“Wheel of Fortune” fans are indignant on the longtime game show for using an unusual motion as the reply to a contestant’s bonus prize.
On Tuesday night’s episode, a contestant named Angela was just seven letters away from completing and appropriately guessing the bonus round puzzle, which ultimately would have sent her home with an additional $45,000.
After guessing the letters “M, H, D and O” so as to add to the “What Are You Doing?” category, she had 10 seconds to unravel the puzzle, which read “_ O _ N _ N _ THE _ R _ _.”
“Joining the cramp, joining the cra-, oop!” she finagled, almost saying “crap.”
“Joining the brag?!” she guessed as her final answer.
“Oop!” host Pat Sajak, 76, reacted to time running out. “Joining the fray,” he revealed the right response.
“You bought joining … that was a very nice try,” Sajak encouraged Angela, revealing that she missed out on the $45,000 grand bonus prize.
“Not an issue,” she said, keeping her head held high when Sajak showed her the big sum she missed out on.
Oyster English claims the idiom “join the fray” means to “take part in a fight or argument that had already began.”
While Angela still took home $20,563 in winnings from the show, fans on social media slammed this system for selecting the phrase to start with.
“#Angela on @WheelofFortune got a bit of CRAP bonus round. I actually have NEVER heard of ‘joining the fray’ before in my ENTIRE life. Can we get some type of #Sponsor to offer this woman a #prize ??????? What the hell type of puzzle was that??? Come on now. #ridiculous!! Let’s get this,” one passionate viewer tweeted.
“Exactly!! I needed to get on Twitter and ensure I wasn’t the just one going “wtf is that!!” another person responded.
“Whatever snooty ny times crossword puzzle doing harvard grad that yall got to give you JOINING THE FRAY must take his expectations down a peg.. #wof #WheelOfFortune, one other reacted.
One added: “@WheelofFortune WHAT THE HECK IS ‘JOINING THE FRAY?’ I’m intelligent, but that’s silly.”
Meanwhile, one viewer claimed the puzzle was “valid.”
“@WheelofFortune simply because some viewers never heard of ‘joining the fray’ doesn’t mean it’s not valid. People who complained, ‘Joined the fray’ whether or not they knew it or not. What’s with all of the ridiculous haters? There are judges behind the camera double checking answers,” they wrote.
One other agreed: “I had to come back and take a look at the outrage to be certain, people have really never heard the word “fray”. Do people not read anymore? Shakespeare? LOTR?”
The Post has contacted reps for “Wheel of Fortune” for comment.
In more moderen “Wheel” shenanigans, co-host Vanna White, 66, visually scolded Sajak on a recent episode after he revealed that he plays a morbid trick on his wife every yr on her birthday.
