Picking up from yesterday – okay. The first puzzle.
So, I know the puzzle quite literally the moment it comes on the board. No letters up, I know the whole thing.
I’d studied, of course. And our theme week was “Surfin’ Safari.”
The Beach Boys’ first album was called “Surfin’ Safari.” So, I thought they might be involved. I studied both their albums and song titles, just in case.
So, as soon as they said song and artist, I thought, “I bet this is The Beach Boys.” And that fit right after where “by” would be. Then if you looked at the song title, obviously “Good Vibrations” fit right away.
It’s one of their super famous songs. It’s 4 letters, followed by a long word. It’s gonna be ‘Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys’.
That’s why I called the letters in a somewhat weird order. Normally on Song/Artist, you’d call “B-Y” first [in any order you want], because you know “by” is in the puzzle.
I called the y, but left the B, because there were 4 Bs available on the board. I was going to keep spinning until I either landed on $2,500 and called B, or ran out of letters to call, and had to call B since there’d be nothing left but that.
[I also would’ve considered calling B had I landed on a vacation, just to end the puzzle and call it a day, because I reeeeeally wanted a vacation!]
So, I started going to the G and D of “good” early, because I knew there was only one occurrence of each of those letters, and I was trying to save my multiples for higher dollar amounts where possible.
So, yes, had I been watching at home, I might’ve wondered what that weird girl was doing, going in such an odd order. So, to anyone wondering that, that’s what I was doing.
You really, for the most part can’t tell what you’re doing with the wheel – or at least, I couldn’t. I think at home, you might think you can kinda understand more than in person, but I couldn’t get a sense of if there was a way to aim (which would’ve been against the rules anyway), or how “hard” to spin it, etc.
But, I did feel like I kept landing close-ish to bankrupt and/or lose a turn, and I thought if I tried to spin it extra hard, that I might finally get a couple of spaces away from that and feel “safer.”
However, at my normal spins, I was usually doing about 4ish spaces below a full spin. Had I kept doing that, I might not have landed on Lose A Turn – which I did when I tried spinning a little harder. So, I mean, that’s all just kind of luck anyway.
But still, part of me wonders had I just kept spinning along to the “plan,” or at least the rate I happened to be spinning, and not changed it up and tried spinning too hard, if I woulda landed on something nicer…
(If I *had* stayed in the pattern of landing 3 spaces to the right after I landed on Free play, it would’ve been $800, then $500, and then $2,500! But you just never know. I’m sure it’s hard to stay in an exact pattern – and it was one I was clearly not aware of while spinning anyway.)
So, why didn’t I just solve if I knew the puzzle?
Well, I guess let’s get into that tomorrow.