Wheel of Fortune season 42’s been a wild ride so far, and the excitement peaked when a contestant, Kristyn Hobbs, was faced with a tough puzzle that she just couldn’t solve – now, fans are calling out producers for creating a confounding challenge. There may be a grain of truth to this, and the contestant, who hails from Fort Cobb, Oklahoma, paid the price, losing out on a $100,000 prize. Wheel of Fortune is a show that offers enough easy puzzles to lull contestants (and people playing along at home) into a false sense of security.
This show is so simple, right? A child could solve this, no?
Well, not always, and when a Wheel of Fortune bonus puzzle’s this difficult, it seems like the game is rigged. In general, the series has a clean reputation, so its “impossible puzzle” was probably just a gaffe on the part of Wheel of Fortune‘s creative team. Since September 1983, Wheel Of Fortune‘s been on the air, and it’s always been a slice of Americana that goes down easy, like a piece of apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
Did Kristyn Get Robbed?
Was The Puzzle Truly Impossible?
Take a good look at the puzzle above – it’s not so easy, is it? It looks like it should be simple, but the brain just can’t connect the dots. There’s a good reason for this – it’s because the answer isn’t a common phrase. That’s the problem. The puzzle answer is “rummaging in the backyard” – okay, fine, but who says that? Who has ever said it? Rummaging just isn’t the right verb – it doesn’t compute. Ryan said:
It’s a big puzzle to solve,
and that did not begin to cover it. With that in mind, it’s so easy to pity the contestant. Why did they have to get such a senseless bonus puzzle? A different contestant also suffered due to the Wheel of Fortune Wedge twist.
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Lots of fans are upset about the “rummaging in the backyard” puzzle – in fact, there’s been quite an outcry over this. The contestant might have won 100K if the puzzle was actually a common phrase – she would have had a much better chance of putting things together in her mind. Now, she has to be haunted by the word “rummaging:” FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE.
Did Ryan Think This Was A Fair Challenge?
Fans Definitely Didn’t
Wheel of Fortune‘s fun, and no one’s saying otherwise. The game is fundamentally fair – people test their wits, choosing letters, guessing and hoping for the best. However, this time, producers dropped the ball, creating a puzzle that was the stuff of nightmares. The contestant deserved a shot at a major cash prize, and they probably had some dark thoughts when they saw the answer. A phrase should at least be a phrase that SOMEONE has heard before. A clip of the onscreen action, via Wheel of Fortune at YouTube, is marred by shade, such as:
that’s gotta be one of the toughest bouns puzzles i’ve ever seen
Maybe Wheel of Fortune producers will listen to the criticism and try harder to provide contestants with puzzles that they have some realistic chance of solving. Maybe not. This isn’t the first baffling WOF puzzle and it won’t be the last. However, it does stand out as being nonsensical – a phrase shouldn’t seem like it was made up on the fly, so a Wheel of Fortune employee could hit their quota of puzzles for the week. So, maybe the Wheel of Fortune team needs to consider a contestant’s plight before providing this kind of insurmountable challenge.
Wheel Of Fortune airs weeknights. Please check your local listings for time and channel.
Source: Wheel of Fortune/YouTube