For ‘Wheel of Fortune’ contestant Emil, two letters are all he needs to solve a twelve-letter conundrum and win $45,000.
In the final round of the game show, which aired Wednesday, the board showed a three-word phrase: the first word had three letters, the second had four, and the last had five. In this round, the game provided contestants with five consonants and a vowel to work with: R, S, T, L, N, and E. Contestants can also pick out three additional consonants and a vowel.
Letter turner Vanna White revealed the letters in the puzzle that matched those provided by the game. There were only two: the letters N and E, one after the other, on the first word of the puzzle.
Pat Sajak, the game’s host, said that the category of the puzzle was “Thing” to help contestants pick out their letters. Emil selected H, M, and D as his consonants and picked out O for his vowel, then waited to see if these came up on the board. They didn’t
Sajak called White’s attention—perhaps she didn’t hear Emil’s letters? White then turned her hands up, as if saying “Sorry, that’s all of it.”
Sajak admitted that the puzzle looked tough to him, and told Emil “It’s a thing, you’re a very good puzzle solver, but I don’t know.”
With so little to work with, Sajak advised Emil to “Keep talking. Maybe the right thing will pop out.” Sajak wished Emil luck, and gave him ten seconds to guess the puzzle. It turns out that the contestant didn’t need to take that long to solve the puzzle correctly.
“New baby buggy,” he said on his first try. And it was correct.
The staff taking control of the board must have been stunned he got it correctly on his first try that it didn’t register on the board right away. Emil tried again, “New baby—“ but he didn’t get to finish, as the board finally flashed the winning phrase.
“I’m rather stunned!” Sajak said, as Emil uttered, “Oh my God!”
Sajak patted Emil down to the cheers of the audience, jokingly checking if the contestant had some sort of puzzle-solving device. He later tweeted that that night’s show features the most amazing solve he’d seen in his more than thirty years of hosting the game.
Tonight’s “Wheel of Fortune” features most amazing solve in my 30+ years on the show. No kidding.
— Pat Sajak (@patsajak) March 19, 2014
What made last night’s solve amazing was the generic category. Could have been “new anything.” But “baby buggy?!” Wow!
— Pat Sajak (@patsajak) March 20, 2014
Watch Emil win $45,000 with an amazing guess.
Image via YouTube