'Wheel of Fortune' Contestant Flabbergasts Viewers With Completely Wrong Answer

If there ever was a wrong time to have 'Build Me Up Buttercup' in your head, it's when you are [...]

By Daniel S. Levine

If there ever was a wrong time to have "Build Me Up Buttercup" in your head, it's when you are leading a game of Wheel of Fortune. That could be a possible explanation for contestant Matt's very wrong guess during Thursday night's episode. His wrong answer left host Pat Sajak and viewers at home shocked.

Contest Matt was in the lead with $9,900 when he decided to guess the answer to a puzzle that only had a few letters on the board. The clue was "People," but Matt guessed, "The Best Buttercup," which is notably not a group of people. The letters displayed on the board - "THE N_ _T _ _ N_ R _ T _ _ N" - were also nowhere close to that guess. "Uh no. Oddly enough, no," Sajak deadpanned after Matt gave his guess. The correct answer was "The Next Generation." Despite Matt's mistake, he still won Thursday's episode with $23,350, notes USA Today.

Twitter users who watched the scene live were just as stunned as Sajak. "The best buttercup' ...Matt. what are you looking at?" one person tweeted. "Not ONE letter in that word matched 'buttercup,'" another noted. "The man on the right just guessed 'the next butter cut' and I'm in stitches [Wheel] please tweet the clip," another wrote. "The best buttercup?... [Sajak] how did you not crack up laughing or make one of your hilarious faces?" another wondered.

During Sajak and Vanna White's three-decade-plus tenure as Wheel of Fortune hosts, there have been plenty of mistakes from contestants. In December 2020, one contestant was eviscerated on Twitter for forgetting David Bowie's name. The puzzle answer was "Under Pressure by Queen & David Bowie," but the contestant said "David Louie" instead.

In March, contestant David lost a puzzle when he included the word "and." The category was Catch of the Day, and the puzzle answer was "sole, flounder, cod, catfish." David instinctively added "and" between the last two words, but this was incorrect. Sajak told David he could not add anything to the puzzle answer. Another contestant then got the puzzle correct because she didn't add "and."

In other Wheel news, Sajak had a pair of important announcements to make recently. During the May 31 episode, Sajak announced that his son Patrick Sajak graduated from medical school and is now a doctor. The only downside to this is that Patrick "insists that I call him Dr. Sajak," Sajak joked. At the end of the June 7 episode, Sajak announced that his dog Stella died. "We recently had to say goodbye to Stella," Sajak said, adding that his family is "going to miss her, she was a good friend."

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