mind the rotation of the wheel each round, we can match each round's answer to two wedges to get a semaphore letter. This gives the final answer, FOOL AROUND.

Turn Contestant Wedge #1 #2 Semaphore Letter
1 Alice $800 $1900 $700 The wheel, rotated so that Alice's marker points to $800. Arrows pointing from the center to $1900 (East) and $700 (South) have been added F
2 Bob $100 $1300 $1700 The wheel, rotated so that Bob's marker points to $100. Arrows pointing from the center to $1300 (Northwest) and $1700 (West) have been added O
3 Carol $700 $1900 $1500 The wheel, rotated so that Carol's marker points to $700. Arrows pointing from the center to $1900 (Northwest) and $1500 (West) have been added O
4 Alice $1000 $000 $1300 The wheel, rotated so that Alice's marker points to $1000. Arrows pointing from the center to $000 (Northeast) and $1300 (Southwest) have been added L
5 Bob $500 $1900 $1800 The wheel, rotated so that Bob's marker points to $500. Arrows pointing from the center to $1900 (South) and $1800 (Southwest) have been added A
6 Carol $900 $400 $1000 The wheel, rotated so that Carol's marker points to $900. Arrows pointing from the center to $400 (East) and $1000 (West) have been added R
7 Alice $100 $1300 $100 The wheel, rotated so that Alice's marker points to $100. Arrows pointing from the center to $1300 (West) and $100 (Northwest) have been added O
8 Bob $300 $500 $700 The wheel, rotated so that Bob's marker points to $300. Arrows pointing from the center to $500 (Northeast) and $700 (Northwest) have been added U
9 Carol $400 $1300 $1000 The wheel, rotated so that Carol's marker points to $400. Arrows pointing from the center to $1300 (Southeast) and $1000 (Southwest) have been added N
10 Alice $200 $1400 $1200 The wheel, rotated so that Alice's marker points to $200. Arrows pointing from the center to $1400 (South) and $1200 (North) have been added D

Authors' Notes

For the answer FOOL AROUND, our original idea was a puzzle about euphemisms. That never really went anywhere, and we eventually decided to go with a tarot theme instead. Wheels go AROUND, and Wheel of Fortune is a tarot card, so a Wheel of Fortune theme seemed like a perfect fit.

We threw around various tarot ideas - Binding of Isaac, using the actual fortune-telling associations - before finally deciding to use JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

Until a week before the hunt launched, this was a puzzle about stands from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Not a single testsolver liked the puzzle, so we decided on a last-minute rewrite. We were thrilled (and a bit surprised) to see how much people enjoyed it.

The mechanic of ordering the guessed letters by amount won was exactly the same in the Jojo version, we just changed the message to TAROT PAIRS. Coming up with the tarot pairs was a lot of fun, and we have a bunch more we didn’t get to include in the final puzzle. We like the mechanic of semaphore with the rotating wheel -- Ben has an affinity for semaphore in his puzzles, and the rotating wheel mechanic made things a bit spicier.

We had a disagreement about what the most logical way to look at the wheel is. Should we always take the viewpoint of the current contestant, with the wedge they landed on at the South of the wheel? Or should we stick to one fixed angle the whole time? We’re glad this didn’t seem to confuse solvers too much.

We learned from feedback that some solvers apparently skipped extracting TAROT PAIRS. We’re very impressed that they managed to finish the puzzle without that hint.

Our biggest regret with the puzzle is that it absolutely requires prior knowledge of semaphore, since its use in this puzzle is entirely unclued. This makes the puzzle quite unfriendly to new solvers.