Maybe you like to watch sports or listen to rock music while you are on the treadmill, but I prefer to pace myself with Wheel of Fortune. Jogging in place while the wheel clicks away gives me time to think about the important things in life. Things like "why is this asshole buying a vowel when he must know the answer" and "you're spinning?! But you've got 12 grand in the bank and there's only one goddamn consonant left!!"

In fact, since Wheel of Fortune is a game, I've decided that it must have a definite optimal solution. Consider the puzzle below, one which I imagine even the reddest red state moron would be able to tease out:

One vowel, 2 Bs, an L, a C, and a K are left. You've already got $8,000 in the bank, including an all expenses paid vacation to the Sandals resort in Jamaica and a shopping spree on Etsy.com to spend on human centipede merchandise. Do you spin or solve?

It really comes down to how much risk you can tolerate. Based on this wheel, and assuming that the probability of landing on each spot is equal and that the Lose a Turn spot is essentially the same thing as the Bankrupt slot (the guy with the lifetime NRA membership next to you is DEFINITELY solving this puzzle), we can calculate the expected value of your next spin. Then we can make a chart. That chart looks like this:

In this context, a singleton is a letter of which there is only one, i.e. the C, L, and K. The twofer is the letter of which there are multiples, i.e. the B. The twofer has a higher expected value because you get money for each instance of the letter appearing in the puzzle.

In our example, even if you have $8,000 in the bank, a spin with a twofer in the board will net you an average value of nearly $700.

Now: is there opportunity cost associated with solving? That is, by solving now, not only do I lose the value of this spin, but of all future spins. Consider the example above again, except start with only $5,000 in the bank. The average value of that spin was $921, because I was risking much less money on a bankrupt or lose a turn spot. There are still letters left. What is the value of those future spins?

On Spin 1, I start with $5,000, and the average value of my spin, because there is a twofer left, is $921. However, if I want to know the value of future spins, that presumes that I did not land on the bankruptcy spots; i.e., the starting value of future spins is not $5,921, but rather the average value of all non-bankruptcy spots on the wheel, which is $730 (or $1,460 with a twofer).

On Spin 2, I would theoretically start with an average of $6,460, and only have singletons left. The average value of that spin is only $130. Additionally, my leveraging (that is the ratio of money I'm risking to money I'm potentially earning) goes from a reasonable 5.4:1 to an absurd 50:1!

Here's how the value of the second spin changes with money in the bank, assuming you will use the twofer on your first spin:

This graph shows that, with anything about $2,000 in the bank, you become what I would consider over-leveraged on your spin (greater than 10:1) and with more than $6,000 in the bank, your bet becomes a loser. It also shows that, in most cases, there is little to no opportunity cost lost unless there are multiple twofers or higher left in the puzzle once you've solved it.

This confirms the strategy that I've long assumed to be correct on the show: once you've determined the answer to the puzzle, you keep going until there are only singletons left or you exceed $10,000 in the bank, whichever comes first. Wheel of Fortune: SOLVED. Next, please.