Caitlin Burke Solves 'Wheel of Fortune' Puzzle With One Letter

(Nov. 9) -- A stunned Pat Sajak called it the best he's ever seen on "Wheel of Fortune." With only one letter showing (an "L,") 27 blanks and one key apostrophe in the first word, Caitlin Burke announced that she was ready to solve the puzzle.

"I've got a good feeling about this," she said, correctly.

She told the New York Post that she had considered answering without even choosing a letter but worried it would upset the producers. (Watch the video below.)

Still, hers wasn't the biggest stunner in game-show history. That honor belongs to Terry Kniess, who became the first person in 38 years to guess the exact value of prizes in the Showcase Showdown of "The Price Is Right" in December, 2008.

Chris Jones wrote an article about Kniess' feat for Esquire magazine this summer. Unlike Burke, Kniess gamed the system. He "saw that virtually every prize on 'The Price Is Right,' from a pack of gum to the flashiest car, repeated," Jones writes. So he and his wife watched episode after episode, memorizing the prices. (It didn't hurt that Kniess was a former Vegas card dealer.)

Host Drew Carey was less animated than Sajak when Kniess nailed the Showcase Showdown, (see the video above.) Carey later said that at the time he thought Kniess had cheated somehow. Jones notes that Kniess could have gotten the answer from an even more "Price Is Right"-obsessed audience member and one-time contestant, Ted Slauson, who had in the past signaled the correct answer to a contestant. Kniess, however, insists that's not the case.

Neither Kniess nor Slauson watch "The Price Is Right" anymore. The game show instituted changes to ensure no future contestants could game the game. Writes Jones:

Ted loved what it was too much for him to love what it has become. The producers no longer rely on Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup; now they have different soups. They have different everything. They've built more luck into the games, dumb luck, and they've started doing sneaky things like changing the options on the cars -- adding floor mats, taking away the stereo system -- to mess with the prices. And they've started adding more luxury items, like Burberry coats, the sorts of things for which ordinary people who have lived their ordinary lives would never have clipped a coupon.

Read more at Esquire.

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