'Wheel of Fortune' player cracked final puzzle with almost no clues — even Pat Sajak checked for tricks
'Wheel of Fortune' has had many stand-out moments, but a jaw-dropping instance that stunned both the audience and longtime host Pat Sajak was when a player solved a nearly impossible puzzle with only two letters on the board. In 2014, Emil De Leon, a nursing school student, competed with Charlene Gibson, a College of Southern NV adjunct professor of public speaking, and Kendra Bacon, a special ed. teacher. He took the lead in the initial rounds of the show, leaving him with a cash prize of $18,099 and a trip to Los Cabos, and Bacon with $4,850 and Gibson with only $1,000, as reported by Andy Nguyen's blog.
He carried the same momentum to the Bonus Round. After taking the final spin, he chose the category, 'Thing,' and was faced with a three-word puzzle with 12 letters. Things got interesting when, after the standard R, S, T, N, L, E were filled, only two letters were shown in the puzzle board, and it read, "NE_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _" But it was not enough to shake De Leon's confidence, who chose letters H, M, D, and O. However, not a single letter turned on the puzzle, prompting even the veteran host to quip, "This looks tough to me."
View this post on Instagram
As the timer started kicking, De Leon made the first attempt and said, "New Baby Buggy." But since no letter turned, he kept guessing. But just a beat later, the board revealed he was spot on. De Leon's happiness knew no bounds as he threw his hands in the air and exclaimed, "Oh my God!" and the 'WoF' audience erupted in cheers. Sajak, still in disbelief, started frisking De Leon's coat and pant pockets, playfully hinting that he might have been doing some mischief. To top off the celebration, he also revealed that De Leon had won an additional $45,000, the perfect cherry on top of an already unforgettable night. He went home with a total of $63,099 in cash.
Fans flooded YouTube's comment section. A viewer of the show said, "I love the three seconds of shock that happened after he got it right, where the people in charge of the puzzle didn't do anything." An eagle-eyed viewer noted, "I love how the puzzle didn't fill in automatically when he guessed it because the guy who probably operates the graphics was probably shocked as hell." Impressed by the contestant's quick wit response, another wrote, "This was, and will always be, the greatest solve in 'Wheel Of Fortune' history."
After the spectacular win, De Leon told The Hollywood Reporter how he pieced the puzzle together and said, "The first word was easy, as there is pretty much nothing that can go there except ‘new’. Then I just kept on working with the second word — I used a used letter board, the first letter there was B, so I worked off that. New Baby just sounds right—it flows." He went on to explain that his background in pediatrics had “babies on [his] mind,” adding, “I just thought, ‘What do you find with a new baby?’ and came up with ‘buggy.’”