Wheel of Fortune fans stunned as contestant loses $1M prize – twice

“Wheel of Fortune” fans were audibly surprised by a moment on Thursday’s episode of the popular game show.

Contestant Tara Brown beat the odds twice when she managed to land on the small $1 million wedge at two different points, and both times, she failed to secure the big prize.

Fans of the show, hosted by Pat Sajak and Vanna White, know that the $1 million wedge works differently than the others – when a contestant lands on it and then correctly guesses a letter, they pick it up, and if they solve the final puzzle, then the $1 million prize will be available to win after the bonus round.

The first time Brown obtained the wedge, it was when the contestants had nearly solved a puzzle in the “Let There Be Light!” category. There were only two letters left before the puzzle was complete, and it read “BULB, BEA__N, SUN, STARS.”

Sajak reminded her that she needed to “call a letter that’s in the puzzle, and she hesitantly guessed “H?”

The audience audibly reacted in dismay, and one person could be heard crying out, “Oh no!”

She lost out on her chance to get the coveted prize, and another contestant then correctly solved the puzzle by saying “Bulb, Beacon, Sun, Stars.”

Later on, she managed to get a chance at the wedge once again, but she was unable to solve.

Viewers in the audience weren’t the only ones to have a big reaction to the first flub – fans at home took to X, formerly Twitter, to react to the moment.

“Who screens these people?” one person asked.

“She just blew the chance at $1M with that H guess!!!” another exclaimed.

One viewer simply asked “H?”

This reaction is a change of pace for “Wheel of Fortune” fans, as many complaints lately have been about the show itself.

In an episode that aired last week, fans began rallying around a contestant, insisting that she had actually named the right answer to the puzzle but that Sajak had failed to recognize it.

The contestant, a woman named Tamara, chose “What Are You Doing?” for the category for the final puzzle. After White turned over both the letters the show traditionally provides and the ones Tamara chose, she was left with “___N_NG A B___ _L_B.”

“Now pay attention to what’s up there,” Sajak advised. “There’s a huge letter board. If you talk it out, you can do this.”

She started out with the word “fanning,” but when she couldn’t get anywhere with that, she went silent. As her ten seconds were almost up, she came up with “book club,” and just before the buzzer rang, she made a guess.

The correct answer was “JOINING A BOOK CLUB.” Some viewers believe that’s what she guessed, but others heard “running a book club.” In the clip, it sounds like she began to say something else before offering her guess.

“You were right there,” Sajak told her. “Got there a little late, unfortunately. By the time you got to ‘book club,’ time was running out on you.”

“Wheel of fortune – the contestant got the puzzle right – you messed it up again!” one person wrote on X.

Another said, “Wth. I thought she said that in PLENTY of time!!! And I thought the rule was as long as you BEGAN before the buzzer you could finish!!”