(NEXSTAR) – Why so shocked, Pat? We were all thinking it.
Pat Sajak was briefly left speechless during a recent episode of “Wheel of Fortune” after a contestant made a silly, yet completely logical remark after failing to solve the bonus-round puzzle.
The category was “What are you doing?” and the contestant, Kate Mock Elliot, was given 10 seconds to uncover a three-word phrase.
Her guesses included “Moving a leaf” and “Raking a leaf,” but time ran out before she was able to come up with the correct phrase: “Fixing a leak.”
After the buzzer rang, Mock Elliott told Sajak she had considered the last word could be “leak,” but ruled it out.
“I kept thinking of doing something else with a leak, and I didn’t think that was it,” she politely explained.
Sajak, looking slightly shocked, stared into the camera as the studio audience began to giggle. He then dropped the prize card he was holding in his hand.
“Excuse me,” he said as he bent down to pick up the card. “These get heavy sometimes.”
The clip has since been viewed more than half a million times on social media, with many viewers praising her appearance and empathizing with her plight.
“We all thought it, Kate!” one viewer replied.
“Wish she won but that was a very funny moment,” another said.
Mock Elliott, a writer and theatrical performer from Cincinnati, is taking the whole thing in stride, too.
“I’m a notorious over-sharer with little verbal filter (hence being able to write a one-woman-show), so what I said was pretty much what I was thinking at that moment,” Mock Elliot, who had already won thousands of dollars in cash and prizes that day, told Nexstar.
“I had gone into the day hoping to win money or prizes, but promising myself that I’d be happy if all that happened was something funny or memorable,” she added. “Success on both counts.”