Mark her words.. no whammies!

"The Luckiest Man in America" is a highly entertaining movie, despite some artistic license taken with the retelling of the well documented  event.

I remember the true story that inspired this movie like it happened just yesterday instead of in 1984. 

 I had a day off, and spent it like I usually do--avoiding chores and watching TV.

There was a contestant on "Press Your Luck" named Michael Larson, brilliantly portrayed in this film by Paul Walter Hauser. 

On  the day I watched the live show, he was just an ordinary citizen from a small town in Ohio, , an ice cream truck driver/ air conditioning repairman with extraordinary luck as he pressed his luck for those elusive  Big Bucks..avoiding The Whammy(that would have wiped out everything he accumulated) as 'though he had x-ray vision, as if he could read the board like no other contestant  in the show's history could.

I remember my friend Paula calling me during  every commercial break.  

"Are you watching this guy?" she screamed excitedly into the receiver.  "I'm going to have a heart attack!  Is his luck really this great?"

Any game show fanatic knows the answer...it was the biggest scandal in game show history, right up there with the cheating allegations rallied against "The Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar Question" that inspired Robert Redford's Oscar-nominated "Quiz Show" from the 90's.

Technology was green then, but not green enough to stop a math whiz like Michael Larson. 

He didn't cheat. 

 Not exactly.

 He outsmarted the producers by studying previous episodes of the show, collecting them on videotape. (something he wouldn't need to do these days)and memorizing patterns.

He studied the algorithms on the board and knew exactly when and how to stop the Whammy.

But of course, the shows' producers and CBS itself had to save face and make this guy look like a thief and a cheater..not the guy with shear dumb luck that almost made my friend Paula faint by her telephone..

He was not a cheater. 

 He was a savant.

Which leads me to talk about my own game show prowess.

I have been accused of cheating by everyone--including family members..who have watched me solve the bonus puzzles on "Wheel of Fortune" with absolute confidence and absolutely little effort. 

 I've been accused of having access to the solution earlier in the day(??!!) among other cheating methods.

I don't cheat.

I am to letters what Michael Larson is to numbers.

I have simply  "memorized" the way the puzzle contructors think.

 I've watched the show enough to be able to take highly educated guesses on what they will present in the bonus round.

 Yes, I do have a flair for anagramming, thanks to years of playing Scrabble and solving cryptograms and probably having a dose of undiagnosed dyslexia.

But my skill goes beyond these natural gifts..it's more about looking at the show's history, the same way Michael Larson did in the 1980's.

I usually yell at the screen when the contestant chooses the boring and generic "thing" as their choice for the bonus puzzle, but I also tell whoever is watching with me that "you watch..it's going to have a tough letter in it..like a "Z" or "Q"--because..it ALWAYS does!"

THAT'S the pattern..the algorithm! 

 It's not cheating, it's obsession.

I was screaming at the TV just the other night, when the boring contestant chose "thing" as her bonus puzzle category, 

 As soon as I saw the first word ended in "et" and had an "n" for letter three, I SAW the "Q"..knowing with one hundred percent certainty that the first word would be "banquet."

That it couldn't be anything else.

I saw the second word had four letters, so I knew immediately that it was "room", even before Vanna turned the "R"

The contestant called out a helpful consonant..A "B"..and a fitting vowel, an "A" when she was given the chance to pick additional letters,

I saw "Banquet Room" before the extra letters were given, but the contestant didn't see it at all.!

  I was screaming at her, as were word nerds across the nation.

How could she have possibly M_SSED T_HAT???

It was painfully OB_IOUS!

I'm getting long winded here, I know. 

Anything to avoid reading the news today.

I'm still on a high from great weekend  TV..The Studio" and "Dying for Sex" and a great ending in what was otherwise a mediocre season of "The White Lotus" in addition to  some awesome entertainment from Elton and Brandi.

Let me get back to my real world of chores and  weekday planning, by wrapping and saying that nerds are not cheaters. 

We have too much to deal with socially to risk being unpopular by being caught in something scandalous, so at least give us this:

Michael Larson was a math genius. 

Michael Larson beat the Whammy fairly and squarely.

And mark my word..yours truly does not.. mark her words.

I never have and I never will.