Wheel of Fortune Announces Season 44 Twist With New "Rapid-Fire" Game

Herb Ball/NBCU Photo Bank

1. Created by Merv Griffin, Wheel of Fortune debuted as a daytime game show on NBC in 1975 and was based on the word game “Hangman.” 

2. Pat Sajak took on the role of host in 1981, and Vanna White joined the show as cohost the following year. In 1983, Wheel of Fortune went into syndication. Its spinoff Celebrity Wheel of Fortune debuted on ABC in 2021.

3. Born in Chicago, Pat started his career in the broadcasting industry. According to his bio, he joined the United States Army in 1968 and was part of Armed Forces Radio in Saigon during his time in Vietnam. Afterwards, Pat continued to work at radio and TV stations, where he fulfilled the roles of staff announcer, talk show host and weatherman.

In fact, he was working as a star weatherman in Los Angeles when he received a call from Merv asking if he’d like to host Wheel of Fortune.

“I swear, the first thought was, 'There’s nothing for me to do,’” Pat recalled to daughter and Wheel of Fortune social correspondent Maggie Sajak in a June 2024 video. “I mean, 'Yes, there are three R’s' is not exactly a career mover….Shows you what I know.”

Herb Ball/NBCU Photo Bank

4. As for Vanna, she grew up in South Carolina. According to her bio, she studied at a fashion design school in Atlanta before pursuing a career in modeling—with her then moving to L.A. to try acting. It was there she was spotted by Merv and auditioned for Wheel of Fortune.

“I was probably more nervous than any other person that auditioned,” Vanna told CBS 58 in 2019, “and 200 girls auditioned—and I was the last one.”

5. In fact, Wheel of Fortune previously revealed that the very first letter Vanna turned on the puzzle board was T.

6. Meanwhile, Jim Thornton joined Wheel of Fortune as the announcer in 2011. Previously, he did voice work for several movies, TV shows and commercials—including Monsters, Inc., Rugrats and Celebrity Deathmatch.

Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images

7. Before Pat retired in June 2024, he and Vanna had appeared on more than 8,000 episodes of Wheel of Fortune across 41 seasons of syndication. 

8. He actually secured a Guinness World Records title in 2019 for longest career as a game show host on the same show.

9. Vanna has broken records, too. In 2013, she was presented with the “most frequent clapper” title—with Guinness World Records estimating she clapped at least 3,480,864 times across 30 seasons. If you break it down and factor in her rare absences, that comes out to about 606 claps per show, according to the organization.  

Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images

10. Wheel of Fortune attracts more than 20 million viewers every week, per a 2023 press release.

11. But let’s talk about the prizes. According to the show’s 2024 numbers, it awarded nearly 600 cars to contestants in 41 seasons.

12. Not to mention it had given away nearly 5,000 vacations by that point.

13. And if you’re wondering how much money Wheel of Fortune has distributed, the show said at the time it’s handed out more than $324 million in cash and prizes.    

Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images

14. Vanna has also racked up a lot of steps walking across the puzzle board—the equivalent of two marathons (about 52 miles!), per the show’s figures.

15. As for her dazzling dresses, Vanna’s worn more than 7,000. But, no, she doesn’t get to keep them.

16. And, amazingly, Vanna didn’t have an outfit repeat for nearly four decades.

“Can you believe for the first time ever I wore the same dress twice after 7,000 dresses?” she told social media followers in a September 2020 video while holding up a blue frock. “Ugh! This is so 2020.”

Christopher Willard via Getty Images

17. Of course, it wouldn’t be Wheel of Fortune without the wheel. It’s a big one, too—weighing 2,400 pounds per ABC News.

18. And it’s one-of-a-kind. The outlet reported the show brings the wheel to all its destinations by breaking it down and then reconstructing it—with the program typically traveling with more than a million pounds of equipment.

19. Plus, ABC News states the Bonus Wheel has more than 24 envelopes filled with prizes.

Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images

20. If you’re puzzled by how the show works, allow Vanna to explain. When it comes to filming, she told WLKY in 2015, “We only do four days, but six shows each day.”

21. As for the puzzle board, Wheel of Fortune got a new one in 2022 that’s one giant screen.

“This year, we switched to a laser,” Vanna explained in a YouTube video at the time. “I don’t even have to touch it. I just stick my hand by it.”

22. And while prices may fluctuate over time, the show shared the cost to buy a vowel has stayed at $250 throughout the past four decades.

23. Ever wonder how Pat knows the exact number of letters in a puzzle so quickly after a contestant guesses? He’d like to solve this one. As he explained in a 2021 YouTube video, the behind-the-scenes team would listen to ensure the right letter is called and then relay the correct number to Pat through a TV screen that he could see from his hosting spot on the set.

Ricky Middlesworth/ABC via Getty Images

24. There’s also a used letter board the contestants can view to help them keep track of which consonants and vowels have already been called.

“You never see that at home, but our players see it,” Pat said in the same video. “So every time a letter is called that letter comes off, that light turns off, and they know not to call it again—except when they do call it again….I kid our players, but, believe me, I understand the pressures they’re under.”

25. If you love the Toss Up puzzles, you can thank Pat for those. As he explained, Wheel of Fortune was facing a challenge:

“How do we get more content and not take up a lot of time?” Pat told Maggie. “So I did come up with the Toss Up puzzles, and they’ve worked real well. And then our producer added the Triple Toss Up. And then I added the idea of $10,000 if you get all three because it’s not my money, what do I care?”

26. In January 2015, reporter Christopher Ingraham published an analysis for The Washington Post that looked at 1,546 final bonus puzzles from 2007 to that year. Based on his examination, he wrote that H, G, P and O were the letters most likely to appear in these puzzles at the time (taking into account that contestants are already given the letters R, S, T, L, N and E). However, Ingraham found that players chose these letters less frequently than they selected C, D, M and A—even though, according to his analysis, the latter set of letters appeared less frequently back then.