Golden Road

Golden Road is a pricing game on the American television game show "The Price Is Right". Debuting on August 19, 1975, it is played for three prizes: A three-digit prize, a four-digit prize and a five-digit prize usually worth more than $60,000. On $1,000,000 Spectaculars, Golden Road has sometimes used a 6-digit prize instead of the 5-digit prize; the game play remains the same.

That grand prize represents some of the most expensive prizes offered on the show. Prior to the reveal of the actual prize, it is usually billed as "worth more than [however many] thousand dollars" and is often touted as the most expensive prize to be available to-date. Possibilities included a motor home, a cabin cruiser, Chevrolet Corvette, Dodge Viper, top-of-the-line Lincoln, Cadillac, or other premium foreign luxury car.

The most expensive prize ever won in this game on the daytime show was an $86,743 Dodge Viper on September 28, 2006. On the prime time version, a Four Winns 268 Vista cabin cruiser worth $105,684 was won on a $1,000,000 Spectacular aired April 9, 2005 . The most expensive prize ever offered was a Fleetwood Terra LX 31M motor home worth $107,205, on June 11, 2007.

Game play

The game begins with a grocery item priced under $1, whose price is shown to the contestant. The price of the three-digit prize is then revealed, with the hundreds digit missing. The contestant must choose one of the two digits in the price of the grocery item as the missing digit.

If they are correct, the game continues with the four-digit prize, whose missing hundreds digit is one of the digits in the price of the three-digit prize. If they are correct, they move on to select the missing hundreds digit in the price of the grand prize from the digits in the price of the four-digit prize. An incorrect guess at any point ends the game; however, the contestant keeps any prizes they have won up to that point.

If the contestant guesses the wrong missing digit on the first prize, the game ends, and he/she leaves with no prizes. Other than the final prize, the prices typically have no repeated digits in their prices.

History

Golden Road was created by then-producer Jay Wolpert. [http://www.golden-road.net/index.php?topic=6912.0 ] Golden Road's original claim to fame was that it always offered a prize worth more than $10,000, while other games typically offered cars in the $4,000-range.

Except for in its first appearance on a half-hour show (when it was played third), Golden Road is always the first game played in an episode. Since the late 1980s, the host almost always enters from the back of the audience at the beginning of a show when Golden Road is to be played. Since the game features a "road" of golden spots on the floor of the stage, a traditional entrance through the center stage door would reveal the game prematurely. Since 2007, if the host "does" make an entrance through the center door, the golden dots on the stage are either omitted or set up during the first One Bid.

On the Tom Kennedy version, Golden Road was played on his final episode (aired May 30, 1986).

On 1994's syndicated The New Price is Right, Golden Road began with a two-digit prize or a fishbowl of cash.

External links

* [http://golden-road.net Golden-Road.net (Unofficial "The Price Is Right" website)]