Money Game
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Money Game is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. Debuting on December 25, 1972, it is played for a car and a nominal cash prize. Until the mid-'90s, the car was occasionally replaced by a boat.
[edit] Gameplay
The contestant is shown a board containing nine two-digit number cards. The contestant is given the third digit in the five-digit car's price. The contestant must guess which cards represent the first two and last two digits in the price. To do this, the contestant selects one card at a time, which covers either a dollar sign or the image of half of a car. The front half of the car is hidden by the first two digits and the back of the card by the last two digits. If a dollar sign is revealed, that many dollars are won to keep and the number is placed in one of the four slots on the left. Should the contestant find both "halves" of the car before four dollar signs, they win the car.
There are three common practices the producers often use in hiding the correct price. One is called "El Cheapo" (as coined by host Bob Barker) – hiding the back of the car behind one of the smallest numbers on the board (usually requiring a 0 as the first digit to receive the moniker), which a contestant trying to bank the most money would be less likely to select. Another common choice is to hide the back of the car behind a number ending in zero or five. The third practice is called the "front and back trick", in which the front and back of the car are concealed behind two of the choices that are side-by-side on the same row. Unlike practices in some other games, these are not rules that apply to every playing of the game.
[edit] History and behind the scenes
Originally, Money Game was played with four-digit cars, and no free digit was given. It was first played for a 5-digit car on February 21, 1990. The current game board debuted on September 10, 1991. The car silhouette used on the current board is based on a 1991 Ford Taurus.
On the 1985 syndicated TPIR hosted by Tom Kennedy, Money Game was sometimes played for cars worth at least $10,000. The game was dubbed "Big Money Game," and the last digit was revealed first. The contestant then had to find the first two digits and the third and fourth digits of the price.
During this game, the displays in Contestants' Row are used to keep track of the total amount of money that has been accumulated; this is generally not seen on-camera.
Money Game was the first pricing game played on the first show broadcast with Drew Carey hosting, although this show was not his actual first episode. The game was also the first to offer a foreign car after producers in March 2008 removed the "Big Three Only" rule imposed by Barker in 1991, as a product placement by American Honda (based in Ohio, the home state of both host Drew Carey and announcer Rich Fields) gave the automaker cars on a May 2008 show.
