By Zane Miller
I thought about doing a list of my favorite pricing games on The Price is Right, but most of my favorites are ones that everybody already knows and loves, so I figured it would be more interesting to go over my least favorites instead. Obviously, the vast majority of the pricing games played on The Price is Right are great. However, there are still a few mediocre and even bad games that slip through the cracks. Just to clarify, this list only includes games that are currently active since the majority of the discontinued games ended their run before I began watching the show, although a list of the worst defunct pricing games could be an article for a future April Fools’ Day.
8. To the Penny
To the Penny is one of the newest pricing games on the show, making its debut in September 2021. The basic rules are that the player has to guess the price for five different grocery items, each with increasing difficulty as there are more choices available per item. Winning one grocery item is worth $1,500, while winning two is $3,000, three is $6,000, four is $12,000 and all five is worth $25,000. In addition, the player has five pennies with which to eliminate wrong answers from the board (costing one penny), or to get back into the game after choosing a wrong price (costing two pennies). Naturally, the player loses everything once they run out of pennies, however, they can stop at any point and win whatever winnings they have.
I’m not a big fan of this game, although I do have to say the giant penny-shaped design of the board looks pretty cool. My main complaint is that a better version of this already exists, as the game Penny Ante ran from 1979 to 2002. It had similar (and less complicated) rules, but apparently had to be retired due to the board breaking down often. I get that they developed To the Penny in an effort to bring back Penny Ante with a more compact board, but given that the rules are kind of confusing (I’ve seen it happen at least a couple times with contestants getting confused on the rules mid-game) and, according to Tpirstats.com, the game has one of the lowest winning percentages of any active game so far at just 3 for 28. Even winning the second-most at $12,000 is quite a bit lower than usual, as only eight of the 28 have won at least that amount. For me, To the Penny is definitely a guilty pleasure since I love the look of the board and it also brought back the classic ‘boo-doo-doo-doo-doop’ sound from Penny Ante, but it kind of makes me wish they just brought back the original Penny Ante with an updated board instead. Just a penny for my thoughts.
7. Most Expensive
For the sake of this list, I wanted to avoid putting games like Double Prices and Switch? on here since they’re so simple that they barely even qualify as games, and are really more of a utility for the producers to have a quick-play game on hand to ensure they have enough room for commercial breaks. However, I needed to make an exception for Most Expensive. For this one, the player is shown three prizes and must guess which is the most expensive prize to win all three. I’ve never liked this game, not only because it gets played way too often, but also because there’s no suspense once the first two prices are revealed. For example, the least expensive prize is almost always a price starting with $1,000, the second price $2,000 and the most expensive at $3,000. So if one of the prizes that the player didn’t pick comes up $3,000 or more, it’s basically already guaranteed that they lost, just like if none of the prices are shown at $3,000, you already know that they won well before the final price is revealed. At least with the other games I mentioned, there aren’t any prices revealed beforehand so it keeps the tension up, so Most Expensive is most definitely a flop in my eyes.
6. Double Cross
Another one of the newer games, Double Cross features two prizes in an X-shaped grid with boxes highlighting the four digits of the price in each row. The goal is to get the boxes into the correct price combination, however, this isn’t as hard as it sounds as both the boxes move simultaneously, meaning that there is a 1 in 4 theoretical probability of choosing the right prices. In my opinion, the game itself is fine, nothing fantastic but not terrible either. It gets a spot on this list mostly because the look of the board doesn’t fit in with the show at all. I’m personally not a big fan of touch screens on The Price is Right, I definitely prefer the physical buttons and levers and so forth that are used for most of the games, and Double Cross is only touch screen activated. Both that and the sleek metal design clashes with the 1970’s theme, which is a problem since aesthetics are obviously very important to this show. While the game itself isn’t bad, the way Double Cross doesn’t fit with the show at all makes me cross my arms in dismay whenever it comes on.
5. Take Two
Take Two is another one of the simpler pricing games in the lineup, as it involves the player needing to match a ‘target price’ for the combined cost of two of the four prizes, if they pick the right combination, then they win all four items. If it just ended there, then this would be an okay game, but the problems begin when the second chance comes into play should the first choice be incorrect. This is foreshadowing for a couple other pricing games that show up later down the list, but as a general rule, for any pricing game that involves a second chance, the producers should tread carefully.
The annoying thing about Take Two is that it’s caught right in the middle of two extremes where having the second chance makes the game a bit too easy, but getting rid of it would make it too hard. Plus, it’s also theoretically possible for the player to be so bad that they actually win by default. Although rare, it actually has happened before where each of the selected prices were individually higher than the target price. I get the feeling the showrunners see the problem with this game too, which is probably why they barely play it anymore. Not helping is the yellow, pink and red board, for me they’re three colors that don’t work together in this case, so it wouldn’t disappoint me much if Take Two was taken out of the rotation.
4. Shopping Spree
For Shopping Spree, the player has to pick which three of the four prizes will cost more than minimum price shown before the beginning of the game one by one to win all four prizes. In other words, they just need to avoid picking the least expensive item of the four. While it sounds simple enough, Shopping Spree is irksome for several reasons. Number one, there’s already a superior version of this game that already exists, called Danger Price, which came out 20 years before this game did. As a rule of thumb, if there’s already a similar pricing game that’s in the rotation and does the job better, the newer game gets deducted points automatically. Secondly, Shopping Spree has the same problem as Most Expensive in that it can be obvious whether the player has lost well before the game is officially over. For example, if the player picks the prize that’s worth less than $1,000, you already know that the player’s screwed no matter what for the rest of the game, so there’s no weight to the other decisions as they go through the motions to end the game. Finally, I feel like the lack of anything shopping-related in the design is a bit of a missed opportunity, with a game called Shopping Spree, you’d think they’d have giant shopping carts around the logo or make it look like a big checkout counter or something like that, but instead it just looks bland and generic. At least with Credit Card (which was a similar game to Shopping Spree that was retired in 2008), you could tell what they were going for with the theme. As it stands, I feel that they should shop around the idea of giving Shopping Spree a major design overhaul.
3. Stack the Deck
If you’ve watched The Price is Right frequently enough, you probably knew that Stack the Deck was coming. To play this one, the player is given a list of seven numbers to choose from to guess the five-digit price of a car. However, the player can eliminate up to three digits in the price of the car by correctly guessing the prices of grocery items. Even if the player wins on all three items, they still have to guess the first two numbers of the car correctly, as the player in this situation will usually have eliminated the third, fourth and fifth digits in the car price. This is one of the more infamous pricing games in the series’ history because of how over-the-top difficult it is to win.
I could understand Stack the Deck being as hard as it is if it was only played for a luxury car or something like that, but no, it’s usually played for a normal car. This game would probably work better if there were only six numbers to pick from, so there would only be one unused number instead of two, this would help the players to be able to win the game on at least a somewhat regular basis. You know it’s a problem when Triple Play, which is played for three cars, barely has a lower winning percentage at 14 percent that Stack the Deck at 16 percent, despite the stakes in Triple Play being significantly higher. As much as it pains me to put a car game on this list, as the games played for a car are some of my favorites on the show, the issues with Stack to Deck are just stacked way too high for anyone to ignore.
2. Cover Up
The worst thing a game can do is reward the player for being bad at it. This is a critical flaw for each of the final two entries on this list, but let’s start with Cover Up. Cover Up is another game played for a car, with the same basic concept as Stack the Deck as the player must correctly pick all five digits for the price of the car. However, the two games are still significantly different as the player is presented with two possible choices for the first digit of the car, three for the second, four for the third, five for the fourth and six for the fifth. Also unlike Stack the Deck, which has no second chances, Cover Up actually has up to five chances built in, as long as the player gets at least one number right on each guess at the price. Just by explaining that, you probably already see the major problem with this game.
Yes, in this game, it’s actually more advantageous for the player to only get one number right at a time, instead of, for example, getting the first four digits correct on the first try. In the latter instance, if the player got the first four digits right, their chances of winning would be decreased significantly as they would only have a 1 in 5 shot in winning the car with the last number. Meanwhile, for the player who only got the first number correct, they would be in a much better position, especially if they continued to only get one digit right while intentionally guessing wrong for the final digit to eliminate options. This facet has long been something that’s rubbed me the wrong way, as it kind of goes against what the show should be about, which is why Cover Up needed to be covered on this list.
1. One Away
Oh, Mighty Sound Effects Lady, does One Away make me want to throw my TV out a window? One Away is actually pretty similar to Cover Up, which obviously is not a good thing, but it tops Cover Up by being about 10 times as annoying.
The rules for this clunker of a game begins with the player needing to guess all five digits in the price of a car, though unlike Cover Up a wrong price for the car is shown at the beginning of the game. Each digit is either one number higher or one number lower than what is shown, hence the name of the game. Like Take Two, One Away also has a second chance involved should the first guess at the price of the car be incorrect, but this is where the issues really come in. Just like with Cover Up, it’s possible to break the game by being terrible at it. Let’s say that a player only got one number right, then they would pretty much be able to win by default as the first number is almost always incredibly obvious. In fact, One Away has actually had to break its own rules on a couple occasions with the player having gotten no numbers right on the first try, which means that they should have won automatically based on there being only two options for each digit. Instead, the player was deemed to have lost, which shouldn’t have been the case since it isn’t explained in the rules that the player needs to get at least one number right to get the second chance. However, this isn’t even the worst part of One Away, as that dubious honor belongs to the Mighty Sound Effects Lady.
Once the player is done with their initial attempt at the price, they are then asked to ask the Mighty Sound Effects Lady how many numbers they have right. Now, if this was incorporated differently it could work a lot better, for example if they had the player go, “Oh, Mighty Sound Effects Lady, how many numbers do I have right?” and the car horn sound beeped three times if they had three digits right, or whatever the corresponding number of correct digits may be. But instead, the player is supposed to ask for each number individually, starting at one and going all the way up to five. Obviously, the sound effects don’t factor into the game itself as the player can’t change any numbers until after they know the exact number of digits they have right, so it just makes the game really tedious for no real reason. This, combined with the second chance conundrum I mentioned earlier, makes One Away my least favorite active pricing game on The Price is Right, which is a shame because I really like the yellow-and-red design of the board, but it definitely doesn’t make up for the sloppy mechanics. In my opinion, it would be nice if One Away could just go away.
Thanks for reading my first-ever game show-focused article, and don’t worry, I’ll be getting back to my regularly scheduled sports-related content soon. Until then, remember to keep your pets spayed and neutered, and have a great April Fools’ Day!
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