Wheel Of Fortune Contestant's Hilariously Terrible Answer Left Viewers - And Pat Sajak - Baffled

Wheel of Fortune's Pat Sajak

You can pretty much expect some wild thing to occur when a show is on the air for over 40 years, and Wheel of Fortune has certainly had its moments of controversy, occasional feigned outrage, and plenty of baffling wrong answers. One such terribly wrong answer recently had viewers -- and even Pat Sajak--scratching their heads at how someone on the game show could guess something so off the wall and blatantly wrong, and it’s a real doozy.

Appearing on TV, and in particular a game show, comes with an increased risk of looking like a fool. A recent contestant on Wheel of Fortune, Matt, is now the target of much confusion as fans of the long-running game show try to figure out what the heck he was thinking with one of his answers. You can check out the clip of Matt’s answer that one Twitter user posted, drawing attention to how host Pat Sajak is equally as thrown off by the answer:

As the letter “N” fills in the three word blank on screen, Matt tries to solve the puzzle with what is either “The Best Buttercup” or what some viewers seem to think sounds more like “The Best Buttercut," neither of which make any sense, as they contain zero N’s. Viewers seem to be even more concerned about “Buttercut," because, you know, what even is that? Here’s one viewer’s response, in which she says she had to rewind the show about a hundred times to make sure she wasn’t hearing things:

Pat Sajak’s response of, “Uh... no.” is basically all of us. The answer is clearly “The Next Generation." Even if the answer wasn’t overly apparent, Matt is pretty much the only person in the world who would guess “The Best Buttercut," as one Twitter user points out in another Tweet about Matt’s bewildering answer:

As confused as everyone is over Matt’s wild answer, what’s even more bewildering is that he was severely in the lead at the point where his answer went viral. He had close to ten thousand dollars on the board compared to both of his opponents, who were under two grand. This is a seemingly smart man who is generally good at Wheel of Fortune, just throwing buttercut out of left field. One viewer seems to think he has it figured out, saying that Matt’s crazy answer is simply a show of sportsmanship since he is basically crushing the other two contestants. In defense of Matt:

I mean, it makes a lot more sense than someone making it onto Wheel of Fortune to try and win the big bucks, blowing his opponents away, and then bombing so hard even Pat Sajak bats an eye. Even so, I kind of just wish Matt would have given it all he had and completely crushed his opponents, but then I guess we never would have had this weird social media exchange over Buttercups (Buttercuts?). For more Wheel of Fortune moments, stay tuned.

Carlie Hoke
Content Writer

Constantly thinking about books, coffee, and the existential dread I feel from Bo Burnham’s Inside.  While writing I’m also raising a chaotic toddler, who may or may not have picked up personality traits from watching one too many episodes of Trailer Park Boys.