Wheel of Fortune seems to have a lot of hidden rules that have cost many contestants big prizes based on small technicalities.
Examples from the past include contestants saying words “wrong” based on their accents and other times where a contestant adds the word “and” to their answer, which makes it wrong.
On Tuesday’s episode of Wheel of Fortune, there was another small technicality that has many fans backing away from the long-time gameshow.
Wheel of Fortune contestant loses for pausing
On Tuesday’s episode of Wheel of Fortune, a contestant was trying to solve a puzzle.
Charlene Rubush was in the bonus round and was trying to work out the correct answer. She had $16,500 in prize money and the grand prize for the bonus round was a car, a new Audi Q3.
The category clue was “What Are You Doing” and her first guess was “choosing the right card.” That was not the correct answer, but she still had time left.
She finally said “word” before the buzzer, which was the answer — “choosing the right word.”
That is when Pat Sajak dropped the technicality on her.
“You know, this one’s tough because you said all the right words, including the word ‘word’ but, as you know, it’s gotta be more or less continuous,” Pat said.
“We’ll allow for a little pause but not four or five seconds. I’m sorry. You did a good job in getting it, but we can’t give you the prize, and it was the Audi,” he expressed.
What this means was that she said the right answer, but because she paused between saying “choosing the right” and then saying the final “word” she lost.
What hurts the most was that Sajak said that pauses are allowed, but it is subjective and he felt she took too long to say the final word, even though she said it before the buzzer.
Wheel of Fortune fans on social media have had enough
Fans began to hijack Wheel of Fortune posts on Instagram. In one post which introduced another contestant, fans began to pepper the message with their thoughts about Charlene Rubush losing.
One fan wrote, “shame on you for denying the contestant her prize” while most of the others just posted variations of “give her the car.”
Fans were also tough on Twitter.
“That lady on @WheelofFortune should have gotten the car,” wrote one user while another wrote, “they cheating that lady out of her audi on wheel of fortune bc she very much guessed it in time …”
“Give her the car @WheelofFortune !! This is ridiculous,” wrote another.
Finally, there were plenty of people threatening to stop watching the show because of the technicalities.
“@WheelofFortune well we had a good run. I won’t watch the show anymore,” one user declared. “That lady won the AUDI, she answered the phrase within the timeframe allowed. You have hidden rules, fake show. Ill never watch again (unless she gets the AUDI ANNND the rule changes).”
With all the unknown rules and technicalities, Wheel of Fortune is pushing some fans away, and the loss, in this case, is just one of many for the long-running game show.