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No. 5711: Garf of Fortune

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Garf of Fortune

First | Previous | 2025-01-06 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=5711

Strip by: shiningpikablu252

{The top panels show what's being shown on the television screen in the bottom panels. For best results, read the panels in a snaking order as follows: top left, bottom left, bottom center, top center, top right, bottom right. The transcript will assume you do this}
{The puzzle board reads: "__EEL __ __RT_NE _APPY _I_TIET_ ANNIVERSARY". The category is a "Phrase"}
Kotonoha, on TV: I'd like to solve the puzzle.
Host, on TV: Please do.
Kotonoha, on TV: "Wheel of Fortune, happy fiftieth anniversary."
Host, on TV: You got it!
{The puzzle board now reads the completed "WHEEL OF FORTUNE HAPPY FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY". With Kotonoha's correct solve, Makoto's and Sekai's round scores have disappeared, though Kotonoha's still-displayed round score has not been added to her game score}
{The scene on the television shifts to show Kotonoha, with a skyline projected on the video wall behind her, standing behind her podium holding a prize wedge reading "NÏCÊ BØÅT" with the podium displaying her winning total}
Host, on TV: Our big winner tonight, with $42,805, cash and prizes!
Garfield: Where's she going to take that nice boat?

The author writes:

(For best results, listen to a retro Wheel of Fortune theme while reading these author notes. No such themes will be linked to for legal reasons. The original theme was "Big Wheels" [composed by Alan Thicke] from 1975-83, although a sizable chunk of the fanbase is likely partial to one of the various mixes of the subsequent "Changing Keys" theme [composed by multitalented series creator Merv Griffin] from 1983-2000 and reinstated in 2021.)

Wow... Has it been fifty years already since the world was first introduced to Wheel of Fortune? Yep, January 6, 1975, the day Wheel of Fortune was first introduced to the world as a daytime show over NBC network airwaves. Did anybody involved at the time know just how big of a phenomenon the show would become?

Back in 1975, a gallon of gas in America averaged about 57¢ per gallon. All in the Family was the top-rated American primetime program. Jaws was the highest-grossing film. The Pittsburgh Steelers won their first Super Bowl. Derby County won their second English top-flight title. Australia regained and later defended The Ashes. The Cincinnati Reds won their third World Series. A single-topping large thin-crust pizza from Pizza Hut cost $4.70. Jim Davis was still doing Gnorm Gnat for a single newspaper. And the value of a vowel on Wheel of Fortune... was $250.

Nowadays, though, Wheel of Fortune rarely acknowledges its original daytime version and thus anything prior to September 19, 1983, when the more well-known syndicated nighttime version first took to the air, beginning a run that continues to this day; this is why the show's only admitting to being in its forty-second season (since it's indeed the forty-second season of the syndicated nighttime edition on just its own merits—the daytime and nighttime versions always kept separate counts of its seasons). Don't be surprised if tonight's show is run-of-the-mill. (Daytime and nighttime shows ran concurrently for precisely eight years and one day, the timeframe between the start of the syndicated nighttime version and the end of the network daytime version on September 20, 1991. This means the original daytime version was quite the long-runner in its own right, although not quite to the mileage the nighttime version would eventually rack up...) Also not helping matters is that the January 6 date nowadays has another meaningful significance in American history (and that's all I am going to say about THAT matter)... though thankfully the more significant anniversary figures won't overlap...

And yes, I am aware the puzzle would make more sense if it read "HAPPY FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY WHEEL OF FORTUNE"... but that sadly doesn't fit the dimensions of the puzzle board as of the time this strip was made (the combination "Happy Fiftieth" fits in the middle rows, but not the top one)...

Original strip: 2023-04-15.