A Wheel Of Fortune contestant won a record amount of money, but some fans of the show are slamming her for being “rude” to longtime host Pat Sajak in the process. Speech-language pathologist Jinger Lough was obviously thrilled to make it to the bonus round, but some fans thought she was wrong to cut Sajak off the way she did, though it did net her a whopping cash prize.
Contestant Wins Big On Wheel Of Fortune
A recent episode of Wheel Of Fortune featured a contestant named Jinger Lough who triumphed over her fellow contestants and won $33,555 on her way to the bonus round. She selected the “phrase” category but when it came time to pick her letters, Lough unfortunately only selected one correctly, her vowel.
Host Pat Sajak was instantly nervous for the excited contestant, saying, ”Well, um, the bad news is, none of the consonants are there. Just those two O’s. I don’t know.” Though Sajak clearly thought Lough didn’t stand a chance at solving the puzzle, her mind was fast at work figuring it out. Sajak continued, “There’s the used letter board, you can-” but he was cut off by Lough, who’d figured out what the phrase was supposed to read with only two letters filled in.
Pat Sajak Interrupted By Mega Winner
“On the bandwagon!” Lough interrupted before Sajak even had a chance to start the clock. Turns out, that was the exact right answer. When Sajak pulled out a golden envelope and opened it to reveal Lough’s bonus prize, it was revealed that the speech-language pathologist had won an additional $100,000, bringing her grand total of winnings to $133,555.
Lough was clearly over-the-moon about her win, revealing on Twitter that she’d kept the golden envelope that revealed her grand prize winnings, and that she’d even gotten it signed by Vanna White and Sajak. Some fans watching at home called Lough out on cutting Sajak off, though the online response was more humorous than outraged in nature.
Hilarious Reactions On Social Media
While there was some tittering over the way Lough interrupted Sajak, most understood that she was likely feeling huge waves of excitement over figuring out the puzzle and solving it correctly despite only having two O’s to work with. When your adrenaline is pumping and you know you’ve only got a few seconds to win an amount of money that could change your life, you’re bound to be a bit overexcited.
Thankfully the response to this very understandable momentary lapse of perfect manners was very small. Sajak recently took to his Twitter account to chide some viewers for their treatment of another contestant who was unable to solve what turned out to be a very simple puzzle. Hopefully, that lecture hit home with some people who needed to learn to give others the grace to make mistakes.