'Wheel of Fortune' host Ryan Seacrest blamed for accepting player's bizarre way of saying a Texas city

There have been instances on “Wheel of Fortune” where contestants have lost out on prizes after not saying a word correctly, and hosts have also faced flak for judging them too harshly. But now fans are unhappy about the new host Ryan Seacrest letting a contestant get away with mispronouncing the name of a city in Texas that appeared as part of a puzzle. In an earlier episode of the show, a contestant named Alicia Sagle faced the puzzle in the first round’s 'On The Map' category. The answer to it was, “Dallas, Houston, and Lubbock, Texas” but she pronounced Lubbock as ‘Loo-bach,’ as per TV Insider. In spite of that, Seacrest awarded her the win and $1,900.

This didn't go down well with some of the fans on social media and led to a heated debate online. “I would not have accepted that mangling of Lubbock, Wheel of Fortune,” a user Rocco C. wrote on X. “Lady pronounced Lubbock as "loo-bach" on wheel of fortune and if I didn't have a sleeping baby in my arms I'd cackkkkkkkle,” user Ellie Banks quipped.

Whether she deserved to be awarded the prize money for that answer is up for debate but one cannot deny that the rest of Alicia’s performance on the show was impressive. By the time she made it to the bonus round, she had earned $22,020 cash and a trip to New York City. She had the chance to triple her cash winnings in the bonus round. She had chosen the ‘What Are You Doing’ category and was given the letters R, S, T, L, N, and E in the puzzle.

Alicia then chose D, C, G, and O as her three consonants and one vowel. The puzzle now read, “____NG T_E RO_NDS.” With 10 seconds on the board, she guessed multiple answers but none of them were correct. When the answer “making the rounds,” she held her head in disappointment after missing out on $40,000. But she was still happy as she walked away with a good amount of money.

The issue of pronunciation came up on “Wheel of Fortune” before as well. Only back then, the tables were turned. Pat Sajak was the host of the popular game show at the time and a contestant named Renne was facing a puzzle that read “SE_EN S__NS _-S__MM_NG.” The correct answer was, “Seven swans a-swimming” and that’s exactly what Renne said. However, she was not awarded the win. That was because she pronounced the word ‘swimming’ as ‘swimmin’ which caused widespread discontent among users on social media. One X user believed that the show was biased against Southerners since Renee had a Southern accent as per ABC News. Others believed that she was simply cheated out of winning for something so trivial that it couldn’t even be considered an error.

Back then, fans called for such pronunciation errors to be ignored if the answer was correct. Now, the opposite has become a reason behind an outrage as fans have taken offense to the name of a city not being pronounced correctly even though it is the correct answer.