Y2K Panic ... Who Wants to be a Millionaire? is a Smash Hit ... Britney and the Backstreet Boys Rule the Charts
February, 1999 ... Sweeps in Hawaii
By this point, a "special" week from another American city was far from special, but this two-week set of shows in Hawaii really took the cake. The entire two weeks were filmed outside of the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel near Diamond Head, often during spectacular sunsets, with the ocean lapping just feet away from the set.
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| Map not to scale. | Diamond Head, the Pacific Ocean, and a tiki torch, all right behind Pat. |
In game play news, by this point in the series, the show was featuring the Puzzler puzzles. Puzzlers were puzzles directly related to the puzzle the winning contestant had just solved. Certain letters would be filled in and the contestant would have five seconds to solve and win $3,000.
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| Vanna's dressed for the occasion... | The puzzle just solved was "Veterinarian"...what could this be? |
September 6, 1999 ... 17th Season Premiere
Nothing really doing here during this season premiere, except the usual opening day snarking by Pat ("This is ... what, our 17th season? When we premiered we were in black and white!") The real changes for the season occurred a month later.
October, 1999 ... A Room With a Preview
By the late 1990s, Wheel producers were grappling with the contrasting desires to show more puzzles, but also promote advertisers during the show. One attempt to jam a quickie puzzle into the show was the ill-fated Preview Puzzle. The Preview Puzzle was a partially filled in puzzle shown during the show's opening. Viewers at home could toss it around in their brains while they watched the opening titles and Pat would reveal the full puzzle once he got to the Wheel. It had zero bearing on the game and was replaced next year by the popular Toss Up Puzzles.
In addition, a $1,000 final spin bonus was added to increase competition in games that were becoming increasingly runaway. The $1,000 extra bonus meant that the least amount of money up for grabs in the Speed Up Round was $1,300. With Pat basically a pro at spinning $5,000 by this point, it was frequent to see $6,000 up for grabs at least twice a week.
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| Don't grab a snack...you have to solve the Preview Puzzle! | Everything's fancier with shading. |
Also in October, the wheel dollar amounts were jazzed up with fancier fonts and outlines. By this point in the series, there was only one wheel template used for the entire show, and new prizes or higher dollar amounts would just be switched out one by one. This contrasts with the earlier history of the show, when whole segments of the wheel would be replaced between rounds.
Also in 1999...In a blooper famously replayed on several blooper specials, a contestant hilariously mis-solved the puzzle A GROUP OF WELL-WISHERS as A GROUP OF PILL-PUSHERS.
