Christina Wolfgram
October 18, 2015 10:17 am

On Thursday night, an episode of Wheel of Fortune aired. Just like every single episode of Wheel of Fortune that has ever aired in the thirty-two years the show has existed, one of the contestants made an incorrect guess. But, for some reason, the Internet is obsessing over her mistake.

In a clip uploaded to YouTube, the contestant, Dr. Shermian Daniels, is faced with puzzle that’s about 75% solved. Oddly enough, these can be the most difficult ones to figure out because your brain is more likely to get stuck on words that it imagines, even if those words don’t align with letters that have already been claimed.

Shermian was on a roll at this point in the game, guessing three letters in a row and buying an “A.” Probably afraid to spin the wheel and risk landing on Bankruptcy, she asked to solve.

She confidently guessed, “Start in the right way.”

You can kind of see how her brain jumped to that conclusion: the phrase is the right number of letters. Unfortunately, “night” was already spelled out, making her answer automatically impossible.

Wheel of Fortune tapes months in advance, so poor Shermian is probably reliving the frustration of being oh-so-close to the correct answer. Trolls calling her terrible names on the Internet can’t be helping. Obviously, none of these commenters have ever appeared on a game show before. The pressure has to be enormous. Plus, I bet once the cameras start rolling, the twenty minutes of play-time flies by, leaving all the contestants in a whirlwind.

Shermian tried her best! She got to hang out with Pat Sajak and Vanna White, so the day was not a “fail” in any way, shape, or form.

Can you guess the correct answer?

Yup, “stars in the sky.” That was a doozy!

Watch the full clip here.

(Images via here, here, and here.)