“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 problem has been described as an editing error, and not all markets were affected. 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 aired 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 went missing 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 pinned the trouble on the Detroit, Michigan, area. Users in Boston, Massachusetts, and St. Paul, Minnesota, reported the same scrambled broadcast, and a fan in Minnesota added that the Words with Friends puzzle never aired there either.
Fan reaction built in a Reddit discussion about the episode, 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.
“Um, did the show just screw up and play the same puzzle twice?” one fan asked.
“Clearly there is something going on at Sony or CBS that is causing these broadcasts to be botched,” one Reddit thread said.
The outcomes did not change for the contestants. 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 they watched twice.
“Wheel of Fortune” airs weekdays in syndication, and local stations set the time. Episodes stream the next day on Hulu and Peacock, where the full episode is available.
A ‘Jeopardy!’ Premiere Mixup
Returning champion Matthew Riggle was defending his streak on the Season 43 premiere of “Jeopardy!,” which aired September 14, and fans turned on their sets to watch him do it. Then some markets came back from commercial to find a different game in progress, with viewers reporting a champion named Jonathan instead of Matthew.
A Reddit user set out the timeline of the switch and asked whether it had happened to anyone else. Plenty of Detroit users answered that it had, and WDIV in Detroit put the correct episode back on the air 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 circulated.
Detroit surfaced in complaints about both shows, and fans read that overlap as evidence against the broadcasts themselves rather than the taped episodes. Viewers in other cities reported the identical glitch that same night during “Wheel of Fortune,” while neighbors saw a normal episode.
Season 44 Friction With Fans
“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.
For now, the record of the episode rests on what each market received. In some homes, the prize puzzle played out once, Lucidi took the Finland trip, Edwards ran the board on “The Piano” with four letters, and the keyword went up on the screen for viewers to enter. In others, the prize puzzle came back around, the Crossword round never arrived and the keyword never appeared.
