Pat Sajak's bold response to ‘Wheel of Fortune’ contestants being 'mocked' for wrong guesses is a valuable lesson in empathy

The episodes on the television game show "Wheel of Fortune" are exhilarating for both the contestants and the viewers. However, many times, it becomes a lot more difficult for players to ace even a seemingly simple answer under tremendous pressure. A similar thing happened when contestants on the show were supposed to guess an idiom. Although the answer seemed pretty simple to the audience, it didn't occur to the contestants in the first few seconds. Despite multiple attempts, they failed to guess the right letters and it led to them being trolled online, as per TODAY. However, soon enough, the show's host Pat Sajak took to X, where he goes by @PatOnWheel, to defend the contestants.

During the show, the players were trying to guess an idiom, "Another / feather / _n / yo_r /  _ap," based on the few visible letters. Soon enough, a contestant, Laura Machado, guessed, "Another feather in your hat," but it wasn't the right answer. She also made other guesses like "map" or "lap" for the final word, but she couldn't get the right answer for a good two minutes. Another contestant, Thomas, guessed the final word "cap" of the idiom 'another feather in your cap' on his third attempt, as per 6abc Philadelphia. The incident sparked a lot of discussions online, where people mocked the contestants for failing to come up with the right answer. 

@soylentteal wrote, "Hey, you wouldn't believe how much trouble I have folding my maps because of all the feathers I've stuck in them!" @rarmai commented, "Brought to you by Disney. If people were spending their time reading books and watching edifying movies and shows instead of needing to be constantly entertained by such fare as 'Wheel of Fortune,' we wouldn’t have gotten to the point." @ccdogpark remarked, "I can't imagine having to face my family after losing because I couldn't solve this creampuff puzzle." 

Soon enough, host Pat Sajak stepped in to defend the players with a powerful lesson in empathy and kindness. In a series of posts, he expressed how it is very different to solve something from the comfort of your own house and to do so while being on national TV. "It always pains me when nice people come on our show to play a game and win some money and maybe fulfill a lifelong dream and are then subject to online ridicule when they make a mistake or something goes awry," Sajak wrote in a now-deleted post, as per WXII12. In another thread, he pointed out how the "another feather in your cap" episode was a case in point. "Sitting at home, it seems incredible that they couldn’t solve it, but I knew in real time what was happening." The host explained how "feather in your hat" was actually a common way to say the idiom and all three contestants were quite shocked when he said that wasn't the right answer.

Sajak asked people to imagine being in a scenario where they might end up looking stupid on national TV. "You start flailing away, looking for alternatives rather than synonyms for 'hat.'" The host revealed, "I’ve been praised online for 'keeping it together' and not making fun of the players. Truth is, all I want to do is help to get them through it and convince them that those things happen even to very bright people." In his last thread, he gave a solid reminder to people trolling the contestants, "These are good people in a bad situation under a kind of stress that you can’t begin to appreciate from the comfort of your couch." His posts were a mic-drop response to all the ridicule the contestants face when they commit a mistake, which can happen to anyone, on national television.