Race Game (pricing game)

Race Game is a pricing game on the American television game show "The Price Is Right". Debuting on August 14, 1974, it is played for four prizes, each worth between $400 and $3,000.

The prizes are usually unrelated, though the game has on occasion offered four trips (on a $1,000,000 Spectacular) or season tickets to four of the Los Angeles sports teams.

Gameplay

In this game, the contestant is presented with four price tags, each representing the price of one of the four prizes. They are given 45 seconds in which to attempt to place the tags on green hooks with the correct prizes. After placing all four tags, the contestant returns to a display and pulls a lever; this causes the display to show the number of tags which have been correctly placed. If anything less than four is displayed, the contestant must rearrange the tags and pull the lever again. They may continue to do this as many times as they can within the time limit.

If at any point the contestant pulls the lever and has all four tags correct, the game ends, and they win all four prizes. Otherwise, they win whatever prizes they have correctly tagged when the time limit expires. If the contestant is in the middle of a switch when time expires, they are usually allowed to complete it and pull the lever a final time. The contestant is not allowed to pull the lever unless all of the price tags have been placed at a prize. The only way to win nothing in Race Game is to get no correct prices for all four prizes after the time runs out.

It is impossible for a contestant to win exactly three of the prizes, as any three prizes being correctly tagged would necessitate the fourth tag being with the correct prize. For this reason, the display that shows the number of correct prizes cannot light up the number "3".

A running gag in Season 36 in this game comes if a contestant is wearing an open-toed shoe (sandals, flip flops, etc.). In such cases, host Drew Carey would make a critical joke about the kind of shoe they were wearing, saying "You picked a perfect day to wear (type of shoe)."

Timing errors

During rare instances, the timer has malfunctioned (stalling, counting the wrong way, etc.). When these incidents have happened, the contestant was given extra time to play the game.

Foreign versions

Some foreign versions of "The Price Is Right" have slight changes -- for instance, on the UK versions, the contestants only got 30 seconds (though earlier Leslie Crowther episodes used 45 like the US).

In Australia, the game goes by the exact name as it does in the US, and even has the same 45 second time limit.