Last night’s Wheel Of Fortune featured a contestant who just happened to rattle off what host Pat Sajak called “the most amazing solve in my 30+ years on the show.” That’s probably not an exaggeration—this is as stunning as televised Hangman gets. For the full surprise, watch the video before reading on. (And if you’re impatient, the action gets underway about 40 seconds in.)
Among the highlights of this bonus round are the full three seconds that elapse between Emil’s answer and the puzzle board lighting up. That delay is the sound of Sajak, Vanna White, and the Wheel Of Fortune production crew thinking, “What the hell?” For that moment, Sajak wonders if something is amiss—if he, the easygoing emcee who never hurt anyone, just got taken by the biggest inside job in American syndicated early-evening game show history. It is hard to fathom, after all, that both the puzzle writers and a desperate contestant would stumble onto the same obscurity of the English language.
Because come on, “NEW BABY BUGGY” is not a thing, not even by Wheel Of Fortune’s permissive “after 39 years on the air, you run out of good puzzles” standard. It isn’t a common phrase, it has an old-fashioned word, and if the contestant doesn’t call “B” or “Y,” he’s practically screwed. This puzzle was not meant to be solved. This is the kind of puzzle that an executive producer slips into the mix when the show is pushing its prize budget for the month. “Hey, Lou, the wheel’s been a little ‘fortunate’ lately, so maybe tonight our friend gets one of those ‘not quite right’ puzzles. You know the ones I mean? Maybe a little ‘FORBEARANCE LAW’ or ‘MACHINE WORKMAN.’ I’ll leave it up to you, Lou.”