“Wheel of Fortune” aired its prize puzzle twice and dropped the Crossword round entirely in a number of markets during its episode of Tuesday, September 22, 2026, leaving viewers to work out whether the fault was in their televisions or in the broadcast itself.
Viewers took the question to social media. Confusion built in a Reddit discussion about the episode, where viewers compared notes and found they had not imagined it.
“Um, did the show just screw up and play the same puzzle twice?” one fan said.
Other Reddit fans called the repeat wild, joked that it felt like time travel and wondered what had happened to the broadcast.
What Viewers Saw Twice
The puzzle that ran twice was the prize puzzle, solved as “Glinda and Elphaba.” Carmine Lucidi, an Eagle Scout from Long Island, New York, solved it first and won a trip to Finland.
The round that disappeared was the Crossword round, with the category “The Piano.” Pam Edwards, a contestant from Cypress, Texas, solved it with only four letters guessed: “Ivory, Key, Ebony, Strings.”
The Crossword round also carries an at-home hook. Viewers can enter a keyword for a chance at a prize, and for the feeds that skipped the round, that segment never happened.
The outcomes for the contestants did not change. Lucidi’s Finland trip stands, and Edwards’ four-letter solve happened even if much of the country didn’t see it. The cost fell on viewers: a keyword they could not enter and a prize puzzle they watched twice.
Not Every Market Affected
The editing error did not reach everyone. One Reddit thread pinned the trouble to the Detroit, Michigan, area. Users in Boston, Massachusetts, and St. Paul, Minnesota, reported the same scrambled broadcast. A fan in Minnesota added that the Words with Friends puzzle never aired there either.
Plenty of other fans reported a completely normal episode, start to finish.
“Clearly there is something going on at Sony or CBS that is causing these broadcasts to be botched,” one thread said.
A ‘Jeopardy!’ Parallel in Detroit
Returning champion Matthew Riggle was set to defend his streak on the Season 43 premiere of “Jeopardy!” and fans tuned in for it on September 14. In some markets, though, the broadcast came back from commercial on a different game altogether, and viewers reported seeing a champion named Jonathan rather than Matthew.
One Reddit user laid out the timeline of the switch and asked whether anyone else had experienced it. Many Detroit users said they had. Detroit’s WDIV re-aired the correct episode overnight at 2 a.m. that Wednesday.
Sony Pictures Television produces both series, and both go out in syndication through CBS Media Ventures — a link fans seized on as the second scrambled broadcast of the young season spread. Complaints about both shows kept naming Detroit, and that overlap pushed fan suspicion toward the broadcasts themselves rather than the taped episodes. Viewers elsewhere reported the identical glitch during “Wheel of Fortune” that same night, while their neighbors saw a normal episode.
The duplicated puzzle and the missing round landed on an audience already arguing about the show. Ryan Seacrest hosts “Wheel of Fortune,” now in Season 44, and the program tweaked its format again one week into the season. That change drew a reaction from fans. The scrambled broadcast arrived on top of that, which did not help the mood in fan forums.
“Wheel of Fortune” airs weekdays in syndication, with local stations setting the time. Episodes stream the next day on Hulu and Peacock, where the full episode is available.