'Wheel of Fortune' player fails to answer the most obvious word in a Christmas-themed puzzle

The energy on "Wheel of Fortune" is infectious, as even the audience gets invested in a player's wins and losses, but this could also lead to chaos, preventing contestants from seeing the obvious answer. Phil McManus did that when he made a hasty decision while solving a “Same Letter” puzzle. The three-word puzzle hinted at a quiet 'Christmas Eve' and read, “Chocolate, Chestnuts & Chi_ne_s." Here, McManus opted out of the vowel "I" and decided to spell out, “Chocolate, Chestnuts & Chickens," as the answer. However, he forgot about Santa coming down the chimney and instantly lost $9,550. 

Fellow contestant Matt Komma stuck to the holiday traditions and said “Chocolate, Chestnuts & Chimneys," thus winning $4,200. McManus's viral moment soon translated into a meme for netizens. “That was my shopping list last weekend,” @WheelRob10 joked on X. "It ain't a proper Christmas without poultry!" @AltomonteEvile chimed in. "When I think of chocolates and chestnuts, the next word I think of is chickens," @squand4 mocked the player. 

But this hardly affected McManus, who was silently celebrating a milestone. The cancer survivor was given only months to live, and he revealed to the host, Ryan Seacrest, that he had made a bucket list of special wishes, which included watching a Blink-182 reunion concert, attending WrestleMania, and reliving childhood memories in Disneyland. "I’d never been to Disneyland, and I actually went last night for the first time,” he said. The Massachusetts native added that he had been in remission for a while. The wrestling enthusiast revealed during a recent podcast session that he applied for the 'Wheel of Fortune' while tackling his boredom.

"I was home, I was bore,d I was scrolling through Instagram, and I saw Wheel of Fortune audition, are you a Disney fa,n and I'm like well [ __ ] obviously so I grabbed my camera on my phone, I turned it around, D put up the tripod and I recorded a wrestling shoot-style promo of why I was going to be on the show," he told host Donnie on 'We R Wrestling' podcast. He recalled forgetting about his self-audition tape until he got an official confirmation from the game show to participate. Soon enough, Donnie bought up the 'chicken moment' "When you said the word chicken before I could even like have a reaction, my dad is sitting in the room just crying, laughing at that dude," he said. 

Before Donnie could finish, McManus admitted that his answer was the dumbest thing, "Lose it, bro, I wish I had an explanation. I really wish I did, but I'm just sitting there looking at it, and I'm like, you got three seconds, man. Like, I got a three-second window to either guess another letter or guess or like, correct the puzzle, or they're gone past you, and I'm looking at this board. I'm like chocolates, chestnuts, food man oh bro it's chickens! I was so confident bro and I shouldn't have been because like I don't know it was the dumbest freaking answer man." McManus confessed that he blanked out with the time ticking and gave the wrong answer. "Freaking word the phrase and that's the thing I feel like a lot of people don't like realize like how hard something is unless you're actually doing it," he concluded.