I actually watched this the day it happened and yes, he brutalized the word terribly and that's why he didn't solve the puzzle, what everyone is forgetting is that even if Wheel would have accepted that he pronounced it correctly, there were several more puzzles to solve and if he would have missed one of them he would have lost the chance to win, then he still would won the game and still solve the final puzzle and then before you try to solve the final puzzle Wheel has you spin a prize wheel and if you get the final puzzle correct that's the prize you get, so the million dollar prize may not have even been available for him to win, there were ten more things that he would have to been lucky enough to get to win the million, he was far from winning.

If that isn't confusing just watch it sometime, the puzzle he screwed up on was the first one of the day.