He was able to quickly deduce that the first word was NEW.
He often does this when someone doesn't get any help with their letter selection. Pat also helped by stalling a bit before his actual 10 seconds started.
He started plugging letters in to the puzzle in his head as soon as he came up empty with his choices. You can see in this shot of the used puzzle board from this show that the R S T L N and E that are given to the contestant in the bonus round are all out of play along with the H M D and O that Emil called for that didn't show up.
