Game show superfan Ted Slauson has been opening up about Wheel of Fortune‘s audition process and his tips on how to win the puzzles.
Slauson is best known as the subject of the 2017 documentary The Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much. The film follows Slauson, an elementary school math teacher and The Price Is Right superfan who memorized product prices and helped contestants make “perfect bids” by shouting answers from the studio audience.
Speaking to The U.S. Sun, Slauson, who ultimately got banned from TPIR after helping contestant Terry Kneiss win a double showcase, revealed he’d also auditioned for Wheel of Fortune twice, once in 2001/02 and again in 2015.
“When I auditioned, it was back in 2001 or 2002, the whole first part is, everyone’s there,” he told the outlet. “[The producers] call you randomly, you stand up, and you take a couple turns, and then you sit down, and they have somebody else stand up, and then they do the part. It’s literally like a test, and you have to fill in as many puzzles as you can.”
He continued, “They give you very few letters to start with, and then they kind of reduce the group down to the people they think would make the best contestants. They have them audition some more, and then they, you know, if you hear from them, great. And if you don’t, you don’t.”
Slauson explained he was the second person called for the first part of the audition. “It kind of surprised me because I don’t ever get picked first for anything,” he said before noting how the first player picked a letter that appeared in the puzzle a couple of times.
Ted Saulson; Real Stories YouTube
“[Then] I picked a letter and [the show producers], you know, lit them up, and then I bought a vowel, and they lit those up. I looked at it, and I said, ‘I’d like to solve the puzzle,’” he recalled. “Everyone kind of looked at me like, ‘What?’ It was diamond earrings.”
“Everyone just was like, wow. Like, they couldn’t believe I got it,” Slauson continued, adding, “And you would think that would get me on the show.”
However, Slauson didn’t make it on the show. Yet, another opportunity came around in 2015 during the Wheel of Fortune Wheelmobile, when the show visited San Antonio, Texas.
“I went to that event,” he stated, noting that he had to speak about himself and his career for about 20 seconds before playing a trial game against other auditionees.
“Five of you at a time are playing the same puzzle, and it’s like the speed round where you each pick a letter, and they light it up if it’s there,” he shared. “For whatever reason, I was just looking at it, and I could not figure out what it was.”
Related‘Wheel of Fortune’: Are These the Craziest, Longest Puzzles Ever?
While Slauson never made it onto Wheel, the game show obsessive has picked up some tricks on how to solve the puzzles.
“I find with Wheel of Fortune, because if you watch the show a lot and you do like crossword puzzles and cryptograms and stuff that are very similar, and you start recognizing letter combinations, it’s easier to just solve puzzles quickly,” he explained.
He continued, “Then, you’re not guessing letters. You’re spinning and you’re using the dollar amount times however many be of a certain kind, and you can really strategize.”
Wheel of Fortune Season 42 Premiere, Fall 2024, Check Local Listings
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