‘Wheel of Fortune’ contestant Julian Batt dragged on Twitter after mispronouncing winning word, he responds

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At the very moment that humiliated “Wheel of Fortune” contestant Julian Batt mispronounced “Achilles,” you could tell that he wanted to melt and dissolve into the cracks in the floor.

You could literally see the light go out of this Indiana University student’s eyes as reality crashed down upon him with thundering force that he coughed up $1 million, a brand new car, a first-class trip to an exotic island and, most of all, humiliated his school on national TV.

All the letters had been filled in for Batt, a freshman at IU, to solve the puzzle “Mythological Hero Achilles,” but contestants must pronounce the words correctly to win.


Batt pronounced the hero’s name incorrectly, saying “A-chill-is” instead of the proper pronunciation. That mistake may have cost him $1 million.
ABC’s “Good Morning America” interviewed Batt, who appeared flustered on the show as he realized his mistake.

“It just kind of hit me like a train, and I really didn’t know how to react to it,” Batt said. “The game continued on and (another contest from) Texas A&M, she solved it, and it hit me right then and there that it was Achilles.”


Batt said he didn’t feel like he’d made a mistake.

“I feel like I solved the puzzle entirely and all I had to do was read it, and I just went for it and I did my best,” Batt told ABC.

Batt also had two other gaffes on the show, yet he still called it a “dream” and one of the “greatest experiences” he ever “accomplished.”

Interesting way to look at it — which probably helps explain why social media, Twitter in particular, dragged him all over cyberspace. Take a look at what they had to say:

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