Wheel of Fortune has been a mainstay on TV for the past 50 years, but there’s a lot about what goes on behind the scenes of the legendary game show that fans may not know.
The competition recently endured the biggest changes in its history when Ryan Seacrest stepped in as the new host, starring alongside Vanna White following Pat Sajak‘s retirement from Wheel of Fortune after 41 seasons in June 2024. However, many viewers may not realize that Wheel spent its first six years on air with Chuck Woolery as host before Sajak ever came on board in 1981.
Regardless of the host, Wheel of Fortune has given fans countless embarrassing moments — from out-of-the-box contestants to awkward mishaps and triumphant spins of the wheel — over the years.
In honor of Wheel of Fortune‘s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2025, keep scrolling for a rundown of unusual secrets and bizarre on-air moments:
Pat Sajak’s Departure
When Sajak announced he was retiring as Wheel of Fortune host in 2024, some younger fans questioned whether the show could — or should — even go on without him. But Sajak actually quit Wheel of Fortune once before in 1989 to host his own talk show.
At the time, there were two daily episodes of Wheel —one airing on NBC during the daytime as well as the traditional syndicated version at night. Sajak stayed on with White for the syndicated edition of Wheel but was replaced on the daytime version by Rolf Benirschke and, later, Bob Goen when the show moved to CBS until its cancellation in 1991.
CBS created The Pat Sajak Show in hopes of stealing NBC’s late-night viewers once Johnny Carson retired from The Tonight Show in 1992. Sajak’s foray into late night didn’t last long, as his talk show was cancelled in April 1990. CBS later found a winner in its late-night slot by hiring David Letterman away from NBC.
Filming Schedule
Wheel of Fortune viewers may assume Seacrest and White are busy most of the year filming six weekly episodes of the game show, but that’s not actually the case.
During a March 2025 interview on Elvis Duran and the Morning Show, White confirmed that Wheel only shoots around “34 days a year.”
“That’s it. But [we film] six shows a day,” she clarified.
White said that Wheel of Fortune tapings are still extremely hectic, as she has as many as six wardrobe changes throughout the day. Radio host DJ host Elvis Duran then pointed out that White still has “331 days off” every year.
“Yeah, I guess so. I’ve never looked at it like that,” White conceded.
Fans can expect much more of White on Wheel of Fortune over the next few years, as she recently signed a two-year contract extension that will keep her on the show through the 2025-2026 TV season.
Banned Segment
Wheel of Fortune players originally had some tough choices to make on how to spend their winnings in a “shopping round” segment where they could choose an array of prizes presented on a rotating showcase stage.
Players were also given the option to put their winnings “on account” to use in a future shopping round, though they’d risk losing everything if they hit Bankrupt on the wheel before they could spend the prize money. Wheel of Fortune ultimately scrapped the shopping rounds entirely from the syndicated show in October 1987.
When a Wheel of Fortune super-fan brought up on air how much they missed the shopping segments in 2020, Sajak complained that those rounds were “the most boring three minutes of television.”
“I don’t miss them,” Sajak told White later in the episode. “In retrospect [you say], ‘Oh, that was kind of fun,’ but, really, it was this thing going around with the [contestant’s] head in a circle… It was really not exciting television. We like it just the way it is.”
Lost Episodes
There are many Wheel of Fortune episodes from the 1970s and early 1980s that have been completely or partially lost due to the way the show was originally recorded. Archived episodes were frequently taped over by producers as a cost-cutting measure, thus leaving Wheel of Fortune without anything resembling a complete archive of its history.
According to Lost Media, Wheel of Fortune producers stopped taping over old episodes during the mid-1980s, as VHS recording equipment became more affordable.
The most recent instance of a missing Wheel of Fortune episode took place in 2016. A show originally scheduled to air on November 11, 2016, was preempted in many markets due to national news coverage. The episode was then supposed to air on November 12, 2016, yet it was delayed once again by college football coverage. This episode is officially considered “lost media,” but contestant Edward Williams has uploaded an incomplete version on YouTube that was filmed from his phone.
Missing Puzzles
There have been several occasions where Wheel of Fortune puzzles were edited out of an episode for technical or ethical reasons. For instance, multiple puzzles were cut from previously-filmed Wheel episodes after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to ensure sensitivity. The most notable example took place on November 2, 1992, where the puzzle “VANNA’S PREGNANT” was meant to announce White’s pregnancy to viewers.
Unfortunately, between the time the episode was filmed and transmitted, White suffered a miscarriage. Wheel of Fortune producers understandably removed the “VANNA’S PREGNANT” puzzle from the November 2, 1992, episode out of sensitivity for White and her husband George Santo Pietro. Instead of the puzzle, viewers were shown a behind-the-scenes look at Wheel of Fortune filming on location in San Francisco.
‘Right in the Butt’
With 50 years on the air, Wheel of Fortune has had its fair share of embarrassing and racy guesses from contestants. Perhaps the naughtiest answer of all-time aired on May 23, 2024, when contestant Tavaris Williams incorrectly guessed that the solution for a 13-word puzzle was “Right in the Butt.”
As the audience and other contestants gasped, Sajak stood silent for a moment before simply telling Williams: “No.”
Williams later admitted to Fox News Digital that his strategy was simply to “beat my contestants by buzzing in first and letting my brain catch up.” That strategy was unsuccessful.
The unlucky contestant flatly denied he was trying to be offensive, explaining: “When my brain was ready to speak, I saw the R, I saw the B, I saw the T. I went for ‘Right in the butt’… And once Pat said ‘no,’ oh, it was the worst feeling.”
(For anyone wondering, the correct answer for the puzzle was: “This is the Best.”)
The Best Defense
Every regular Wheel of Fortune viewer has a memory of a particularly bad or embarrassing puzzle guess, but Sajak once demanded fans keep their criticism to themselves.
Sajak’s plea to viewers came about when one contestant repeatedly failed to recognize the phrase “another feather in your cap” in a 2022 episode. Incorrect guesses such as “another feather in your hat” and “another feather in your map” were made before a competitor correctly answered the puzzle.
After Wheel of Fortune fans branded the segment one of the worst in the show’s history, Sajak wrote a lengthy message via X asking for more sympathy for the show’s hopefuls.
“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,” the former host wrote.
Sajak argued that angry Wheel of Fortune viewers didn’t have an accurate understanding of the blunder.
“Sitting at home, it seems incredible that they couldn’t solve it, but I knew in real time what was happening,” he insisted. “The first attempted solve was ‘Feather in your hat’ which, by the way, is how a lot of people say it. So all three players thought it was a good solve, and were stunned when I said it was wrong.”
“Now imagine you’re on national TV, and you’re suddenly thrown a curve and you begin getting worried about looking stupid, and if the feather isn’t in your hat, where the heck can it be? You start flailing away looking for alternatives rather than synonyms for ‘hat.’ And, of course, when it’s solved, you want to crawl in a hole,” he added.
The longtime Wheel host admonished those on social media who were having fun “mocking [players] online and calling them names.”
“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,” Sajak concluded.
Feuds
Rumors of backstage in-fighting are a staple of any long-running show, but White swore to Fox News in 2019 that she’d only had one argument with Sajak in all the years they worked together. Ever more surprising, this one-off disagreement had nothing to do with Wheel of Fortune.
“Believe it or not, Pat Sajak and I have only had one argument in 36 years and that was over putting ketchup on a hotdog,” she revealed.
White said she preferred mustard and ketchup on her hotdog and couldn’t understand why her cohost only wanted a single condiment.
Following Sajak’s retirement in 2024, there was soon speculation that White wasn’t getting along with new host Seacrest. White shut down any suggestion of disharmony on set by sharing a photo of herself eating chicken dumplings alongside Seacrest.
“Friends on and off camera,” she wrote of Seacrest via Instagram.
Wheel of Fortune airs weeknights on ABC.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/sex-and-the-city-season-5-031125-078a6569b8f14757bc335718f7588029.jpg "Why Kristin Davis’ Charlotte had a baby late on ‘Sex and the City’")
