Ask the Slot Expert: Questioning Wheel of Fortune Pink Diamonds payout

Question: I hit a hand pay of $61.00 playing wheel of fortune pink diamonds quarter machine I had 2 blue 7 and a pink 7 the lights are flashing on the top screen it said line one 600 line two 800 ect I ask why a hand pay for $61 the attendant didn’t say I show them the top screen they pay me I walk back a few feet I over heard them say something like he didn’t know that

Answer: I'll give you two puzzles to work on today. The first is to break up the email above into sentences.

Wheel of Fortune Pink Diamonds is a 5-line, traditional reel-spinning slot machine. The five paylines follow the traditional layout. The first payline is straight across the middle of the window. The second payline goes across the top of the window, one stop above the first payline. The third payline goes across the bottom of the window, one stop below the first payline. The fourth payline goes diagonally from the top left though the center symbol on the center reel to to the bottom right. The fifth payline goes diagonally from the bottom left through the center to the top right.

The symbol placement on the reels follows the traditional placement: a symbol, a blank, a symbol, a blank, and so on.

If I had to choose one adjective to describe this machine, it would be traditional -- though the Wheel of Fortune wheel-spinning bonus was decidedly non-traditional in a prior era.

I described so many details about this machine because the writer mentions Line 1 and Line 2. Given that the symbol placement on the reels is symbol-blank-symbol-blank..., I don't think it's possible to have payouts on both Line 1 and Line 2.

I found a video of the Slot Hopper playing Wheel of Fortune Pink Diamonds on Facebook.

The Hopper scans up and down on the machine at the beginning of the video. The top screen is displaying a section of the paytable. The screen title is "Line Wins". Underneath the title it displays a combination of different 7 symbols and then says, "ON LINE 5" and "600". The caption on the bottom of the screen shows "TOUCH GAME RULES FOR DETAILS".

I also found a picture of a Wheel of Fortune Pink Diamond jackpot win in the Las Vegas Sun. The top screen shows the same title, symbol combination, and caption. The difference is the amount. Instead of 600, this screen shows $3000. That makes sense because this is a $5 machine and 600 credits on a $5 machine is $3000. The reels show the same combination as the top screen, the jackpot combination, on the first payline. The top half of the top screen says that this combination on the first payline with max lines played (max bet) pays just over $5.4 million, which is how much the player won.

Back to the Hopper's video, right before the camera tilts down to show the reel window, the line number and amount shown on the display change to "4" and "525," respectively. When the camera settles in on the reel window, the display shows Red Bars in the center on the first two reels and a blank between the Spin symbol and a Double 5-Bar symbol on the third reel. The Win Meter shows 0.

I went through this excruciating detail to show that the top screen isn't displaying what was won on the spin. It's displaying the paytable.

Watching Hopper's video, we can see that the machine tells you what was won on a spin under the Credit Meter. It uses the traditional multi-line win display: "Game Pays xxx" and underneath it cycles through each winning payline: "Line y Pays zzz".

I found a video that showed a paytable. It was a dollar machine, but it is probably the same as the paytable on your quarter machine. Mixed 7s pay 20 credits. If each 7 was a doubling 7, we can get to 160 credits, a far cry from your 644-credit ($61) handpay. I can get close if reels 1 and 3 had red 7s in the top and bottom positions and the center reel had a Double Red 7 in the center position. That would pay 300 + 300. The bottom line is that I don't see how 2 Blue 7s and a Red 7 could pay $61 -- and why a $61 hit would be a handpay, for that matter.

In any case, let me speculate on the part you didn't hear them say. "He didn't know that..." the top screen displays the paytable and not what was won on the spin.

Here's the second puzzle I promised. A few months ago, The New York Times started running a new word game called Connections. The game consists of a grid of 16 words and you have to break them into groups of four words that are related in some way.

The game can be tricky. Frequently five words will have the same connection and you have to figure out which word belongs in another group. The connection between the words, in addition, is sometimes a bit obscure. The puzzle creators even rank the groups by trickiness level.

Sometimes I get a connection that they considered tricky just because I was familiar with what connected them (e.g., Asia, Journey, KISS, Yes are all rock bands with one-word names).

Following are the words from about a month ago. See if you can find the four groups of four words that share a common thread. It's easier to play using the app because the app will tell you once you've correctly identified a set of words, but the Times does not have a way to play a puzzle from the archive. I'll give you answers next week.

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