'Wheel of Fortune' fans blast Ryan Seacrest for rejecting player over how she said the word 'safari'

"The Wheel Of Fortune" host Pat Sajak was often blamed for costing contestants massive prizes because of his blunders, despite being loved by fans. Now his successor, Ryan Seacrest, continues to face such allegations, and a recent gaffe involves a player named Arzice Salonga, who lost a round for mispronouncing the word 'Safari.' While the player took it well on the show, fans blasted the ruling by Seacrest on social media for being extremely harsh. 

It happened when three contestants were playing the toss-up round with a chance of winning $1,000. In the rapid round, a puzzle is provided to the players, and the letters of the puzzle are revealed one by one with each passing second. The players only get one attempt at solving it before all the letters are revealed. The two-word puzzle for Salonga initially read,  "A F _ I _ _ N     _ A _ A _ _."  Arzice, a law student and a single mother from Medina, Ohio, solved the puzzle with the answer, "African Safari".

However, the second word was pronounced "sa-fairy," and the host, Ryan Seacrest, ruled the answer as incorrect. The ruling stunned both the audience and the other players, as no one made another attempt. Eventually, the next contestant, Brian, repeated the same two words with the correct pronunciation. "Safari is the way you have to say that," Seacrest explained to Arzice to justify the harsh ruling. As the player reeled from the loss, the host further clarified that it wasn't up to him to make the judgment. "Just wanted to check with our judges to make sure," he said. 

While the player took it on the chin during the show, fans took to social media to express outrage at the mispronunciation ruling. "Wheel of Fortune stinks. Poor contestant pronounced a word wrong but she was correct" @gigiright wrote on X (formerly Twitter). "Wheel of Fortune you suck! The woman said African Safari and was correct but used a southern twang! That was rotten!" another viewer, @Leelilacs, added.

Fans complained that the player had got all the letters, and the answer wasn't that far off. "Wheel of Fortune just penalized a player for a minor pronunciation error. Everyone knew exactly what she was saying," @JJlikestoplay pointed out. Many fans thought she was robbed. 

While the debate on whether the ruling was fair or not isn't settled, this wasn't the first time that a player lost out on a technicality.  Previously on the show, a contestant named Jonny completed an answer on the board in a similar fashion but got one word wrong.  Jonny read the puzzle “Flamenco Dance Lessons" as "Flamingo Dance Lessons" and lost $7,100. The host at the time was Pat Sajak, who had no choice but to rule the answer as incorrect.

The player's opponent, Ashley, then swooped in and got the prize as Jonny was left in shock. “What we all heard was — and I know you didn’t mean to say it — but you gave us a G instead of a C," Sajak explained to the contestant who made the error.