Pat Sajak is just weeks away from retirement. He's showing a softer side lately. On Tuesday's (May 21) Wheel of Fortune, he sympathized with a contestant after a puzzling mistake.
The contestant, Brittany Collins, is a children's hospital facilitator from Louisville, Kentucky. She competed against Susan Meissner from Charleston, South Carolina, and Blake Swoboda from Houston, Texas.
Collins started strong. She nailed the $1,000 and $2,000 Tossup puzzles in the “Things” and “Food and Drink” categories. But she stumbled on an obvious “Phrase” puzzle.
The board read: “A N _ T _ I N G / I S / P O S S I _ _ E.” Instead of solving, she asked for another letter. Shockingly, she chose an “R.” It was wrong.
“I’m sorry, no R,” Sajak said. Meissner quickly solved it with “Anything Is Possible.” Collins looked embarrassed, but Sajak was kind.
He told viewers, “Sometimes you’re sitting at home and you think, ‘I know that.’ Sometimes, it doesn’t want to come into focus, and then we move on to the next round.”
However, viewers at home were less forgiving. “She really asked for an ‘R’?” wrote one fan on X (formerly Twitter). “Where the heck did that woman think an R was going to fit into that puzzle?” said another.
Another fan commented, “I can’t believe she said ‘R,’ proving that anything is not possible #wheeloffortune.” One more added, “How did she not know it? It was pretty much complete, apart from like 3 letters, now she’s made me grind my teeth, and I can’t stop.”
Collins never recovered from her mistake. Meissner didn’t either. Swoboda took control. He won the episode with $27,250 cash and a trip to Fairmont Mayakoba in Riviera Maya. He then solved the Bonus Round puzzle, adding a brand new Infiniti QX50 Pure AWD to his winnings.