He grabs the wheel tight and spins it as hard as he can. It spins furiously, the pegs on the wheel clicking loudly, slowly sputtering to a stop on the mystery prize space.

“N,” he says.

Four squares of the “Wheel of Fortune” puzzle light up and Vanna White gracefully strolls across the stage, touching each square to reveal the N’s.

Mike Vogt is now $10,000 richer.

His newfound fortune didn’t last long, though — and, because of some creative editing, parts of his acquisition and expeditious loss of the money weren’t even shown on TV.

“They edit the show differently at every station — I was watching it here on WHO, and my family lives in eastern Iowa and they were watching it on KWWL,” says Vogt, senior in microbiology. “At one point, I get this huge puzzle. So I spin the wheel and land on this mystery prize — a $10,000 Sony gift certificate. I spin again and guess another letter that was up there. Then I buy a vowel, then spin again and get a ‘lose a turn.’

“How it was shown here was, after I got the $10,000, I guessed the wrong letter right away. In Dubuque, they never even showed that I got the $10,000.”

Vogt began his “Wheel of Fortune” quest in February, when he saw an ad in the Iowa State Daily for auditions to be on the show. He says he went to the show’s Web site and tried to get on, and shortly thereafter received an e-mail saying he had a chance to audition.

“I got to the audition and there was, like, 200 people there,” he says. “So I was thinking I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting on.”

Janeen Goedken, senior in child, adult and family services, was also at the audition and says she had similar feelings about her chances of being on the show.

But both ISU students emerged from the audition pool victorious.

“A couple weeks [after the audition], I was sitting in my apartment and I got a call,” Vogt says. “This woman was, like, ‘Hi, this is Sandy from ‘Wheel of Fortune,’ and I just wanted to let you know that you’re going to be on in two weeks.'”

So off they went to sunny Los Angeles for their chance at game show glory — Goedken as part of the Big 12 Challenge and Vogt a regular contestant. When they got to California, however, it wasn’t quite what they expected.

Vogt and Goedken both say they were disappointed with many aspects of “Wheel of Fortune,” particularly aspects involving size. The stage, the wheel, the puzzle board — even Pat Sajak — were much smaller and different than they expected.

“I remember thinking the wheel was this 25-foot, huge wheel, which it’s not — it’s about six feet wide,” Vogt says. “But Pat Sajak doesn’t look like a midget on TV, either. That man is shorter than short.”

Goedken says she was just as surprised at the host’s height.

“I’m over six feet tall, and I just looked at Pat and I was like, whoa,” she says. “So they tried to level us off, but they couldn’t get me low enough.”

The pair was disappointed with more than Sajak’s Frodo-esque stature, though.

“I’ve been a ‘Wheel of Fortune’ watcher for a long time, but I don’t watch it any more,” Goedken says. “Everything is just so set up and so television — it’s just so fake. Maybe it’s because neither of us hardly won anything, but it was just really fake.”

Vogt says he agrees.

“And the camera does add a lot of weight,” he says. “Because, no, I do not weigh 250 pounds, even though it looked like it.”