Workshop: Array of Prizes, Indeed

Watch the syndicated game show Wheel of Fortune for any length of time and you'll be surprised at how predictable the contestants are.

In the years that this show has been one of the world's most successful television programs, fortune seekers have worked the puzzle-solving process into an exact science.

Wheel contestants typically guess the same letters when they are starting out on a puzzle: R, S, T, L, and N. In the final round, when these letters and the vowel E are given to the players right away, they usually choose four other letters: C, D, M, and the vowel O.

The reason for this predictability is that these are the letters that appear most often in English words. The contestants are stifling their desire ...

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