Wheel of Fortune Free Play released on iOS and Android recently, and it is a total delight. Doing what the best mobile games do, it streamlines the ‘Wheel’ experience into delicious bite-sized grammatical morsels.
As a result, you’re playing one puzzle then a bonus round, instead of three puzzles, a speed up round, and then the final round. This means you’re in and out of a session in about 4-5 minutes, which is perfect for the platform.
With Wheel of Fortune’s goal being to level up, earn ‘prizes’ and climb the leaderboard, it might be time to brush up on your Wheel of Fortune strategy. And no, that doesn’t mean staring into Pat Sajack’s eyes for hints.
What you can do, is brush up on your parts of speech, and read these awesome tips below.
1. Keep An Eye Out For Common letter groups (Digraphs)
In Wheel of Fortune the name of the game is to find the consonants in a puzzle to earn cash and eventually solve the puzzle and win the round. However, sometimes a puzzle will have one or two letters in it, and you’re totally unsure what to pick next.
You could guess, or you can look for digraphs. Basically keep an eye out for common groupings of letters like ‘Th’ ‘St’ ‘Sh’ ‘Ch’, ‘Wh’,
If you’re looking at a puzzle, think to yourself if that ‘S’ the second to last letter of a word. If so, there’s probably an ‘E’ or ‘T’ behind it. A word starts with ‘C’? Look for an ‘H’.
Similarly, Just about any longer word ending in ‘G’ will have ‘In’ ahead of it.
For the record, these aren’t hard-and-fast rules, but rather strategies designed to help you not waste your time tossing letters against the board randomly.
2. Three Letter Words and Contractions Are Your Safety Net
There’s nothing more comforting in Wheel of Fortune than the three letter word…or four letter word with an apostrophe.
Why? We’re most familiar with them. The, Why, How, Can, Not, and so on. After a few spins and a couple of letters on the board, it’s pretty easy to discern what they are; meaning you have a go-to safety net when you absolutely need to land a letter – especially if one of the three letters has been filled in.
Same with any word with an ‘ in it. We know these words like the back of our hands. The letter after the ‘ will almost always be an S or D or T.
Wait to fill in these letters until you’ve landed big money or some other bonus on the wheel; they’re literally an ace (there’s a three letter word for you) in the hole.
3. Be Aware of Parts of Speech
Knowing the categories and various parts of speech are going to help you a *lot* in Wheel of Fortune Free-Play, especially in the bonus round.
There are a lot of categories and it would get confusing and annoying for me to list them all here. The best thing to keep in mind is certain categories are obvious strategies associated with them.
‘Proper Name’ is the actual name of a people; Tom Cruise, Vana White, Paul Meekin.
‘Food & Drink’ is one to keep in mind as the first word is sometimes an adjective. So ‘Delicious Pizza’ is a possible possible. If you see a hypen, assume it’s ice-cream, or root-beer, or similar hyphenated food items.
4. Don’t pick letters you already know in The Bonus Round.
When you make it to the bonus round, you get the famed R S T L N E pre-selected for the given puzzle, you can get to pick three more contestants and a vowel.
If you have an idea of what certain missing letters are, pick around them. Meaning if you’re fairly certain a puzzle ends in D, don’t pick D, because you’re wasting a pick. Instead, pick letters you’re unsure will be in the puzzle, as to best get a leg up – you can always mentally fill in the letters you’re sure are there.
5. Plug & Play in the Bonus Round; Don’t Be Afraid To Buy Hints
The bonus round lets you try and solve the puzzle multiple times. Meaning you can completely fill out the puzzle, hit solve, get it wrong, and still have time to try again.
What this does is afford you to multiple guesses. Maybe your first guess on ‘Delicious Pizza’ was ‘Delicious Pasta’. If you enter Pasta and get it wrong, go back and think of other delicious food items, etc.
If you’re super stumped, you can always get a hint. Hints are bought with gems, which in the early-going of the game’s release, are thrown at the player; so if you’re on a win streak and want to keep it going, don’t get thrifty and spend those gems.
Or watch an Ad for a free hint.
In the bonus round, a hint will fill in a letter of your choice; and subsequent similar letters, so if the first letter of a word is “D”, that hint will also fill in all the other “D”s in the puzzle.
Ultimately, between sounding out puzzles, utilizing hints, and knowing almost automatically what three-letter words will be, your Wheel of Fortune: Free Play win rate should skyrocket.
That means there’s only one thing left to do, and that’s to spin the wheel, Pat!