Her characters would crash down on consonants, as though landing a plane in the midst of an engine blowout or stretch out vowels in defiance of several laws of physics.

“We find a substantial increase in bankruptcy rates, debt collections, debt consolidation loans, and auto loan delinquencies” in those states, they wrote, consonant with an increase in excessive debt among players.

It’s hard to think about Sajak doing anything other than soliciting consonants and vowels or declaring a player “bankrupt,” but his storied career began long before “Wheel of Fortune.”

They were prone to making simple mistakes, including basic addition errors and mistaking consonants for vowels, which led them to provide incorrect answers.

In the Gluck rehearsal, Palumbo cautioned the group not to sit on one word’s final vowel, so that the next consonant could be more explosive.