'Wheel of Fortune' fans boo over an ‘unfair’ $1 million puzzle — Pat Sajak comes up with sassy response

During a recent episode of the game show, "The Wheel Of Fortune", the audience expressed their disappointment with loud boos after finalist Paul Dodson failed to win an Infinity car and lost a shot at the $1 million prize. The audience seemingly felt that the puzzle was too tough or impossible to solve. As the boos got louder and things seemed out of control, veteran host Pat Sajak had to hit back with his wit. 

Here's the puzzle that cost the contestant big-time

Dodson from Aurora, Ohio, had amassed $33,550 against his opponents Venetia Brown and Jessica Huffman. The final puzzle for the bonus round had the word under the category “What Are You Doing?”. At the time, the $1 million card was also up for grabs. With his card picked, the puzzle board for Dodson read, "_ _ _ _ _ L _ N _." With the letters R, S, T, L, N, and E out of the picture, Dodson went on to guess some of the most common letters, C, H, P, and A. 

To his surprise, none of the letters fit into the word and the contestant had lost the chance to win the mega prize. The final answer was then revealed to be "QUIBBLING". The audience gasped as soon as the answer was shown and they soon turned to booing to show their disappointment over the difficult word. According to the Oxford Dictionary, quibbling refers to "arguing or raising objections about a trivial matter”, which is what the audience did. 

Dodson joined the efforts and encouraged people to boo louder. However, host Sajak was having none of it. Hitting back at the audience, Sajak said, "Who asked you?" and everyone burst out in laughter. 

The host then showed the audience the card Dodson had picked for the final spin. It turns out,  the contestant had unfortunately missed out on winning an Infinity Car. Sajak also revealed that the $1 million card wasn't too far from what Dodson picked. However, at the end, Dodson still took home the $33,550 that he had won. 

While the official YouTube channel posted the bonus round clip of the episode with the caption, "If the audience is gonna sass, Pat's gonna sass right back," the viewers of the video too echoed the sentiment of the live audience.

"That was unfair beyond belief. They're right to boo," wrote one user @christianlorre. "Thanks a lot for booing, audience… for no million…, and “quibbling”…. And also the car," added another user @tonybeltrani5433. 

It wasn't the first time Pat Sajak robbed contestants

In June, the longtime host of the show, Sajak, retired from his duties, leading the show for one last time. Sajak, 77, who had been at the helm for 41 long years had prepared a parting speech for which he had to cut a round off the episode. Sajak admitted that this robbed the three contestants, Tammy, Nino, and Adrienn, a chance to win more money. 

However, he made up for it by adding $1,000 extra to whatever the contestants landed on. On the first spin, the wheel landed on  $1,000, bringing the total for the contestants to $2,000. But Sajak wasn't done as he said,  "You know what? It's not my money. Let's give them all $5,000." This helped Adriene a resident of Memphis, Tennessee, win nearly $90,000.

This article originally appeared 1 month ago.