'Wheel of Fortune' contestant loses $40,000 on a tough puzzle about food: 'She tried her best...'

Contestants on “Wheel of Fortune” are known to boast of having knowledge about some things, before failing to answer questions about the same. Things also get extra tricky with the pressure and chaos in the studio. That’s what happened in an earlier episode of the show with a woman named Yumemi Turk. According to a report in TV Insider, she was a big fan of Japanese food, and her family even owned an okonomiyaki restaurant. The puzzle she got in the final round of the show was also related to food, but she didn’t get it right.

Turk had a blistering game and maintained a lead over her competitors right from the start. She answered puzzles and made it look easy, and even had some luck as she avoided the Lose A Turn and Bankrupt cards by a hair’s breadth on multiple occasions.

By the time she made it to the Bonus Round, Turk had already made herself rich with a whopping $37,950 in her purse. For this round, she had chosen the Food and Drink category. She was given the letters R, S, T, L, N, and E, and After they were revealed, the puzzle read, “___E_ ___.”

She then had the choice of three consonants and one vowel, and she chose the letters D, M, B, and O. These were decent choices and opened up the puzzle a little bit. It now read, “B__ED __M,” and Turk tried her level best in those 10 seconds to solve the puzzle, but it was just not working out for her that day.

In the end, she failed to figure out that the answer was ‘Baked ham.’ She thought that the second word would be ‘gum’, but that was obviously incorrect. “That wasn’t any kind of gum, that was ham,” Seacrest said after her 10 seconds had passed. There were no hard feelings on the contestant’s part as she seemed quite satisfied with what she had won until that point.

The host then opened the envelope to reveal that she could have won an extra $40,000. The fact that she had won almost that amount of money without the Bonus Round was quite impressive. Despite the loss, fans of the show loved Turk and appreciated her effort in the comments section of the clip on YouTube. They even acknowledged that the final puzzle was not an easy one to solve.

“Another really tough one. I didn't have it but if you could get ham you might have had a shot,” one user commented. “She tried and did her best,” added another user. “This was hard solve,” one more mentioned.