'Wheel of Fortune' contestant stuns Pat Sajak with epic solve
A "Wheel of Fortune" contestant wowed Pat Sajak and the world when he correctly solved the final three-word puzzle with only two letters to help.
Emil de Leon needed to solve the three word puzzle that after the standard "R-S-T-L-N-E" given, Vanna White only turned over two letters. De Leon added the letters H, D, M and O - and got nothing in return.
"This looks tough to me. It's a thing," Sajak said to de Leon. "You're a really good problem solver, but I don't know. You have 10 seconds. Keep talking, maybe the right thing will pop out. Good luck."
On his first guess, de Leon correctly answered "New Baby Buggy." It apparently stunned the tech guys, because it took a few seconds before the answer showed up and de Leon realized he gave the correct answer. Sajak was at first shocked and then playfully patted down de Leon, (possibly trying to find a cheating device?).
"Tonight's 'Wheel of Fortune' features most amazing solve in my 30+ years on the show. No kidding," Sajak later tweeted.
Cultural blogger Caitlin Dewey at the Washington Post wrote an article that argues it wasn't that amazing when you break down the possible words by number.
Minus all the used letters, de Leon was left with ABC FG IJK PQ UVWXYZ. Dewey wrote that Q, J, Z, X, V, K and W are useless because they show up in less than 1.5 percent of English words. So de Leon was actually left with A, B, C, F, G, I, P, U and Y. Since a word that starts with N-E is most likely new, he needed to come up with a four letter and five letter word using A, B, C, F, G, I, P, U and Y.
Still, out of the 53 possible words de Leon could have picked, he guessed the right ones the first time.
"None of this should detract from Emil's victory, of course," Dewey wrote on WashingtonPost.com. "Working through those permutations in a couple seconds - on national TV, moreover - is both savant-level brilliant and kind of insane. But let's give Emil credit for savvy play with the Used-Letter Board, and not for making a wild guess."
The video of the win on YouTube has already been viewed over 4.3 million times since Wednesday.
"Words can't explain how I feel right now," de Leon tweeted the night of his win. "Thanks to everyone who watched @WheelofFortune tonight! It was a huge and unforgettable journey!"%3Cimg%20src%3D%22http%3A//beacon.deseretconnect.com/beacon.gif%3Fcid%3D155715%26pid%3D46%22%20/%3E