The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide: Pathfinder

Pathfinder

Rules

A car is shown. The contestant is placed in the middle of a 5x5 grid of numbers, and they are standing on top of the first number of the price of the car. The next number is non-diagonally adjacent to them; they must guess the next digit of the price of the car. If they are right, they move to the correct square and must guess the next digit from the non-diagonally adjacent numbers to that digit; the path cannot return to an already-used digit. If they are wrong, they must guess the price of one of three small prizes to get another chance. Each small prize has two possible prices to choose between. If the contestant correctly guesses the price of the prize, they get another chance. The game continues until the contestant has found the price of the car or they run out of extra chances.

Random fact

For the second digit of the car, the contestant will always have four choices; for the third digit of the car, the contestant will always have three choices; for the fourth digit of the car, the contestant could have two or three choices; for the last digit of the car, the contestant will always have two choices. I will call the case with three choices for the fourth digit the "harder" path and the case with two choices for the fourth digit the "easier" path. Examples of each:

Harder path    Easier path

 o o o o o      o o o o o

 o o o o o      o o o o o

 o o x o o      o o x o o

 o o x x o      o o x o o

 o o o x x      o o x x x

Win-loss record

• Actual (seasons 29-46): 54-170 (24.11%)
• By random chance:
• If the correct path is a "harder" path: 43/288 (14.93%)
• If the correct path is an "easier" path: 13/64 (20.31%)

Car pricing stats

Number of times each type of path was used (seasons 40-46)

• Easier path: 14 playings (14.74%) [not more than twice in a season since season 42]
• Harder path: 81 playings (85.26%)

For the second digit, the correct option was...(seasons 40-46)

• Largest possible digit: 27 playings (28.42%)
• 2nd largest possible digit: 16 playings (16.84%)
• 2nd smallest possible digit: 17 playings (17.89%)
• Smallest possible digit: 34 playings (35.79%)
• Unknown because the author missed one and can't find what he missed: 1 playing (1.05%)

• Directly in front of the contestant: 14 playings (14.74%)
• Directly to the left of the contestant: 25 playings (26.32%)
• Directly to the right of the contestant: 26 playings (27.37%)
• Directly behind the contestant: 30 playings (31.58%)

Small prize stats

The correct choice was...(seasons 40-46)

• The price on the left (the smaller price): 146 prizes (54.28%)
• The price on the right (the larger price): 123 prizes (45.72%)

If one price ended in 0, 5, or 9, and the other didn't, the correct one was...(seasons 40-46)

• The price that ended in 0, 5, or 9: 24 prizes (51.06%)
• The price that didn't: 23 prizes (48.94%)

Strategy

Car pricing

• Second digit: The second digit is usually the lowest or the highest option ("pick the endpoints") and is rarely the number in front of you ("that'd be too easy.")
• Third digit: Usually, the third digit is NOT on the edge of the board. That would result in an "easier" path being correct instead of the hard path.
• Fourth digit: I don't have anything for this one. Sorry :(.
• Last digit: As is not unusual in car games, the last digit in Pathfinder is rarely 0, 5, or 9. Since season 42, the last digit hasn't been 0, 5, or 9 more than 4 times in a season and there have been a couple of seasons where there were no cars with any of those last three digits.

Small prizes

Know the prices. There are no trends here that I could find--in particular, they don't try to trap you with a fake price that ends in 0, 5, or 9.