'Wheel of Fortune' fans convinced player was 'robbed' of $40,000 as they 'heard her' say the right answer

Beyond luck and skills during games on TV game shows, the basic rule is that people who give correct answers walk home with prizes. However, "Wheel of Fortune" seemed to make an exception for one contestant and fans on social media were not happy. A clip uploaded to X (formerly Twitter) by a fan showed a fan giving the correct answer but not receiving the prize money. Surprisingly, even the contestant did not challenge the host Pat Sajak’s decision.

The contestant, Megan, stood to win a $40,000 prize if she got the answer correct in the “Living Thing” category. It’s important to note that she had already won more than $14,000 as per HuffPost at this point in the game. Two words with blanks showed up on the screen in front of Vanna White - “P_N_/_RC_ _D.” The correct answer was “Pink Orchid” which she did seem to get right in a clip uploaded by a viewer.

However, she did not stick to her answer and thought of other possible answers, eventually failing to put forth a definitive answer within the allotted 10 seconds. Commenters on X were not happy with the outcome as most people believed she had said the right thing at the beginning. Sajak simply seemed to ignore that and eventually did not credit her with the prize money.

“She said pink orchid! The need to give her the $40,000!” one user commented. “100000% First thing she said was PINK ORCHID,” quipped another. It’s understandable why people were upset but a clip uploaded to YouTube by "Wheel of Fortune" showed that the contestant said something else.

She got the second word correctly. However, instead of saying “pink orchid”, Megan said “something orchid” and that changed things. Viewers initially were surprised she did not challenge Sajak on his decision but now, that turns out she did not say the correct word. Nonetheless, Megan seemed quite happy to walk away with the $14,000 she had earned. It might not be as high as $40,000 but it’s still a substantial sum.

Wheel of Fortune is an unpredictable show. While some contestants miss out on guessing the simplest terms, some don’t need a lot of clues. That’s exactly what happened in an earlier episode when one Tom Stednicki stunned Sajak and other viewers with his guessing skills. All he needed was one letter to guess the word correctly.

The category was called “On The Map” in which contestants have to guess the names of certain places. Stednicki had three large words in front of him and no letters. He first guessed the letter “S” and proceeded to answer “Glacier Bay, Alaska” which was correct. However, it turned out to be a fluke as the rest of the game did not go as planned for Stednicki. 

He tried the same method in other guesses as well but repeatedly got them wrong. Eventually, Sajak informed him that he had lost about $50,000. “He kind of deserved that the way he solved puzzles there,” the veteran host added.