Pat Sajak Suffers Embarrassing Gaffe On 'Wheel Of Fortune'

It isn’t often that the longtime host of Wheel of Fortune makes a mistake, but Pat Sajak proved he wasn’t above the occasional gaffe during a recent episode of the popular game show. Sajak, who has recently come under fire for his sometimes less than nice treatment of contestants, made a classic mistake, though he managed to recover nicely from the slipup.

Videos by Suggest

The 74-year-old host definitely didn’t mean to give away the answer to the puzzle before the contestant gave an answer, but that’s exactly what he did during Thursday’s broadcast of the long-running game show. Only six of the puzzle’s 12 letters had been revealed when Pat Sajak mistakenly uttered the answer aloud while talking to a contestant.

The half-completed clue read, “_ _ _ TE _ RAN _ L _” as Sajak turned to speak to the contestant. “Yikes,” Sajak said, adding, “Well, I’d rather be standing here than there, quite frankly.” Unfortunately for Sajak, “Quite Frankly” turned out to be the answer to the puzzle, which he’d accidentally given away. The contestant didn’t pick up on Sajak’s mistake, however, and didn’t manage to correctly guess the puzzle’s answer before the timer ran out.

After the show ended, Sajak spoke about the slip up with Vanna White in a post-episode video. “I wonder how many people at home caught it,” Sajak told his longtime co-host before admitting to his mistake. He jokingly added, “It’s funny what your mouth will say when your brain says, ‘You shouldn’t do that.’” Showing that he was taking the accident with his trademark dry humor, Sajak bid goodbye to the audience, telling them that he and White will “quite frankly, see you next time,” with White laughingly adding, “Yes, we will!” Now that he’s slipped up, we quite frankly think that Sajak won’t be making this same mistake anytime soon.