My Day As A Wheel of Fortune Contestant – Part 5 – The 2nd Puzzle (The Wrong Vowel (Gah!))

April 28, 2020

Picking up from last time –

Aaaaaaaagh! Yes! I know it was annoying to watch me not know the second puzzle. I was more annoyed living it.

I LOVE when they brought the crossword addition to Wheel of Fortune.

A lot of times my friends and I will play this game where we try to figure out the entire crossword before a contestant guesses a single letter – just by using the clue at the bottom and number of letters in each word. Usually the crossword puzzles are pretty freaking doable.

I was shocked that it even made it over to me – especially when, to me at least, “bear” seemed so clear. And then, after bear, I obviously thought badger was clear [hence why I called those letters].

I was so stoked that somehow the second puzzle made it over to me. Of course I wanted to solve it. But alas, I obviously just merely did not know what that small word was.

*sighs in embarrassement*

Here’s the really embarrassing part – and I don’t even have to share this, since you can’t see into my brain. But, I’m going to anyway!

Whenever there’s a crossword puzzle, before anything even comes up – before a single empty letter is shown – I immediately start rolodexing my brain as quickly as I can for any words that would fit with the clue. And then when the crossword comes up, I see if any of them fit (based on number of letters), and where they would cross, etc.

Well, the first word (the first!) word that came into my mind was “bunches” (like honey bunches of oats). I saw that “bunch” was one letter too short and “bunches” was one letter too long for the spot where badger was, so I threw it away out of my brain.

I didn’t think to take the bridge from “bunches” to “bun.”

Then, even when I was going to call a vowel, U was on the tip of my tongue! I was reeeeeeally really thinking U for some reason! I didn’t know it, but my gut said U (which makes sense in this case! u makes more letters that make sense – bum, bug, bun… those feel like potentially they could go with honey… what was O gonna give me? Honey box? I don’t think that’s a thing, though I suppose it could’ve been, I guess). And I psyched myself out completely.

When I said I was going to buy a vowel, I was planning on U, but obviously unsure. And when Pat said “which one” in the voice he did [which, I know he was just fun-ly mocking me, and it’s all good, I’m not blaming him, of course], but when he did it in that unsure voice, for a moment, I just thought he could see into my brain or something, which of course is a little crazy, but I was like “Pat knows. Somehow Pat knows that I’m about to screw up and guess U. Maybe I shouldn’t guess U. Maybe I should guess O. O is generally statistically more likely.”

So, I did.

But the real problem is, I shouldn’t have guessed a vowel at all!

And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow.

I'd love to hear from you! So whaddya say?