The Price is Right Miracle

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

http://www.tmz.com/videos?autoplay=true ... 9dd1b3574a

[TheConfessor]

It was no miracle. I never watch TPIR, but I saw extensive discussion about this episode at Buzzer Blog.
http://buzzerblog.flashgameshows.com/
Apparently, there are some people with no lives who memorize all the prices and then camp out all night to get into the audience and shout the exact answers to the contestants.

[PlacentiaSoccerMom]

Apparently, there are some people with no lives who memorize all the prices and then camp out all night to get into the audience and shout the exact answers to the contestants.

Anybody that we know?

[Ritterskoop]

The link roomie had on this suggested in the header that Drew Carey made a mistake during the segment, but we didn't see anything.

Ideas?

[moonie]

He sure looked pissed off about something. Do they really recycle all the products? Even the showcase items? Still, an incredible thing to add things up to the exact dollar amount.

Could this lead to the demise of TPIR?

[silvercamaro]

The link roomie had on this suggested in the header that Drew Carey made a mistake during the segment, but we didn't see anything.

Ideas?

In the blog linked by Confessor, there was mention that taping stopped for 45 minutes between the time the showcase bids were placed and when the winner was revealed. Drew and the producers conferred during that time. Certainly, it was a very strange situation.

[MarkBarrett]

Just a wee bit of discussion here: http://gameshow.ipbhost.com/index.php?s ... 17061&st=0

[Ritterskoop]

Just a wee bit of discussion here: http://gameshow.ipbhost.com/index.php?s ... 17061&st=0

That was fun, somehow. Some stuff worth thinking about, about getting help, and what kind of help, and the nature of a show, and all that.

[silverscreenselect]

So either this guy or someone else in the audience had memorized prices and was able to add them up to come up with an exact figure because they had used the items previously on the show. The MSRP is not the street price of an item; it's a figure set by the manufacturer and used for tax purposes. For all but a handful of items, the retailers are free to set a lower price (look at the price printed on a bag of potato chips and see how often you pay a lower price at a grocer's).

What the contestant did was highly risky, since he gained nothing by getting the cost exactly right and if he'd gone over by one dollar (which might have occurred due to how the prices were rounded off when the items were added together), he'd have been completely out of luck. More simply, the MSRP could have been adjusted since the last time those items were put up for bids.

What's bad about this is how Drew reacted. He seemed about as excited as if someone had guessed the price of a box of Rice-a-roni during the grocery shopping game. There's being low key and there's being a cold fish. Drew was the latter. I can't imagine Bob Barker reacting in this way (even though I'm sure they all figured out what was happening during the commercial break).

[TheConfessor]

What the contestant did was highly risky, since he gained nothing by getting the cost exactly right and if he'd gone over by one dollar (which might have occurred due to how the prices were rounded off when the items were added together), he'd have been completely out of luck.

Maybe I misunderstood the rules, but I thought he got a bonus of double the prize because he hit the exact total. I am not a fan of the show and I never watch it, so it's quite possible that I'm wrong about this. If so, then I agree that it would have been much smarter to bid a little lower than the exact price.

[silverscreenselect]

What the contestant did was highly risky, since he gained nothing by getting the cost exactly right and if he'd gone over by one dollar (which might have occurred due to how the prices were rounded off when the items were added together), he'd have been completely out of luck.

Maybe I misunderstood the rules, but I thought he got a bonus of double the prize because he hit the exact total. I am not a fan of the show and I never watch it, so it's quite possible that I'm wrong about this. If so, then I agree that it would have been much smarter to bid a little lower than the exact price.

The rule is that if you are the winner within $100 (since most people enter bids in $100 increments) you win both showcases, which this guy did.

If you read this forum (about half way down the first page), you can see the guy who claims to have shouted out the correct answer;

http://www.golden-road.net/index.php/topic,9640.0.html

According to this guy, this is the third time in about two decades that he's gotten the exact price correct. If I was a contestant, and the penalty for being even $1 over the correct total was so severe, I'd think twice about going with a number like that given the long odds against this guy being correct. Plus it's not as if he's the only one shouting out to the contestant. I'd venture there's other people with no lives who shout out wrong answers with an equal amount of confidence.

The fix is fairly easy, as someone indicated. Just add a few incidental items to each major showcase (the pool cues for the pool table, for example) which can vary from one time the item is used to the next, and it becomes exceedingly risky to try an exact dollar amount like that.

[silverscreenselect]

The guy who confessed to having provided the contestant with the right price had also given the other woman in the showcase the right price to the first item she won.

However, he also said he steered the winner wrong during his bonus game by giving the wrong answer on Switch, which is one of the easiest games they have (the contestant is given two prices for the item which are several hundred dollars away from each other and in order to win, they have to pick the right one, a 50/50 chance). So the contestant was definitely taking a chance in listening to this guy.