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Hello again and welcome back to America Under the Microscope. 欢迎你又回到【闲话美国】.

Hello, James.

Hi, Lulu.

So what are we going to talk about today?

I wanna ask you a question, what's on TV at 7:00 pm every night in China?

That would be 【新闻联播】, that would be the news.

That's not very exciting. In the United States, usually around this time, we would be basically our Game Show hour where there will be two of the biggest Game Shows.

Game Show, this is usually with contestants and people competing for a prize.

Correct. So these are shows where the contestants are regular people like you or me and they are playing for prizes usually money.

就是这种综艺答题型的节目或者竞技型的节目Game Shows.

There're some really long lived Game Shows in America, right?

Yeah, we're gonna talk about three of them today. We're gonna talk about these because these are household names in America. They are known by everyone in the country.

So even if you don't watch it, you've heard of it. And they are constant references of these Game Shows in American TV shows or movies.

Yeah, they'll show up everywhere.

大家看美剧或者说美国电影的时候, 经常就会听见有人提, 其实是一个文化梗。

I bet one of them is Wheel of Fortune.

It is. The first one we were gonna talk about is Wheel of Fortune.

Ok, let's talk about the big three.

Yes, so let's start off with Wheel of Fortune (Since 1983).

So Wheel of Fortune is basically Hangman game…Guessing Words. It is.

Hangman

Hangman是一个猜单词的双人游戏。由一个玩家想出一个单词或短语，另一个玩家猜出其中的每一个字母。出题玩家一般会画一个绞刑架，当猜词的玩家猜出了短语中存在的一个字母时，出题的玩家就将这个字母存在的所有位置都填上。如果玩家猜的字母不在单词或短语中，那么出题的玩家就给绞刑架上小人添上一笔，直到7笔过后，小人被吊死，游戏结束。

So you have three contestants, and then there's a big wheel, like a really big wheel. On each turn one of the contestants will spin the wheel. It will land on a money amounts like $100 $200 $500, something like that. And then they guess letters to try to guess… to put into the phrase and they try to guess the phrase. So if they guess a letter correctly, they can spin again to get a higher amount, then guess another letter and so on and so on.

And if they guessed it wrong, then it’s someone else’s …

Then it goes to the next player. If they spin the wheel and lose a turn, it goes to the next player. If they guess wrong like they try to guess the phrase like maybe the phrase is like they should guess like the end of the movie and they say it's the end of the book. Wrong guess, it goes to the next player.

Okay, so whoever has the correct guess, how much money is this person collecting?

However much they spun and guessed correctly. So it accumulates, so they guessed two letters and each letter was 500, they now get $1,000.

Okay. I'm getting a bit confused. Yeah, but don't you get an extra point for guessing the entire sentence?

You get to keep the money. Everyone else who didn't guess it loses the money from that round.

Okay. So how many rounds are there? I mean, how many phrases are there?

Usually there's four or so, because it doesn't take that long to guess the phrase and whoever has the most money at the end will do the final phrase all by themselves. And they'll win a grand prize, usually something like $25,000.

So it's not a huge amount of money. Do they do this every day?

Yes, Monday through Friday.

Okay. And is this show filmed in front of a live audience?

Yes, it is. Wouldn't they be shouting out the answer? I WOULD.

They are not allowed to, they would be kicked out. But people at home, they will shout, they do. It's like, ‘No, you're wrong. You should’ve guessed this!’

You do see this in TV and movies a lot.

So the prize money isn't a lot, but they win cash prizes, all contestants do win something. Maybe if they want a little bit of money, they’re gonna keep that. So if they won one round, they still get to keep that money.

Sounds like one of those Game Shows that is fun for the whole family to gather.

Oh yes. It's perfectly family friendly.

Now let's move on to the next of the big three, Jeopardy.

I've heard of it. I don't really know how it's played.

Well, Jeopardy is a lot different than Wheel of Fortune. Jeopardy is a trivia Game Show.

Trivia, 百科知识,小知识, so it's like factoids, isn't it?

Yeah it’s exactly what it is.

Again this show, there are three contestants, in front of them it'll be a big screen that has five categories and under each category will be like five questions.

Categories like what, food or movies …

There will be things like stretch at the beginning letter of H, history, they can be some very specific things. So, the contestant will choose a category, then they'll choose a question by number and amount. They'll like category one for $500 which would be the most difficult question in that category. And then they will be given a statement.

A statement?

Like this for example, let's say it's writers for, and they say writers for 300 and they'll get a statement like this, this Chinese person won a Nobel Prize in literature.

That's easy. 莫言. But you wouldn't get the money for that because you have to make your answer in the form of a question. You would have to say who is Mo Yan?

Okay. Is that just a specific game rule?

That's a specific game rule. So all of your answers must be in the form of a question. So who is who are what is when is, so the Ws and Hs.

Do you get people who actually got the correct answer, but they're too excited and then they just shouted out the answer?

That does happen. But usually it's very rare because this show's been on TV for so long.

How long exactly?

Ever since I …before I was born (Since 1984).

So decades then, and it just never gets old, it’s such a simple concept.

Yeah, and there's some people who can win this…there's a guy who won 74 times in a row. I bet that's his life. Yeah and he won millions playing this game.

And, I guess the trivia questions, they will get updated, obviously, as time goes by.

They're always different.

And these are tough, and people try to play this at home, too, like it's like ‘woo!’ And the people they get to play this game, you'll still introduce them, they'll be like people who are well-educated, well-read, because the questions in Jeopardy can be really obscure factoids. It would be like classic literature arts authors.

I suppose you need to be very intelligent, but also you need to be into all these trivia.

Yeah.

So we had Wheel of Fortune which is guessing the phrase, guessing the letters, and then Jeopardy which is trivia.

We have one more. Now this one is actually a morning Game Show instead of evening. But it's called the Price is Right.

The Price is Right, is it about guessing the price of things?

That's exactly what it is. And this Game Show has been on for a very, very long time and it's had multiple hosts over its time (Since 1972).

I've seen multiple references, 看到过很多关于Price is Right的梗.

So is it one of those, if you guessed the correct or the closest price, you get to take it home?

Correct. That's how it works. So they start off the game by choosing four random audience members to come to the front to the … Oh so it's not pre-selected! 现场选.

No. They come to the front and they start the first game where they bring out some product. And you need to guess a price. Whoever gets closest to the price will then go on onstage and play another game, which will be usually some other guessing game. If they win that game, they win that prize, then they move on to another game later where they'll spin a giant wheel.

So the more times you win, obviously the more stuff that you can take home.

Then the top two winners have a final guessing game at the very end of the show to win like the grand prize.

Are all the prizes things, not money?

You can win money, but it's usually things like… A car? It can be a car, vacations, equipment. Some stuff looks really cool, other stuff like, you can even actually see it on their faces like we're gonna offer you this exercise equipment. Sometimes they just have that kind of dead look on their faces like, I don't want that.

But you can't really choose.

No, you have no choice.

I didn't even realize that explaining these the big three Game Shows in America would take the entire episode. So I guess we will stop here. And in the next episode, we're gonna go into it and talk about the whole culture behind it.

Yes.

All right, we'll see you next time. And if… in the meantime, if you like watching any Game Shows made in China or produced somewhere else, leave us comment in the comment section, share with us your experiences.

We'll see you next time. Bye.

Bye bye.