Right In The ... What? Getting To The Bottom Of Wheel Of Fortune's Asinine Crapshoot

We've all been there: The clock is ticking, we're under pressure, and we completely fumble the bag. To err is human, and all that. But few of us have probably embarrassed ourselves on as big of a scale as Tavaris on "Wheel of Fortune" on Thursday, May 23. He was on probably the biggest stage of his life, guessing words and phrases with plenty of letters missing and only seconds to spit out an answer — disaster lurked behind every unturned letter. And the answer he finally gave was ... well, less conventional than host Pat Sajak was probably expecting, even with the show's history of controversial moments.

When Tavaris put in his guess, the puzzle had lots of blank letters, and with them lots of potential minefields — minefields that Tavaris quickly stepped in when he blurted out "right in the butt." This was not, shockingly, the correct answer. Not even close, actually, since the first word was only four letters wrong. But at least the audience considered him a champion, showering him with giggles and applause for his extremely out-of-left-field response, while Pat Sajak paused for a moment, seemingly speechless, before responding with a dry, "No."

He might not have gotten the puzzle right (the correct answer was "this is the best!"), but as Sajak commented when it came time to introduce the contestants, "Well, Tavaris, you've already made an impression on us."

Almost immediately after Tavaris made his NSFW guess on "Wheel of Fortune," the moment was memorialized for all time on the internet. The clip began to make rounds of TikTok, X, formerly known as Twitter, and every other social media site you can imagine. The response was gleeful, with @BuzzerBlog tweeting, "Congratulations to Tavaris for being able to enthusiastically shout 'RIGHT IN THE BUTT' just days before Pat's retirement. This is a wrong guess for the record books. #WheelOfFortune." (Sajak announced months ago that he would be leaving the show in June 2024, with Ryan Seacrest stepping in as his replacement.)

Others expressed their disbelief that the contestant would even consider something like that as the correct answer, with X user @excuseyou77 writing exasperatedly, "THIS IS WHEEL OF FORTUNE, TAVARIS!!" But most seemed to be rooting for the unlikely hero of the Wheel, including @curlprofessor, who tweeted, "One of the greatest guesses of all time. I immediately texted this to two different countries and another state. I hope #Tavaris gets whatever he hopes for in life. Bless him, the excitable champion rib eater. This is the best! #wheeloffortune."

And with that one extremely confident, extremely wrong answer, Tavaris took his place in "Wheel of Fortune" history.