Hi, I saw this just now on the front page of SRC, and I actually had thoughts about running this game as this is one of my favorite wheel of fortune games alongside the Wii one. However I thought it would not be fun and unfair to run as someone can cheat by looking the answers up. But now looking at the rules (for this wof game at least) and seeing that no outside help is allowed, it raises some questions.

1. How are you supposed to enforce this if the runner has no webcam or mic? They can be looking answers up without anyone knowing. I know that its obvious to tell if they just start solving the puzzle right away, but someone can just pretend to figure out what it is by filling in a little bit of the puzzle and then look up the answer and solve it. Only way I see around it is if you require a webcam and mic to submit.

And what if by chance you just happen to know the puzzle without any letters and without any outside help and you don't have webcam on? Its only happened to me once, but one time I got the category "movies", and in the first line there were two dots next to the first two letters, so I immediately knew it was "E.T. The Extra Terrestrial" just by seeing the length of each word in the puzzle.

2. What exactly defines outside help? Is it only looking up the answers online? Lets say I was streaming the game, and someone in chat just randomly says the answer before I figured it out. Would that make the run invalid? I guess it would since any help isn't allowed according to the rules. Speaking of which, you would never know I had any help if I omitted chat from the PB video.

Idk this just seems like a hard rule to enforce and easy to figure out loopholes. I understand that this was the best way to word the rule to prevent cheating but it just seems very easy for someone to cheat in this game unfortunately without requiring strict rules.

Hi, thanks for your interest and the questions, I'd definitely like to get you involved so let's make sure this rule isn't stopping you.

When I added the rule "No outside help is allowed" I mainly had cheat devices and answer calculators in mind, though in a broad sense I suppose that would also include chatrooms feeding the player the answer while livestreaming. You bring up a great point that this is a tough rule to enforce, especially since not all runners are comfortable including (or are equipped to include) webcam footage. I took a look around SRC to see how other puzzle games with hidden information treat outside help, and it seems like it's not a big deal in games like Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy. A player could build their own database of answers while playing the game naturally, which technically would not be outside help, so I agree with you that it is too easy to circumvent "no outside help" with silly loopholes. That being the case I think it'd be appropriate to change the rule from "No outside help is allowed" to "No cheat devices or tool-assisted emulators allowed."

This would mean that looking up answers online or being told the answers by a chatroom member would not disqualify a run. I would like to hear your thoughts about this MrJimmysteel25, since I find myself to be a bit torn. I personally think that looking the answers up or accepting audience answers is against the spirit of Wheel of Fortune, but I also feel that the "speed at all costs" approach is perfectly acceptable for SRC.

Regarding solving puzzles with no letters on the board, I wouldn't worry about it. It might be suspicious if a player solved every single puzzle this way, but it makes sense that you'd get a very distinct movie title right away every once in a while. For example I solved "It's a Wonderful Life" with no letters on the board in a recent run (zne9ollz), the apostrophe and lengthy third word gave it away.

I definitely don't want to be looking up answers running the game myself as it ruins the fun and the spirit for me as well. I just wanted bring this up as its always been a concern for me running these trivia games like wof and jeopardy.

How I see the other wof games on SRC go is that they allow calculators and looking up the answers like for example the NES and SNES versions. I kinda get the appeal in running those games that way cause it's about going fast like you said. But I've always been turned away cause it does ruin the spirit of wof for me too. I figured the other wof games were like that too but I guess not for this one (at the moment at least).

Yeah this is very tough to deal with man, really any speedgames where you can look up answers is subject to this cheating. If other games and game show speedgames don't really have a problem with it like you said, I think we should probably just leave it as is and go by an honor system. You can also make a sub category for the purpose of looking up answers/getting help like how the other wof games are. I know I just said I didn't like doing that, but I'd probably run it from time to time tbh.

Actually I just googled PS2 puzzle solutions, but I can't even find any sites that have databases online, same for the wii version. So I don't think we have to worry about cheating as much as I'd thought. So I think we can just keep everything as is. And honestly I don't think that having someone in chat give someone an answer is that big of a deal, because you still have to do the inputs to solve the puzzle yourself. Though it also kinda gives an unfair advantage at the same time since the more viewers you have, the more help you have so there is that.

Those are my thoughts. I may end up trying some runs out very soon thanks to this discussion so thank you for your time and clarification!