Indiana honors student Julian Batts was both the luckiest and unluckiest Wheel of Fortune contestant last Friday during the show's annual College Week. Some have also called him the worst after he botched the pronunciation of "Achilles" (among other WOF transgressions) and cost himself the chance at winning a million dollars, the Huffington Post reported.

After reaching a solvable point in the category "Famous People" and picking up the "Million Dollars" spin card, Batts was still unsure of the three-word phrase and guessed the wrong letter. The Texas A&M student to his left didn't know it either, though she probably would have solved it had she not landed on "Lose Your Turn" after uncovering the "M" in Mythological. Most likely, the Alabama student up next could have gotten it, but she abruptly spun a "Bankrupt." Still stumped, Batts guessed the entire phrase, "Mythological Hero Achilles," then whiffed on the pronunciation of the mythological hero's name. Instead of a hard "c," he said the "ch" with the same soft sound with which it's usually pronounced in other worlds such as "church." "We can't accept that," Pat Sajack said. The Texas A&M student then took the puzzle, while Batts lost his chance at millions.

The next 30 seconds or so were among the show's most awkward as Sajack attempted to deflect the attention away from Batts' blunder. He didn't do much of a job. Only the commercial break could end the moment. (At least it didn't happen on Jeopardy, where Alex Trebek is notorious for unintentionally rebuking contestants for plays much less questionable.)

Unbelievably, Batts would actually win with over $11,000 in prize money -- a route to victory Sajak would later call "circuitous" in jest. More unbelievably, he'd find himself in two more unfortunate situations. One of them was a combination of poor luck and too-quick thinking as the category was "person" and the puzzle read:

The World's Fastest _a_

Even I was thinking car (which is basically what Batts was thinking when he next guessed "r") when I first saw it, though that wouldn't had worked since a car is not a person and the "r" had already been guessed. It also didn't help that Batts had landed two consecutive times on the win-a-car triangle previous to his guess.

For his finale gaffe, Batts guessed "On-The-Spot Dicespin" (again, influenced by his environment) instead of "On-The-Spot Decision" with only a few letters remaining.

In an interview with his the Indianapolis Star afterwards, he defended and laughed at his adventurous appearance. He emphasized that he had heard of Achilles and did know how to pronounce his name, but nerves made him forget.

"I didn't have a lot of time to really process," he told the Star. "You have to stay positive. You have to keep the game going. And you can't let one buzzer discourage your performance for the rest of the game."

"Social media and the media, they're going to say what they're going to say," Batts said. "They have their opinions. But at the end of the day, look at the end result. I won the show. I was the champion of the episode. Despite what happened in between, if you look at what happened, I still won."