Wheel of Fortune BEST/WORST (and WILDEST) Moments of Season 41

Here’s another yearly edition of the Best, Worst, and Wildest Moments regarding S41. Feel free to tell me what I should add to those lists.

🙂BEST🙂

1. The four $100K winners. At least we had more winners compared to S40, but it’s a shame we did not have a millionaire on Pat’s final season (though there were a couple of contestants who are spaces away to the envelope or had lost or forfeited their MDW and then wound up landing on $100K).

2. Sept. 27 had a $20K+ sweep!

3. A decent improvement on the Friday Final week on the NFL Superfan Tournament when you have Jill winning both nights (and eventually both BRs), giving her a SEASON-HIGH total of $136,386! But if you want to count only the grand prize winners, then we have Valerie Reynolds and Tom Krisa’s $126,714 total on Nov. 17. That week also was the first time since S34 we had 1-1 on $100K (the Nov. 15 again had a back-to-back $100K losses).

4. A season-high maingame total of $71,700 set by Jack Zhou on the conclusion of the crazy Wheel Across America week.

5. The Dec. 26 episode saw Alisha becoming the very first $75K winner since the introduction in a civilian episode. Prior to that, there were three losses.

6. The weeks seemed to be improving, and what a way to go out on a bang for Pat’s exit, better than nothing. And the 8,000-episode special week went better unlike the past three milestone weeks if you recall.

7. Tiffany Calas’ near $86K haul!

8. Eventual Fan Favorite Rhachel Royal-Fortune scores exactly $80K on Pat’s 77th birthday! Her surname is pretty iconic.

9. Rob Bodnar dominates the maingame and pulls off a Christmas miracle to salvage the second Disney Secret Santa week.

10. Jeremy’s dominance at the start of Sand & Sea week, and he took home a total of $83,815 cash & prizes including the Ford Mustang convertible!

11. All hail Blake Swoboda and Michael Bystrzycki for their Jackpot wins in the BR especially the latter who brought the DOUBLE JACKPOT wedge. 

12. Hannah Precour’s $75K win on the penultimate show of Pat’s final season, breaking $100K the hard way!

13. Adrienne Bean ended the season with her $50K BR win to make way for Pat’s farewell message.

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☹️WORST☹️

1. After 43 years, Pat Sajak has retired as host.

2. The nine $100K losses this season. The penultimate on Apr. 26 was rather DISASTROUS for a very good reason (Friendship Feed luckily warned us on a Warning of posting in Future recaps back in 2019 on Andy’s site and to ensure there’s no repeat of a similar manner unlike the S39’s Hawaii or the Feb. 8, 2023 incident, both of which taught the group a good lesson; with that in mind, it was clear Friendship Feed relayed a message on anniversaries, know which ones we can keep, and keeping references as indirect should be good). And it’s a shame another such loss had to happen on Andy’s Nov. 15 blogging anniversary.

3. HSN Shopping weeks are usually a bad omen, and this better not return for good, if they ever did so, given the week being SKUNKED and had a $100K TOTAL TRAINWRECK on anniversary week. If there’s anything positive, the weekly total wasn’t a SEASON-LOW week (that honor goes to the European Vacation, our first INSTANT SKUNKING since S23). Grand Getaways probably shouldn’t return, either, since that week was a carbon copy of last season’s edition.

4. We tied the record of SIX Toss-Up TRIPLE STUMPERS.

5. Eventual Fan Favorite Laryn may have won big on Sept. 13, but the maingame was an absolute mess including her lousy guess of A CABLE IN A FABLE.

6. Too much BANKRUPT trash on the Wednesday and Friday episodes of Halloween week (the former saw a frightening $31,750 being taken away).

7. In addition to the many duds from Nov. 9, there was Matthew’s PATHETIC STRIPES, STARS, AND BUTTER BARS, which caused him to go viral.

8. The Monday episode of Home for the Holidays week is an example where conservative play and careless mistakes will cost them the game and a MDBR chance, and some big leads, respectively.

9. The start of Dec. 1 really had some abysmal gameplay, all that ended was Kristen getting a SEASON-LOW total of a measly $10,250, which ties the record-low in the Triple Toss-Up era.

10. Numerous missolves gone viral including the one that took the cake on the May 23 episode where Tavaris gave the WORST NSFW ANSWER OF ALL TIME, RIGHT IN THE BUTT– UGH. -__-

11. The entirety of Happy New Year week was pretty shaky due to messy maingames including some critical mistakes. One such example was this on Jan. 4…

G R A N D
S L A M
D _ N _

Heather Morgan Zell BOMBED OUT thinking the last remaining vowel is an O to throw away over $16,650 cash & CARIBBEAN along with the MDW– DONK, lady?! UGH. -__-

12. The whole episode of Jan. 16 was totally OUT OF FOCUS due to bad gameplay and Angela ultimately became the second-lowest winning champ that season.

13. The first two episodes of our favorite Wheel Around the World were a pain to watch especially Monday when we had a low scoring game plus Ryan DiMarco’s painful BR miss by one second costing him the Infiniti QX50.

14. Kylee Hatch made a BIG FOOL of herself on the April Fool’s show especially in the Mystery Round when she thought there was a West Coast city called SUN FRUNCISCO, hence the U purchase to cost her $12,450 including the $10K MW. I had no choice but to give her the DESERVING $1K GOOSEEGG award.

15. The entirety of the Apr. 2 show. Because of champ Lauren’s forgetfulness of collective nouns, we set a new SEASON-LOW in winnings for a single episode.

16. Even though we had a triple $10K+ finish on Apr. 4, we had this in the PP Round…

T H E / E N T R A N C E
T _ / A / C A _ T _ E

You’d Expect: Kim Weisenberg to solve or if she chooses to buy a vowel, she needs to pick the obvious O.
Instead: She BOMBS OUT BIG TIME with a CRITICAL PURCHASE OF U to throw away $17,300- just where do you think that would go, ma’am?! -___-

17. The PP/Express Round on Apr. 8 was a TRAINWRECK with 10 lost turns.

18. After Randy Rose’s late CRITICAL DUD in the Mystery Round on Apr. 11, he did most of the work in the next round and this was the board:

U N _ I N D I N G
A T / T H E / E N D
O F / T H E / D A _

You’d Expect: He needs to solve right away to collect $23,550 plus the trip to Costa Rica.
Instead: He spun on and painfully LaTed out– unbelievable. -___-

19. The board late in the PP/Express Round on Apr. 30…

D U _ _ – _ I L L E D
P L A T Y P U S

You’d Expect: Kimberly Wright to either solve or fill in either the C, K, or B.
Instead: She next landed on EXPRESS… but BOMBED OUT BIG TIME with F to throw away $7,250, apparently thinking the second word was FILLED. She never recovered from that mistake, forcing me to give her the DESERVING $1K GOOSEEGG award. She also went viral as a result.

20. The category THING showed up in all 195 episodes as a BR choice this season.

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🤪WILDEST🤪

1. Jesse’s stomach roll on the Friday of Weekend Getaways.

2. Tuesday’s maingame of Teacher’s Week was rather underwhelming until the BR, with the Speed-Up puzzle of MILLION DOLLAR WINNER being the ironical one.

3. The entirety of Wheel Across America week. You have two maingame highs by Keri and Jack having one of the top maingame scores, but each has lost their respective BR. The former also had one big BANKRUPT earlier on Round 1 but later redeemed in the $6K final spin while the latter he would have almost doubled his total.

4. The Wednesdays of March-April seems to have attracted $100K envelopes and it did, four times in five Wednesdays.

5. Male Izzy and female Frankie from the start of Halloween week. This proves why some names can be unisex.

6. Nov. 23 on the set of Wheel Across America was pretty wild. There were big wins in Rounds 1-3, a triple stumper on the last of the Triple Toss-Ups, and a BR WIPEOUT to boot.

7. Susan from the Tuesday episode of Big Money kept grabbing the Toss-Up device when it wasn’t really a Toss-Up.

8. While Collette Show You the World week was more-or-less the same in a S38 counterpart where we faced a skunk threat, the difference was where we had two sweeps- an all-female winner and a BR Car for the first time in 13 years. And for the second straight season, Bonusland did not offer a Winnebago.

10. The second car sweep happened during Big Money week.