When you're on live TV, everything seems a lot harder. Just look at The Weakest Link - plenty of pretty clever people have been on that show, but when the lights are on you and the camera is whirring, somehow your brain just... stops.
Pity then poor Zach from Reed College, Portland, Oregon, who recently appeared on a special, student-filled edition of America's Wheel Of Fortune show.
Confronted with the letters "M-A-G-_ -C" and "_-A-N-D" turned around, he got the first word - "magic" - but struggled with the second, guessing out loud "hand, band, yand, sand, band, cand, fand" before the timer went.
Only after the buzzer did Zach say the correct answer: "Wand" - but even then, he said it with a short a, so it rhymed with "manned" and not, say, "fond".
"Uh. Wow," was host Pat Sajak's initial reaction, and to be honest, we can understand his lack of words.
But to make Zach here feel slightly better about himself - with the emphasis on the 'slightly', we should point out - here are some far more faily fails that should put his relatively minor blunder in proportion. Kind of. Maybe.