LINGO is GSN’s most popular and successful original game show. Those of us who remember playing variations on “Mastermind” on our underpowered computers growing up find the formula familiar: Guess a string of characters. The computer lets you know which characters you guessed right and which characters you guessed right in the correct place in the string. Guess again. The end goal is to guess the series in as few steps as possible.

That’s LINGO, the game show which uses a five letter word version of “Mastermind.” Each team gets five guesses to determine the word before the other team gets a free letter and a chance to steal. They’ve bootstrapped a Bingo-like game device on there to add an extra element beyond just the word play. Like most GNS shows, the top prize money is $5000 a show. (Well, there is a way to win $10,000, but I’ve never seen anyone get that lucky in the dozens of shows I’ve watched.)

The game is simple enough that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to play, as you can see quite often in the contestant pool. Even the least literate of people can come up with enough five letter words in their vocabulary to not make a complete fool of themselves. Contestants play in teams of two, and most often you see one enthusiastic person playing with the friend/spouse that they’ve dragged onto national TV to play with them.

Still, there are smart ways to play the game, using lessons learned from playing “Mastermind” two decades ago. It always amazes me to see people fail to use them. Contestants are given the first letter of each word to start, so they only need to figure out the last four, which is a big help and a smart way to speed up the game.

The first word you guess should contain all different letters. You want to cast your net as wide as possible to start. Even if the letters aren’t in the right place, at least you might catch one or two additional letters to start thinking up some words that fit. If they’re in the right place — bonus!

The first couple of words you guess should have as many vowels as possible. There are only five vowels — and sometimes six — and you know that at least one will be in the word. More likely, two vowels will be in there. Rather than guess at 21 letters, narrow your aim to those five.

Don’t be afraid to guess a word that you know isn’t right, so long as it contains all new letters. Repeating wrong letters in a guess is dumb and a waste of opportunity, unless you’ve drawn a complete blank and risk losing your turn entirely. But if you guess “HOURS” and it’s all wrong after the first letter, guessing “HEARS” might help you with the vowels, but kills you with the consonant. (Try “HEAVY” or “HEADY” at the very least.)

LINGO doesn’t use plural words too often, though they do use them. Guess plurals at the start sparingly. There are enough words out there with five letters that aren’t plural.

That said, “S” is a fairly common letter so it’s not a bad letter choice. Years of WHEEL OF FORTUNE have taught us all the popularity of R, S, T, L, and N in words. Use lots of words with those letters to start.

If things get desperate, like you’re down to your last word guess and you haven’t spotted a letter yet, ignore every suggestion I just made. Guess a word with all the letters you’ve guessed wrong with in the past. Odds are good you won’t catch the miracle and get it right, but you’ll hinder the competing team’s chance to guess correctly, too.

The show is fun, particularly with the venerable Chuck Woolery in command, and can be a nice breezy half hour to exercise your brain with. But I wish more contestants would think further ahead than the next guess. Every now and then, one such person pops up and they jump off the screen. You can see them thinking. Those are the ones I root for.

One last thought: Your official word guess on the show is the one you spell out. So you can say “GEARS. G. O. R. E. D.” and “GORED” will go up on the board. I want to be a contestant on the show just so I can do that for the entire game. Say one word and ALWAYS spell another. EVERY TIME. Even if I didn’t win, at least I’d be remembered for something.

Tomorrow: More GSN, more word play.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 11:27 pm and is filed under TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.