‘Wheel of Fortune’ player faces heartbreak as Ryan Seacrest admits bonus puzzle was 'tricky'
A "Wheel Of Fortune" contestant came heartbreakingly close to winning a brand new Ford Mustang, before getting stumped by a single letter in her Bonus Round puzzle. The contestant, Jess Graham, nearly nailed all her letter picks and got two out of the three words on the board. However, the third one escaped her and the host, Ryan Seacrest, who admitted that it was a "tricky one" as Graham failed to crack it. Even the fans watching at home expressed that the puzzle was seemingly unfair.
Graham, a veteran skier from Brockton, Massachusetts, went up against Rocky Brown, a triathlete from Chicago, Illinois, and Duane Chapman, a basketball lover from Lubbock, Texas. After getting off to a rocky start, Graham soon picked up momentum to take over the early lead. She got a few Toss Up puzzles right off the bat, capitalized on her competitors' misfortune, and by the time she reached the Express Round, she had already racked up over $10,000 in cash, representing a lead of more than $9,000 over Chapman. In the Express Round, she kept her winning ways up and bagged a trip to the Glass Resort in Rovaniemi, Finland, worth a whopping $11,194, as per Andy Nguyen's blog. Graham then went on to crack two out of the three puzzles in the Triple Toss Up round, but missed out on the Speed Up puzzle. Nevertheless, she ended up as the big winner with $26,544 cash and the Finland trip.
After picking the category, "Phrase" for the final puzzle, Graham joined Seacrest at the wheel. She brought along her husband, Andy, to the stage for support before picking out her Golden Envelope. The show then gave her the standard letters, "R, S, T, L, N, E," for the three-word puzzle, and the player chose "C, G, H, and O" as her additional letters, after which the puzzle read, "THE_ GOT O_T_O_E_". Seacrest then kicked off the ten-second timer, and Graham yelled out a few obvious guesses, "THEY GOT OUTVOTED", "OUTMOVED", and a strange guess, "OUTDOVED". However, the clock ran out, and the host revealed the answer, "THEY GOT OUTFOXED", and went on to say, "Yes, it was a tricky one at the end there." Adding to the heartbreak, he revealed that Graham had lost out on driving home a brand new Mustang Mach-E.
Even fans at home expressed that the puzzle was too tricky to solve. "That's sort of an unfair puzzle. Like picking IVY on Hangman," @markh wrote in the comments of the show's YouTube clip. "What in the 1847 phrases are these?! They got outfoxed?! What's next? They got out of discombobulation? They got outbamboozled? I'm starting to think Wheel makes up these crazy phrases when they feel they're giving away 'too much money' and want to stop people from winning," added another fan, @dynamo116.
Watch the moment here.
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