The Wheel of Fortune has been one of the most iconic shows on TV ever aired. It has given us some awesome scenes with contestants going from last place to winning it all in just one round. However, with the glorious victories, there are also embarrassing defeats. If you won the contest or even did decently at it, you would love for everyone to watch the episode. For a contestant who experienced the latter incident happen to them, they would rather not see the episode air again. So, what do you even do in such cases? Hide your face in shame or laugh along?
The Worst Wheel Of Fortune Mistake
Regardless of how a contestant might cope with it, it does provide quite a bit of entertainment for the audience. Recently, Matt, a contestant on Wheel of Fortune probably made the worst mistake in the show’s history. The overall performance of Matt, in this particular episode, was actually quite complicated. Just to let you know, he was the final winner and went home with $23,350, so he probably does not feel too bad about the horrible blunder in this episode.
However, a blunder as embarrassing as that usually overshadows anything else that happens in an episode. In the round in question, the three contestants were going head-to-head to figure out a word puzzle as soon as possible. The puzzle had three words, and “people” was the category. Contestants can either check for one letter or try to guess the whole phrase. When it came to Matt, he asked to check if “N” was present in the phrase. It was, and the puzzle looked like this: TH_ – N_ _T – _ _ N _ R _ T _ _ N
He then took a second to guess what the phrase could be. His answer, to everyone’s surprise, was something that did not have a single “N” in it. He said: “The Best Buttercut”. We don’t exactly know what Buttercut means, but it definitely did not fit the puzzle! The final answer was THE NEXT GENERATION. You can have a look at the hilarious blunder here:
Other Mistakes That Are Right Up There
However, Matt is not the only one to have made an embarrassing blunder in Wheel of Fortune. There have been quite a few memorable fails in the show’s history since it was first aired in 1975. In 2017, contestant Kevin while facing the word puzzle. He had to fill in the blank for just one letter in the name of this play: “A STREETCAR NA_ED DESIRE”. He spun and was gifted the choice to select a consonant. To everyone’s amusement and dismay, Kevin chose K to make the word: Naked. Of course, the answer was A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE.
In 2009, Sacramento, California resident Lolita McAuley was participating in a speed round. This means that the letters would appear randomly on the board after every period of time. The first one to buzz and guess the complete answer will win. “Thing” was the category, and Lolita was facing this: S_LF-PO_T_ _ _T. McAuley buzzed at this point and answered: “SELF-POTATO”. Again, a confusing but very amusing answer. The correct answer was SELF-POTRAIT.
More recently in 2014, Julian, a student from the University of Indiana, was on track to win $1 million after quite a few lucky spins. On a special edition for collegegoers, he only had to pronounce the phrase: “mythological hero Achilles”. Unfortunately, he pronounced it as “AY-chill-es” when it should have been “AH-kil-ies”. Then, he had to fill in the blank in: “WORLD’S FASTEST _A_” Here, he chose “c”, when the final word was MAN. Lastly, when he arrived at the section for “things”, he had to guess “On-the-spot decision”. He did his biggest fumble and guessed “On-the-spot dicespin”.