The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide: Cliff Hangers

Cliff Hangers

Rules

A large prize is shown. Then three small prizes are shown and described. The contestant guesses the price of each of the small prizes. The difference between the contestant's guess and the actual price is calculated; the difference is considered positive whether the contestant's guess was too high or too low. If the sum of those three differences is less than or equal to $25, the contestant wins the large prize.

Random fact #1

In spite of how easy this game is, people have lost it in spectacular fashion. See how Bob handled one of those cases here:

Random fact #2

The song this game uses is called "On the Franches Mountains" and comes from a collection of Swiss Mountain music. You can hear the whole thing here:

Win-loss record (seasons 29-46): 257-112 (69.65%)

Pricing trends for the three prizes (seasons 40-46)

The following data is courtesy of AvsFan at golden-road.net. Thanks so much!!

• Average price for prize #1: $21.09
• Median price for prize #1: $20
• Average price for prize #2: $32.05
• Median price for prize #2: $32
• Average price for prize #3: $43.24
• Median price for prize #3: $43
• Average difference, SP #2 and SP #1: $10.89
• Average difference, SP #3 and SP #2: $11.19

Strategy

20-30-40! No need to bore you with a lot of stats here. The guesses of $20, $30, and $40 (in that order) would have won this game every single time except twice in the last 15 years. In fact, on the "super fan" show they did, the producers lampshaded this fact by making the prizes exactly $20, $30, and $40. There are only two exceptions I could find: one had prizes of $10, $20, and $30, and the $10 prize was a Libman mop that had been on the show quite a few times. The other was a playing from Big Money Week that used different rules; I'll cover that case below. So unless the first item is a Libman mop or it's Big Money Week, guess $20, $30, and $40, and you'll win every time. 

Big Money Week note: There have been two times during Big Money Week when they played Cliff Hangers such that the contestant got $10,000 per step the mountain climber didn't climb. For example, if you're off by a total of $15 between the three items, you win (25-15)*$10,000 = $100,000. They're not afraid to break the 20-30-40 rule here, so if they're giving you $10,000 per step you survive by, your guesses should most likely be $5 to $10 higher than 20-30-40, though it depends on the exact prizes. Note this exception only applies when they play Cliff Hangers during Big Money Week for $10,000 per unclimbed step. Nowadays, they usually play Cliff Hangers during Big Money Week for a flat $20,000. If that's the prize you're playing for, 20-30-40 applies.