February 7, 2008
To those that were actually expecting some news before the site went down: you ought to know better by now. :)

Everything should have survived the move over, but since I don't have any future plans for this site, I've taken down the "How You Can Help" section. The rest of the site will stay up strictly for historical purposes. So, if my resolve doesn't weaken and cause me to go near this website again, this is goodbye. Thanks again to all who have contributed to this website -- it's been a blast.

--Chris

May 20, 2007
"Update by July," huh? Actually, it shames me that today's small update should have taken place sometime in 2006... The Austrailian boards have now been added to the Special page. Thanks to bmhedgehog for brining it to my attention!

In other news, this site may be moving. Additional news to follow when it becomes available.

June 10, 2006
The board configurations used on CBS's Game Show Marathon have now been included on the Special page.

January 18, 2006
A new article for 2006: The Pilot Episode -- it took two years to finish it, but only half an hour to actually write it. Also, the "urban legend" has been removed from History of Pick a Corner, since it has been debunked on TVRules.net. For the record, the legend -- which was no more than a wild guess from another member, but one that I liked -- was that the $1750 slide in [1] became $750 in Season 3 due to a printing error.

In other news, the Prize Rotation pages are still on hold. My goal is to have another update ready by July.

November 5, 2005
Small update. A new "Ugly Whammy" slide has been added to the article The Whammy. Thanks to Barry Wallo for providing the footage.

August 28, 2005
Most websites would announce, "We're back, bigger and better than ever!"* after taking a five-month vacation from updates. But most are usually lying -- the big hurrah is followed by a year or two of silence, and at the end lies either a helpful 404 message, or a helpful domain registry page.

So I'll be brutally honest: this site is much the same as it has been for the last year, aside from some housekeeping. Thanks go out to Todd Hunter for pointing out the unexpected Move 1 Space square on the pilot episode of Press Your Luck. Through some research, I've found that the first few aired episodes of PYL had a blue $2000 in [8] instead of a white one, like all the others. Finally, a photo of the set on Second Chance has revealed some unexpected news about the show -- thanks go to Brian "Sonic Whammy" Sapinski for the heads-up, and DoctorW for providing the photo.

For those curious about the future of the website: I'm still keeping an eye on it. The Prize Rotation section needs some more work, and there's always housekeeping to do. My energy has been spent with the Win95 game PYL Expert Edition over the last year, and will most likely continue to be a higher priority (although that's been on hold for a few months as well).

* That sounds suspiciously like a certain gameshow... :)

April 3, 2005
Another page added to the Prize Rotations collection: this time it's Season 2b, which wraps up the second season of PYL. Next up will be Season 3a... at least up to the point where GSN has aired episodes. Some of its recently aired eps have featured prize changes on the Demo Board, including Luggage in [2], but I haven't gotten around to making those changes yet.

One other bit of business: the "Strange Whammy" screenshots in the article The Whammy are taken from footage provided by Barry Wallo. I'm very grateful for his help, and made sure to update the "Sources" section of that article.

March 25, 2005
Copyright information added to the article PYL Strategy.

March 12, 2005
Only one week since the last update -- something rare for this site! Two new prize rotation pages are up: Demo Boards and Season 2a. With new information coming to light about Add-A-One, the PYL Season 3 page and the PYL Questions & Answers article have had references about Add-A-One returning at the start of every episode removed. We do know that this practice was in place for Add-A-One, but it looks like it wasn't practiced early in the season.

March 5, 2005
New article: The Whammy, which includes information previously available from PYL Questions & Answers. There's also a comparison between the new August 1984 Whammies, the ones that first premiered, and the redrawn Whammies that came a few episodes later. PYL Season 1 has been touched-up with new links to this article. PYL Season 3 has a small color correction for Neon Color Change (R2).

February 6, 2005

• Whammy! Season 1: Brought back the Statistics panels! Also added taped episode numbers (T#) to the descriptions for greater specificity, and changed light blue squares to teal.
• Whammy! Season 2: New Stats panels, and added taped episode numbers.
• Whammy! Special: Simplified Charity and Halloween Boards by simply stating that they used the big font, and leaving out that they used teal.
• Articles: The Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number article is finally complete! The footnotes have been reorganized. PYL Questions & Answers has been updated with an Add-A-One formula by Kevin Cheung.
• Welcome Page: Now that all the Whammy! episodes have been seen, I've cleaned up the "How You Can Help" section.

January 15, 2005
Just so people don't start suspecting that I've abandoned the Prize Rotation List articles, I've converted another batch to HTML, this time covering the second half of Season 1. Check out PYL Prize Configuration Lists, Season 1b in the Articles section. Unlike the Season 1a article, I've omitted commentary and most of the detailed footnotes, which takes an enormous amount of time to prepare. In time I'll return to the article to highlight the changes, but for now you can see the raw data. The Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number article has been updated again with five episodes in Season 1. Eight more to go!

More recent news from Christmas '04: My Secret Project is now available to the public! It's yet another PYL computer game, which I named, "PYL Expert Edition". It's intended to be an update to Curt King's PYL game, made especially for both the fans of the PYL mods that have been cropping up over the last few years (Jim Balcerek's mods basically inspired this project) and for those that want to include PYL GameControl's many features into Curt's simple interface. This is only the first release, which means it has some minor bugs, but nothing that will ruin the game for those that aren't expecting too much from a first release. For more information, visit the game's homepage at http://home.att.net/~jp312/pylexpert.html [link redirected to new site].

January 9, 2005
Special thanks to Jeff Pfeifer for pointing out many of these changes:

• Whammy! Season 1: Early Episodes (R3) now has $900 in [2] instead of $800, Big Font Change! (R3) now has corrected text for Car/Spin, and the Final Board (R3) now specifies when the Double Whammy appeared in [9].
• Whammy! Season 2: A second look at the Larson Rematch shows that there were two keys in R1, but not where you think it would be!
• Whammy! Special: Another second look at the Halloween Episode shows a Double Whammy in [9], like the later Final Board episodes have.
• Articles: The Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number article has been updated, with the new subheading "Extra DW" under "Final Board" to take into account the episodes that have an extra Double Whammy in [9]. There are only 12 episodes left until this article is complete (and accurate)! PYL Questions & Answers has also been updated with new RGB values, taken from Jim's new slide packs.
• The style sheet for this website has been updated with the new colors mentioned above, which doesn't work so well for the rare off-white entries. I might cheat and go back to the older off-white values for the sake of legibility. "Dark green" is no longer considered an "official" color, although it will take some time to restructure the pages to change the dark green entries to regular green.

December 4, 2004
GSN has finally begun to show the Final Board episodes of Whammy!, and so I have made corrections to the Big Font Change! board. Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number has also been updated. Note that in the last update, the classification "470 moves" was removed, as it only applied to one episode (which is marked with a footnote). However, since the Gem space unexpectedly disappeared after only four episodes, I've included a new classifcation under Big Font Change!: "GEM disappears".

November 21, 2004
Small update today. During the last few PYL episodes, Add-A-One had disappeared, and recently returned to [5]. This is noted under PYL: Season 3. GSN has finished airing the Small Font episodes of Whammy!, and that board has been corrected according to my study of those episodes. The Big Font episodes have begun to air, and I've noticed some mistakes on my page. Those corrections will be made when we move on to the Final Board. The Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number article has also been updated.

November 6, 2004

• Articles: Added another new article, written and submitted by Kevin Cheung: PYL Strategy. GSN is now airing Season One episodes of Whammy!, which allows me to complete more of the Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number.
• PYL Season 3: Add-A-One has disappeared on the last two episodes GSN has aired, and these disappearances have been added to the Early Color Tweaks board.
• Whammy! Season 1: With some of these episodes finally in hand, I've corrected some mistakes found on Early Episodes (R3) and Small Font Board (R1). The Statistics Panes have been removed for now, until the values can be rechecked.
• There have been a few pages on the website with an improper <title>, but they've finally been corrected.

November 2, 2004
A brand new article for Election Night: PYL Prize Rotation Lists, which will be an ongoing effort, premiers with a list of prizes that appeared on the Big Board during March and April, 1984. Jim Balcerek has re-created two Whammy slides -- the Reaching Up Whammy, and the Egyptian Pose Whammy -- and they've been added to PYL Questions & Answers [link redirected]. If anyone has a clean close-up of the Big Tongue Whammy, please contact me or Jim Balcerek, and we'll have all ten poses (and you'll get credit). The icon used for the Q&A article has been changed to the one I originally wanted to use.

October 15, 2004
The mystery about how Whammies were added to the Whammy! Early Board has been solved, thanks to Brian "Sonic Whammy" Sapinski! The How You Can Help section below has been modified to include a few new requests.

October 5, 2004

• PYL Season 3: Added information about Add-A-One's premiere on the Early Color Tweaks board.
• Special (PYL): Changed a reference from "green" to "lime" on the Back-to-School Demo Board.
• Special (Whammy!): Made some minor changes to the pilot boards, including an embarrassing name mistake!
• Articles: Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number is now complete for Season Two! Many thanks to Jimousine at TVRules.net for his help on closing this gap. The light patterns information from the article PYL Questions & Answers has now been moved to a new article: PYL Light Patterns. Special thanks to Brian "Sonic Whammy" Sapinski for letting me use this information from his website!

September 22, 2004
With the Season 3 episodes airing on GSN come some corrections to make on the website! PYL Season 3 has been updated with new color information. The changes between the Back-to-School Week and the regular Demo Board were so numerous that I split them into separate boards. See them on the PYL Special Boards page. Lastly, Jeff Pfeifer has provided additional information about the light patterns used on PYL, which can be found in the article PYL Questions & Answers [now in a separate article].

September 11, 2004
Lots of article updates today! Updated PYL Questions & Answers with new neon cash slides and new Whammy slides, made by Jim Balcerek. Also, I fixed the link for Adam Marchese's archived PYL page in The Original Board Configurations Lists. Finally, one Whammy! episode I had not seen aired Friday, and so the article Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number has been updated. That leaves one Season 2 episode whose board configuration has not yet been confirmed: #79, Larry/Katie/Cheryl (an April Fool's Day episode). If you have information about this episode, please let me know!

Expect another update in a few weeks. Now that GSN has been airing the Season 3 episodes, a few mistakes have been spotted on my pages, mostly involving colors.

August 30, 2004
Added a new article: PYL Questions & Answers, covering a number of various topics. PYL Season 1 and Season 3 have links pointing back to this article, where needed. The Pick A Corner article has been fixed so that the PAC links on the PYL pages take you to the appropriate section of the article. Finally, Whammy! Season 1 now includes information on which "batches" of squares rotate in Round Two.

August 9, 2004
False alarm! Reset the links for Jim's PYL Slides. Added links to the PYL pages in connection with the Pick A Corner article.

August 6, 2004
Updated some links, particularly Jim's PYL Slides.

August 2, 2004
Having seen what this page looks like with large text and a 800×600 screen, I decided to make a few adjustments to the new format. This page should now view fine with any text size and any resolution. Personally, I use 1024×768 and "Smaller" text size, but all shapes and sizes should work now.

July 31, 2004
GSN has shown the 8/12/85 episode, where a "Reaching Up" Whammy replaced the running Whammy in [9]. At the end of this August (my guess is the 28th) we should see the first Season 3 episode with the Neon Color Board.

July 24, 2004
No content update today, but spiffy new titles (below the not-as-new page headings) have been added to each page. Hopefully this will help the navigation a bit more. A few of the new graphics have been tweaked and optimized.

GSN Note: In a few weeks GSN should be showing the episode where this running Whammy in [9] will be replaced with this Whammy with his arms upstretched. At the end of August expect the neon slides to debut.

July 15, 2004

• Site Help: All the information on how to read the board configurations has been moved to this new page.
• PYL Season 3: Add-A-One is now a darker color, and looks more like the other prizes.
• Special: Whammy!: The pilot boards now reflect how they appear on the Whammy! GameControl (Pilot Episode version).
• Articles: I don't know why, but I moved them to the Special section. Also, background information has been about Jim Balcerek's list has been added to The Original Board Configurations Lists.
• And of course, the page headings have been redesigned, and the navagation is reorganized (again). They shouldn't take up as much room at the top of the page now.

June 5, 2004
Jim Balcerek has taken down his board configurations list from his website, but has graciously allowed me to host it here. It has been added to the article with Adam Marchese's list. The article has been renamed, The Original Board Configurations Lists.

May 29, 2004
The remaining pages have been converted to XHTML. In more interesting news, there is a new article: A Treatise on Pipsquack. Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number has also been updated. Only three more question marks remain for Season Two!

May 26, 2004
More housekeeping, and conversion to XHTML 1.0. There is one minor content change: Tournament of Champions (Final) (R3) received its missing footnotes.

May 23, 2004
No real update this weekend, but there are a few housekeeping chores that have been completed, from fixing rather embarrassing spelling errors to crunching images for faster loading. The sample board used below for How to Read a Board has been updated to match my current formatting practices.

May 16, 2004

• Whammy! Season 1: Updated the Statistics Panels and returned them to the page. The Final Board had some unnecessary footnotes that are now gone. Also changed all instances of GEM CAR to "Gem Car"; I think it looks nicer.
• Special Boards (Second Chance): Split up the R2 information into separate boards, which also makes a nicer looking Table of Contents.
• Special Boards (Whammy!): Due to last Sunday's Mother's Day broadcast, I added additional information about the Charity Board, particularly about how Whammies were added to R1. Also added a Statistics Pane to the Halloween Board.
• Articles: Added a new and long-planned article: The History of Pick A Corner. The Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number is now complete for Season Two, although a few question marks are still up -- hopefully GSN will show these scattered episodes soon.

May 8, 2004

• Split up the Specials page into a separate PYL page and Whammy! page.
• Added an Update History page, for those keeping track.
• PYL Season 1: Added information about "Double Your $$" to the Pick-A-Corner! board.
• PYL Season 3: Added information to $2000/W Disappearance.
• Whammy! Season 2: Corrected a typo regarding the "Bottom Key" in Round 1 of the Tournament Episode boards.
• Special Boards (PYL): Added an Early Blank Slide Board to go with the Late Blank Slide Boards.
• Special Boards (W!): Added the boards from the pilot episode. Also added information about the "Whammy Board" in the introduction at the top of the page.
• Articles: Updated Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number.

May 1, 2004

• Second Chance: Added more information on the Prize Boxes.
• PYL Season 3: Removed the bogus "Pick-A-Corner Gone" listing from the Table of Contents.
• Whammy! Season 1: Included the rare Double Whammies in [9].
• Whammy! Season 2: Fixed a mistake on the Tournament page now that I've seen the last regular taped episode (Jennifer/Andrew/Hunter). Only one key is offered, not three or four.
• Special Boards: The Blank Slide Boards from the Intro and the Question Round have been included.
• Articles: Added a new article: Adam Marchese's Original Board Configurations List. Updated Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number.

April 28, 2004
No content update today. However, I was poking around www.w3.org and decided to be responsible and do a HTML and CSS verification. And I'm glad I did -- some bugs are fixed now, and I get to put the little nifty W3C button at the bottom of the page.

April 25, 2004

• Reorganized the navigation bar!
• Second Chance: Added Devil and Prize icons.
• PYL Season 1: Added more information on the five Whammy poses used at the beginning of the show's run.
• PYL Season 3: Added information to Fate of [10], Revisited (R1) regarding the "double Whammy" in [7].
• Whammy!: Split up the page into two seasons. Cleaned up the commentary by moving some of it below each board rather than trying to keep it all in the tiny space in the center of the board. Added approximate number of episodes that each configuration ran in Season One. Reconfigured (hopefully simplified) the S1 Big Font Change! phase description. Expanded coverage of Season 2.
• Special Boards: Added the names of the TV moms for the Whammy! Charity Board.
• Articles: Added a brand new section to the site! The first article has been added: Whammy! Board Listing by Episode Number. Not much of a real article, but it's a start.

March 13, 2004
Site goes online. Various adjustments made throughout the month.