Playing Along

It is television's top-rated game show and home to America's sexiest woman of letters, Vanna White. Now Wheel of Fortune has inspired the genre's most futuristic home game. A new device from Mattel enables viewers to play along with the nightly syndicated show. The unit, when aimed at the TV set, picks up an encoded signal that activates a miniature computer. For each word puzzle, the player can "spin" a wheel to accumulate prize money, choose letters and try to guess the hidden phrase. The TV players' guesses also show up automatically on the home unit.

The game, selling for around $80, offers more technical razzle-dazzle than competitive challenge. Beating the TV players is not hard, because they usually delay offering a solution in order to build up the pot. But the interactive concept may catch on. Youngsters last season could blow away TV villains in Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, and Mattel is developing six more interactive TV products. Guess the culprit on Murder, She Wrote, perhaps? Divine Alf's gag lines in advance? Nah -- too easy.