Wheel of Fortune is one of the most popular TV game shows in the nation with millions of viewers tuning in every night.
The game involves several contestants attempting to solve word puzzles until just one final winner remains.
Now one contestant on Wheel of Fortune just redeemed himself from his loss on another game show years ago.
Contestant wins big on Wheel of Fortune after losing on Jeopardy! 15 years prior
Wheel of Fortune contestant Scott Menke solved the final puzzle so well that he impressed host Pat Sajak with his skills.
Menke did so well that it almost looked like he had been practicing for this very moment for years.
It turns out that Menke had already appeared on a TV game show in the past, although he lost that one.
When Menke arrived at the Wheel of Fortune set, he solved both toss-ups, won the first round, and guessed his bonus round correctly even though he only had a few letters to work with.
In some cases, Menke wouldn’t spin the wheel but instead, he chose to try and solve the puzzle with what little letters were already revealed.
As he went through the contest, his fellow contestants and audience members were amazed at his talent, even impressing host Pat Sajak.
Before the final prize round, Sajak said, “He’s been a good puzzle-solver, that’s for sure.”
When Menke reached the final puzzle, he selected “phrase” as the topic and was only shown a small number of letters on the board.
Yet somehow, Menke was able to correctly guess the final phrase in just a few seconds with his third guess being the correct answer.
Menke exclaimed, “Pick at the opportunity. Pack at the opportunity. Jump at the opportunity!” realizing his last guess was the winner.
After he solved the puzzle, Menke went home with a prize total of $52,690 including his gold envelope prize: a brand-new blue Chevy Equinox.
However, what many viewers didn’t know at the time was that this wasn’t Menke’s first appearance on a popular TV game show.
Not his first rodeo
The incredible Wheel of Fortune win came 15 years after Menke dealt with a tough loss on Jeopardy! when he competed as a Johns Hopkins University alum in the 2009 College Championship Tournament.
During the Final Jeopardy! portion of the show, which was hosted by Alex Trebek at the time, Menke wrote down the wrong question in the form of an answer.
The correct answer was, “What is a deadline?” but Menke wrote down, “What is a headline?”
He lost to Eric Betts, a journalism student from Emory University.
At the time, Menke spoke to a local news outlet about his loss and how he had attended a campus screening of the episode as many other fellow Hopkins students waited to “see if Scott made the finals.”
Menke said, “It was tough to keep a smile.”
Now, it looks like Scott Menke finally got his chance to redeem himself on a nationally televised game show.
Read All About It will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
