The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: bradhig on December 22, 2012, 11:53:14 PM
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http://youtu.be/7k-C1K6pRXY
The navy lady said "Seven swams a swimmin" and was robbed. Has this happened before? This has me scratching my head.
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"Robbed" is a bit dramatic.
Unfortunate? Sure. But she should've known better than to solve that casually.
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This has me scratching my head.
I really don't get why people are so up in arms over this. You have to read what's up there, letter for letter. If I ever get lucky enough on the show, I might look foolish but I'm going to be solving every puzzle slowly with enunciation so every syllable is heard. In my opinion, the only reason this woman should have been ruled correct is if she had some sort of speech impediment where pronouncing the "G" at the end of the word is difficult.
Of course, I say all of this but the next night this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qU8AnvPPbLk) solve was ruled correct, so I don't know what the heck was happening that tape day. (I analyzed and opined on both at Buzzer (http://\"http://buzzerblog.com/2012/12/wheel-judging/\"), if anyone cares to read.)
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Well if it was seven swams, I'd definitely say no.
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I'm operating under the assumption that bradhig made a typo, but if she actually did say "swams" instead of "swans" then forget about "swimmin'", it's wrong no matter what (re: Armadillo and Laredo Texas).
EDIT: Damn you Mello! ;)
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If I were a writer, I would have made the puzzle "SEVEN SWANS A-SWIMMIN'" anyway, just to eliminate pronunciation issues.
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If I were a writer, I would have made the puzzle "SEVEN SWANS A-SWIMMIN'" anyway, just to eliminate pronunciation issues.
But the real line is "Seven swans a-swimming". You can't change the wording because you want to avoid someone dropping off a letter.
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I think this is way overblown now. I was at work this morning, and it came up as a story on ABC's GMA Weekend (http://\"http://gma.yahoo.com/video/tv-26594281/wheel-of-fortune-contestant-guesses-right-but-loses-anyway-31391061.html;_ylt=Ag98mi2OJX0MeSyXvfdM69.o6.d_;_ylu=X3oDMTJmZTEzMGg5BG1pdANIUCBGZWF0dXJlZCBWaWRlb3MgU3BlYXJtaW50BHBrZwMzMTM5MTA2MQRwb3MDMgRzZWMDTWVkaWFCQ2Fyb3VzZWxNaXhlZExQQ0E-;_ylg=X3oDMTFpNzk0NjhtBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3\"). They had reaction from the contestant herself.
I personally agree with Klauss, you have to read it as it's up there.
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If I were a writer, I would have made the puzzle "SEVEN SWANS A-SWIMMIN'" anyway, just to eliminate pronunciation issues.
But the real line is "Seven swans a-swimming". You can't change the wording because you want to avoid someone dropping off a letter.
Not only that, but that wouldn't eliminate pronounciation issues. I remember once a puzzle was "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" and a contestant was ruled incorrect when they added the G.
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Not only that, but that wouldn't eliminate pronounciation issues. I remember once a puzzle was "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" and a contestant was ruled incorrect when they added the G.
The real solution is pretty easy: Don't use any puzzle on your show that offers a reasonable chance of setting up a situation like this, because if it goes sour you're gonna get bad pub out of screwing over a contestant who falls into the trap.
There are lots of words in the English language, and lots of ways to combine them. Surely vetoing a few extra puzzles at the writer's meeting isn't going to slow down the writing process that much.
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I heard "swans" and "swimmin". I don't know exactly when they suddenly decided to get tight on pronounciation, but it's more strict under Sajak than under Woolery.
I remember one bonus round where the puzzle was MILAN ITALY, and the contestant pronounced Milan "MY-lun" and was ruled incorrect. On the other hand, back in the Woolery days, "Green-witch Village" was accepted for GREENWICH VILLAGE. (In fact, the host reminding the players to solve the puzzle "exactly as it appears" started the day after somebody said "Tweedledee and Tweedledum" for TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE and got credit for it.)
Another one from the Sajak days (although it's a legitimate call): being called wrong for saying "The Atlanta Falcons" for ATLANTA FALCONS.
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So what you're saying is that someone who says "PEE-can" in "Pecan Pie" (Like, say, someone with a southern accent)--would get ruled incorrect?
I'm on the opposite end--I think she should have been ruled correct. There's a huge variance in dialects in North America--some leeway needs to be given.
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I'm on the opposite end--I think she should have been ruled correct. There's a huge variance in dialects in North America--some leeway needs to be given.
I won't argue the dialect part, but in this case, it wasn't like she went for a different vernacular or alternate pronunciation (FWIW, the first page of a Google search reveals "A-Swimming"). She clearly left the "g" off the word, which is wrong.
I agree with Chris, that the puzzle shouldn't have been used. There are other "gifts" in the song that could've been used without causing that kind of confusion (A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE or TWO TURTLE DOVES, come to mind).
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I Spelled swans wrong.
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So what you're saying is that someone who says "PEE-can" in "Pecan Pie" (Like, say, someone with a southern accent)--would get ruled incorrect?
I'm on the opposite end--I think she should have been ruled correct. There's a huge variance in dialects in North America--some leeway needs to be given.
I'm not Southern and I pronounce it "pee-can". As do a lot of people.
It's not "swimmin", it's "swimming".
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I found this post on a Wheel forum from a former contestant:
[size=\"2\"]Backstage, as we went through the categories, we were specifically told on SONG LYRICS, SONG TITLES, and PHRASES (among others) that we had to read the answer EXACTLY as it appeared on the board, even if it wasn't complete or grammatically correct (for example, "Blowin' in the Wind" or "You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog"). The coordinators even emphasized this when they read through a few sample puzzles.
[/size]
The funny thing is, a day after this, a contestant clearly left out the D in HICKORY-SMOKED COUNTRY HAM and they didn't catch it.
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This story is now generating a lot of press. Good Morning America is doing another segment on the controversy near the end of their 7AM eastern hour tomorrow (Monday).
Using a different pronunciation of a word is one thing (the hypothetical pecan issue mentioned earlier,) but completely leaving off the last letter of a word is another. If the producers had wanted it said that way, they would have put swimmin' on the board.
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Has WOF ever rejected pronunciations like /gover'ment/ or /Feb'uary/? (Curiosity question, not rhetorical.)
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Not only that, but that wouldn't eliminate pronounciation issues. I remember once a puzzle was "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" and a contestant was ruled incorrect when they added the G.
The real solution is pretty easy: Don't use any puzzle on your show that offers a reasonable chance of setting up a situation like this,
Are you proposing that they don't use puzzles that end in I-N-apostrophe, or that they eliminate all puzzles with gerunds? Because if it's the latter, it seems like nearly every time the category is Event, the puzzle contains an "-ing" word, yet this is the first time I've heard of where a contestant lost money because they left off the G.
"Hickory-smoke" is actually the more-discussable story, but since viewers don't watch the show that closely, that slips by. They only notice "swimmin'" because the show had to do the right thing and point out the error (even the contestant realized what had happened as soon as the buzzer sounded).
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Are you proposing that they don't use puzzles that end in I-N-apostrophe, or that they eliminate all puzzles with gerunds?
I agree that you can't kill gerunds wholesale, so I *think* I'm proposing the former.
Honestly I'm reminded of the weird spelling rules in Final Jeopardy; it's an idiotic rule, but they approach it as "the bed's made, now we have to lie in it." Which they don't, but if they are going to, they owe it to their contestants to mitigate the possibility of a landmine as much as possible, and the easiest way to do that that is also transparent to the audience is simply not to use landmine puzzles. The world will not end if you never see HUNK-A HUNK-A BURNIN' LOVE up there on the board.
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Has WOF ever rejected pronunciations like /gover'ment/ or /Feb'uary/? (Curiosity question, not rhetorical.)
As far as I know, no. I've seen several instances where Pat has explicitly said on-air that an answer has more than one "valid" pronunciation. I remember him doing this with "espresso" and "poinsetta", among others.
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So what you're saying is that someone who says "PEE-can" in "Pecan Pie" (Like, say, someone with a southern accent)--would get ruled incorrect?
I'm on the opposite end--I think she should have been ruled correct. There's a huge variance in dialects in North America--some leeway needs to be given.
I'm not Southern and I pronounce it "pee-can". As do a lot of people.
It's not "swimmin", it's "swimming".
Myself included--and I'm from Northern Michigan.
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Question for discussion: does the "Smoke(d)" punt by the judges open up a can of gazpacho because of this?
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I've seen several instances where Pat has explicitly said on-air that an answer has more than one "valid" pronunciation. I remember him doing this with "espresso" and "poinsetta", among others.
I'm not about to challenge your encyclopedic and obsessive knowledge of the show, so I'll just point out that those two examples aren't words with more than one valid pronunciation. Those are words that are commonly mispronounced, just as some people commonly slur the 'g' off of the gifts in that Christmas song. So if WoF has taken those, I have a harder time getting behind their hard-line stance on this one.
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Can of worms opened: The word "often." How is it pronounced on WOF?
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I'm not about to challenge your encyclopedic and obsessive knowledge of the show, so I'll just point out that those two examples aren't words with more than one valid pronunciation. Those are words that are commonly mispronounced, just as some people commonly slur the 'g' off of the gifts in that Christmas song.
This. As someone who lives in the Pacific Northwest, if you actually deigned to call it "expresso", I do believe the police wouldn't step in to break up the horde beating you with lengths of garden hose.
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This has me scratching my head.
I really don't get why people are so up in arms over this. You have to read what's up there, letter for letter. If I ever get lucky enough on the show, I might look foolish but I'm going to be solving every puzzle slowly with enunciation so every syllable is heard.
Same here, right down to making the "hw" clear in a word like "whether".
I'm not going to look for the posts to quote, but there's no issue with a puzzle like "Burnin' Love," because in that situation, they always put the apostrophe up anyway.
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I'm not going to look for the posts to quote, but there's no issue with a puzzle like "Burnin' Love," because in that situation, they always put the apostrophe up anyway.
Then you completely missed my point (and I'm sorry you couldn't be bothered to do the due diligence to find the quote), which is that it works both ways; that makes "burning" a wrong answer, and that's a minefield you still don't want to step into.
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I thought it was Jeopardy! that was supposed to be draconian hardasses about pronunciation and Wheel of Fortune was the happy-go-lucky show that everybody watched because it was fun and accessible and easy.
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I'm not going to look for the posts to quote, but there's no issue with a puzzle like "Burnin' Love," because in that situation, they always put the apostrophe up anyway.
Then you completely missed my point (and I'm sorry you couldn't be bothered to do the due diligence to find the quote), which is that it works both ways; that makes "burning" a wrong answer, and that's a minefield you still don't want to step into.
Case in point. (http://\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1mjLZRwSQk\")
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I'm not going to look for the posts to quote, but there's no issue with a puzzle like "Burnin' Love," because in that situation, they always put the apostrophe up anyway.
Then you completely missed my point (and I'm sorry you couldn't be bothered to do the due diligence to find the quote), which is that it works both ways; that makes "burning" a wrong answer, and that's a minefield you still don't want to step into.
Case in point. (http://\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1mjLZRwSQk\")
I didn't miss your point. I'm saying that I have no qualms about ruling against a player who says a letter that's not there.
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I didn't miss your point. I'm saying that I have no qualms about ruling against a player who says a letter that's not there.
So you're suggesting that it's a unidirectional problem? It's fine if the "g" is actually dropped and they say it, but not so fine if the "g" is up there and they don't because of regional inflections?
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If I understand you correctly, yes. By "fine," I assume you mean "fine to rule against the contestant." I agree with both, but more strongly with the decision against the contestant who says a letter that's been replaced by an apostrophe.
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It's the role of shows like Wheel Of Fortune to promote good pronunciation. As much as it's AFL footballers' roles to promote bad.
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It's the role of shows like Wheel Of Fortune to promote good pronunciation.
No it isn't.