The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide: Temptation

Temptation

Rules

A car is shown as is the first digit of the price of the car. Then four prizes and their prices are shown, one at a time. Each digit of the price of the car matches a digit of the corresponding prize's price; for example, the second digit of the car's price is a digit in the price of the first prize. The contestant must decide what they think the price of the car is from those prizes; they choose one at a time, but after all four prizes are revealed, the contestant may make any changes they wish. The contestant must then decide if they want to go for the car or keep the prizes shown and give up the opportunity to win the car. If they go for the car and are correct, they win the car and the four prizes; if they go for the car and are incorrect, they win nothing.

Random fact

Early in the show's history, there was a game called Double Digits that had sort of similar mechanics. It was played a total of five times. You can see a playing here:

(Jump ahead to the 1:50 mark to see the Double Digits playing.)

Win-loss record

• Actual (seasons 29-47): 20-154 (11.49%)
• What it would be by random chance assuming you never take the gifts: 1/16 (6.25%)

The correct digit to choose was...(seasons 40-47)

• The higher digit in the prize's price: 135 prizes (46.23%)
• The lower digit in the prize's price: 157 prizes (53.77%)
• The digit that appeared more frequently in the prize's price**: 106 prizes (47.11%)
• The digit that appeared less frequently in the prize's price**: 119 prizes (52.89%)

* Excluding the $549 prize used in season 40 (Correction: the prize I thought was $549 was actually $559. The data above has been updated. Thanks to Punchboard91 at golden-road.net for pointing that out!)

** Excluding prizes where the digits appeared equally often (such as $2,299 in cash.)

Strategy

Car pricing strategy

The last digit is almost always 5, and when it's not 5, it's 0. Since at least season 40, the prices of all the cars in this game have ended in 0 or 5; in seasons 46 and 47, one car had a price ending in 0 and all the others ended in 5. For digits 2-4, it's "know the price" territory.

Should you take the prizes or go for the car?

In order to decide if you should go for the car, you need to know two things:

1. The ratio (R) of the value of the car to you against the value of the prizes. For example, if the car is worth $18,000 to you and the prizes are worth $6,000, this ratio is $18,000/$6,000, or 3.
2. The probability (P) that you are right about the car.

Given those values, go for the car if and only if  P > 1/(R+1). For example, if R (the ratio) is 3, then go for the car if and only if the probability you have the car's price right is 1/(3+1) = 1/4 = 25% or greater.