Watch: 'Wheel of Fortune' Contestant Pulls off Incredible Solve
Wheel of Fortune contestant Cody Horton pulled off an incredible victory during the April 20 episode. It looked like his success would end at the bonus round at the end of the episode, but a stunning stroke of luck helped him win a new car. Horton is a longtime game show fan, so his victory was a dream come true.
The puzzle category was simply "event." Only two of the letters he called – "B" and "I" – were in the phrase. Host Pat Sajak was ready for it to take Horton all 10 seconds to come up with anything. Incredibly, Horton first muttered "brief power outage," but then realized that this fit the puzzle so he shouted that a second time. "Yeah!" Sajak said as all the letters were revealed.
"It's clearly 'brief power outage,'" a shocked Sajak said as he opened the bonus-round envelope. It revealed that Horton won a new Ford Escape SEL. In total, Horton won $80,635 on the show.
Horton is a Tampa native who grew up watching game shows, he told WTSP before his episode aired. "Even since I was a little kid, I was a game show fanatic," he said. "There's actually a video of me as a newborn with my grandmother in the background saying, 'You can't go to sleep yet, you have to watch The Price is Right.'"
The contestant is a respiratory therapist at Tampa General Hospital, but he hopes to one day host his own game show. He is now sharing his love of game shows with his boyfriend of four years, Jason, who pushed him to audition for Wheel of Fortune. He applied in June 2022 and was called back in January for an in-person audition. After passing another test, he got on the show. He prepared by playing Wheel online, work that appears to have paid off.
Although he was very nervous at first, he told WTSP that Sajak and Vanna White helped him relax. "They're so kind," he said. "Everybody there from the security guard at the gate at Sony Pictures up to the stage manager – literally everybody person there is just delighted to be there, they're rooting for you, they've got your back."
That's no surprise to fans who follow Sajak on Twitter. The longtime host has been very protective of contestants, especially after their mistakes go viral on social media. "I've been praised online for 'keeping it together' and not making fun of the players. Truth is, all I want to do is help to get them through it and convince them that those things happen even to very bright people," Sajak wrote in a long Twitter thread in March 2022, after an infamous puzzle confused contestants. "But mocking them online and calling them names? These are good people in a bad situation under a kind of stress that you can't begin to appreciate from the comfort of your couch."