The greatest pricing games from 'The Price is Right'

This carnival-turned-grand-prize game is the oldest and most popular of all the show’s pricing games, and it’s not hard to understand why if you’ve soaked in the show enough on your sick days from work.

First, a contestant has to play a price guessing game that earns them an iconic "Plinko" chip, giving them a total of five chances, including the free chip they get for making it on the stage, to win the easiest cash they’ll ever make outside of finding a box of money in the woods. Then, they drop each chip down that big pegged board, hoping to land each chip in the $10,000 slot. Winning the prize is 80 percent luck, but hearing that plinking noise as the chip descends the board makes for a mighty satisfying dose of macro-drama.

Press Your Luck had the Whammy. Tic Tac Dough had that pesky Dragon. The Price is Right has that yodeling mountain climbing guy from "Cliff Hangers."

It’s another one of the show’s deceptively simple games that seems easy until you step up to your mark and realize you’ve only got three shots at winning the big prize. The goal is to move the yodeling man up the mountain without sending him over the cliff. The way to do that is to come as close as possible to three increasingly more expensive products. The difference between your guess and the price determines how far he goes up the mountain. You win a new car if he doesn’t fall off the mountain. If he does fall off the mountain, you get the joy of knowing you’re not the only one who has to suffer humiliation on national television.

Ultimately, this game requires the most amount of sheer luck than any other game on the show, including "Plinko."

You guess the price of products for a chance to break open a couple of paper-covered cubbyholes, which looks like it feels so satisfying. How often do you get to punch things in real life and not get charged? Each punch you make reveals a card with a dollar amount, and here’s where the drama starts. The player can either go home with the money on the card or throw it away like so much garbage in the hopes of getting a higher amount or even the $25,000 card, of which there is only one on the board. The odds are staggering. According to WizardsOfOdds.com, there’s a .02 percent chance of someone winning the $25,000 on the first try, so when it happens, it feels like you’re witnessing something worth telling your grandkids someday.  

This is one of those games where the prizes aren't big or even glamorous, but the action more than makes up for the payoff. 

Players are faced with four prizes, usually in the $500-$2000 range, like appliances, furniture, and the occasional piece of single-use exercise equipment. There's a chance of winning all four prices if they can place the correct price tag on each item in a 30-second window. So they have to run like hell to each prize to make their guess, then run back to Bob Barker (in the past) or Drew Carey (currently) and the big neon slot machine to input their guess as to how many items are correct. It's one of the few games on The Price is Right that requires a healthy cardiovascular system. 

The only other game with a ticking time clock comes with one giant clock.

This game dates back to the show’s earliest seasons and is still in regular rotation. Just like "Race Game," the prizes are a little smaller, but the ticking clock elements help liven it up. All the player has to do is guess the price of two mid-range prizes down to the exact dollar. Every time they guess, Bob or Drew says the price is “higher” or “lower” in rapid succession. It takes real skill to do this one, both as the player and the host.

This game is another one of those “one shot or you miss it"-type of games, and the theming is what makes it so special.

Each game offers a prize that’s worth at least $1,000 and is given a price with five digits. All the player has to do is figure out which one of the middle numbers doesn’t belong, and the host removes it from the shelf. Then the dollar sign card slides into place with that satisfying cartoon “raaaaaar” noise you usually hear when a cartoon character is trying to put a size 35 belt on their size 50 buttocks.

This pricing game has to have the longest run time of any game on The Price is Right because there's only so much brain power one person can use to keep all the facets straight while keeping your good side to the camera. 

Each game comes with three prizes with three, four, and five digits, respectively. You're giving all the numbers and an extra one for each prize, and you need to figure out which numbers are in the price and the correct order, but you only get — wait for it — 10 chances to guess them all. It's just fun watching players get more and more frustrated each time that dry-erase board slides under each card and seeing the host's forehead veins bulge as the contestants eat up more and more time.

This is one of the first games to appear on the show that's still in regular rotation, and it's one of the few that hasn't changed since the 1970s. 

The gameplay is ridiculously simple. The player is shown four small prizes and an incorrect price, and they have to determine if it's higher or lower than the real one. The "bonus" part comes after they've made all four guesses. The slide next to one of the prizes has a "bonus" tile underneath, and if it's next to one of the smaller prizes they've won, they get a big, extra special prize. The cool part is how much the board looks as it did when it premiered. The cards still have those groovy, flower petal shapes and big, boxy arrows. "Bonus Game" is the fashion equivalent of strong shag carpeting.

Former host Bob Barker is a big golf player, so it only makes sense to put a golf-themed price game on his show. All you have to do is make a simple putt on a green, but the distance between your shot and the ball is determined by how well you know your grocery store prices. You’re presented with a series of products, and all you have to do is put them in the right order from least to most expensive to win the big prize.

This pricing game has more chances for players to win than other games. For starters, the host takes an “inspiration putt” for you to help you learn the lay of the turf, and if you don’t get it on the first try, you can win with a “Hole in Two” no matter how far away your shot is from the hole.

Luck is pretty much the only thing that’s going to help you win the brand-new car in this guessing game.

Money Game is a pricing game, but you have to know the price of the car you’re trying to win right down to the last dollar. So unless you have memorized the latest Kelly Blue Book, luck is the only other way to win. All you’ve got to do is figure out the correct two-digit pairs of numbers, which are the first two numbers and the last two numbers in the price of the car. The first part is usually harder to find if you’ve ever tried to research car prices. Those last two numbers are a real pain in the butt to find.

You would think that a game involving rolling something as random as a pair of dice would be about as difficult as trying to guess the exact price of the "Showcase Showdown" to the penny.

Dice Game, however, is actually one of those games with the better odds if you really need to drive out of the studio with a new car. Just like all pricing cars that offer a brand new car, you have to guess the price of the vehicle with all the extra bells and whistles attached. This one, however, gives you the first number for free. All you have to do is guess the remaining four numbers and your options are limited to the numbers on a standard die. If the number doesn’t match what you roll, you can guess if the actual number is higher or lower. So all you have to do is roll 1s or 6s, and you’re guaranteed a new ride.

Cars are, without a doubt, the biggest and most exciting thing you can win on The Price is Right. Just hearing an announcer bellow, “…a brand new caaaaaar!” can turn the most sullen of crowds into screaming masses of pure energy.

A car is always the prize in this price-guessing game. Players are presented with a five-digit number in which each digit is “one away” from the actual number in the car’s price. The player just has to figure out if each number is higher or lower. After they input their first guess, the producers tease them by telling them how many numbers they got write as they count up the guesses from 1 to 5 and respond “yes” with a car horn. Then they get one more guess depending on how many numbers are wrong; the rest is up to fate.

This classic game isn’t just one of the oldest in the bunch. It’s also one of the hardest.

Contestants go through a series of products along the “Golden Road,” each of which carries a series of bigger and more expensive prizes leading to (what else) a brand new caaaar! This time, they have to guess the missing number in the price of the prizes from the numbers of the prize that precedes it meaning the difficult curve gets extremely difficult by the time you get to the grand prize.

One of the biggest secrets to The Price is Right’s runaway success is its ability to draw natural drama out of just about anyone who makes it past Contestant’s Row. This game does that.

Once again, contestants are challenged with matching a series of six products to six different prices. The drama kicks in when Bob Barker or Drew Carey reveals how well they did. The prices for each product are revealed one at a time, and each time they get one right, they earn a small portion of the grand cash prize. Either they risk losing a huge consolation pile of cash, or they can bet on fate and go for the big prize at the end of the table.

This game is one of the newer entries in The Price is Right’s arsenal, and it’s quickly become one of the show’s most popular pricing games.

This time, the winning is mostly up to luck, but you can get a fighting chance for one or all three of a series of prizes if you can guess the price of three grocery products within a certain value. If you get all three, you get to pick three out of five rats racing along an S-curved track. The first-, second-, and third-place rats get you the prize, which means if you’re lucky enough to get a shot at all three rates and pick the top three, you can win all three prizes.

Few games cause as much raw frustration as this price-guessing game. That goes for the person trying to win the big prize and the people watching them.

Three prizes are laid out on a shiny gold board, one of which is a brand-new caaaar! The goal is to guess the correct prize of the big prize first using all 10 single digit numbers, which are in the price of the car and a secondary prize with three numbers. The remaining three numbers are ditched into the Piggy Bank at the bottom of the board with a decimal point between its first and second number, and you win whichever price is completed first as you guess one number at a time. That means if you don’t guess the price of the car or the Samsung smartwatch, you’ll end up walking away with a couple of bucks and some change instead.

This baseball-themed price-guessing game is another one of those that requires a lot more luck than skill.

Once again, you’re competing for a chance to win a brand-new caaaar — that never gets old — by putting five numbers in the price of the car in the correct order. The only way you get a shot to put each number into its proper place is by blind drawing them out of a baseball bag, one at a time. If you guess wrong, the number goes back in the bag, and you keep drawing until all the numbers are in the proper place. The only catch is there are three chips or balls with big, ugly Xs on them, and if you draw three before you put all the numbers in the right place, you’ll need to slum a ride when you leave the studio.

This press-your-luck style game has one of The Price is Right’s bigger payoffs if you’ve got the gumption to go for it.

You’re presented with a series of six products, a target price, and a final prize of $1. Four of the products have a price lower than the target price, and every time you pick the correct one, a zero is added to your $1. If you find all four, you win $10,000. If you get one wrong, you lose everything, but you can also stop and take home whatever you’ve earned on the board. So if you know the price difference between a can of Fritos bean dip and a pack of Windex wipes, then you’ve got a shot.

This is one of the games you should be hoping you get if you’re going on The Price is Right because the odds are pretty good compared to other pricing games.

All you have to do is guess the right price of two products for one of five giant wooden keys. Then you head over to the big locks to see which of the three prizes your keys will open. The odds are better than average that you’ll win something because four of the keys open at least one of the three prizes, including the “Master Key” that works on all three locks. That means if you can guess the price of both products, then your odds of winning at least one of the prizes is…uh, four…two out of, um. It’s pretty damn good.

It takes the steeliest of nerves to play this single-price guessing game because you only get one shot. If you miss your shot, then it’s gone forever.

"Range Game" is simple. All you’ve got to do is guess the price of a mid-range prize within a certain margin to win it. The challenge is guessing where you think the price lands. You enter your prize on a giant, verticle range in which a see-through sheet of red plexiglass slides up the scale. The pressure is on because you only get one chance to guess where the price falls and when you should push that big button that stops the range from moving. As if that weren’t stressful enough, an ominous jingle plays along as the red sheet slowly creeps up the range as you tempt fate with your guess. Is winning a trip to Acapulco really worth this much stress?!?