“Wheel of Fortune” aired its prize puzzle twice and dropped the Crossword round entirely in a number of markets during its Tuesday, September 22, 2026, episode, and viewers took to social media asking whether the fault was their TV or the broadcast.
The scrambled broadcast has been described as an editing error. Not all markets were affected, and many fans reported a completely normal episode start to finish.
The syndicated game show is hosted by Ryan Seacrest and is now in Season 44.
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 vanished was the Crossword round, category “The Piano.” Pam Edwards, a contestant from Cypress, Texas, solved the Crossword puzzle with only four letters guessed: “Ivory, Key, Ebony, Strings.”
The Crossword round also includes a home-viewer element. Viewers can enter a keyword for a chance at a prize. In the affected feeds, that segment never happened.
Where the Feeds Went Wrong
Commenters on one Reddit thread traced the problem to the Detroit, Michigan, area. Users in Boston, Massachusetts, and in St. Paul, Minnesota, reported the same scrambled broadcast.
The Words with Friends puzzle never aired in Minnesota either, according to a fan there.
“Um, did the show just screw up and play the same puzzle twice?” one fan asked in a Reddit discussion about the episode.
Fan reaction built in that discussion, where viewers compared notes and found they had not imagined it. Others called the repeat wild, joked that it felt like time travel and wondered what happened to the broadcast.
The outcomes for the contestants did not change. Lucidi’s Finland trip stands, and Edwards’ four-letter solve stands. The cost fell on home viewers: a keyword they could not enter and a prize puzzle watched twice.
A Second Scrambled Broadcast
Returning champion Matthew Riggle was defending his streak on the Season 43 premiere of “Jeopardy!,” which aired September 14, and fans tuned in for it. Then, in some markets, the broadcast came back from commercial on a different game altogether, with viewers reporting that the champion on screen was named Jonathan rather than Matthew.
The timeline of the switch was laid out by one Reddit user, who 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.
Both series come from Sony Pictures Television, and CBS Media Ventures handles syndication for both — a link fans seized on as the second scrambled broadcast of the young season circulated.
Detroit surfaced in complaints about both shows, and that overlap turned fan suspicion toward the broadcasts themselves rather than the taped episodes. Viewers elsewhere reported the same symptom on the same night for “Wheel of Fortune,” while their neighbors saw a normal episode.
“Clearly there is something going on at Sony or CBS that is causing these broadcasts to be botched,” one Reddit thread said.
The trouble landed at an already touchy moment for the show’s audience. “Wheel of Fortune” tweaked its format again one week into Season 44, a change that drew a reaction from fans. The duplicated puzzle and the missing round arrived on top of that, worsening 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.
