The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide: Spelling Bee

Spelling Bee

Rules

A car is shown as are three small prizes and a game board with 30 cards on it. In most playings, two of those cards have the word "car" on their back, 11 of them have a "C", 11 have an "A", and 6 have an "R." The contestant's goal is to choose cards that either spell out "C-A-R" or pick one of the cards with the word "car" on it. They can choose two cards for free, and can earn up to three more picks by correctly guessing the prices of the small prizes. For each small prize, if they guess the price within $10 above or below the actual price, they get another pick on the board. If they guess any small prize right on the nose, they immediately win all three small prizes and all three extra picks, even if they were more than $10 away on a previous prize. After the contestant has made all their selections, they can choose to play for the car or stop and take $1,000 per card they earned. If they play on, the cards are revealed one at a time; after each card is revealed, if the contestant hasn't yet won the car, they can choose to stop and take $1,000 per card that is yet to be revealed or continue playing.

Random fact

This game has been played perfectly before, meaning a contestant got a C, an A, an R, and both cards that had word "car" on them:

Win-loss record

• Actual (seasons 29-47): 79-87 (47.59%)
• What it would be by random chance, based on how many picks you have and assuming you never bail out:
• 2 picks: 19/145 (13.10%)
• 3 picks: 151/406 (37.19%)
• 4 picks: 1067/1827 (58.40%)
• 5 picks: 52363/71253 (73.48%)

Price ranges of each small prize (seasons 40-47)

• First prize: $10-$57
• Second prize: $10-$80
• Third prize: $16-$65

How often each ordering of the small prizes' prices was correct (seasons 40-47)

The table below refers to ordering the small prizes by price. For example, "123" means the first prize was the cheapest, the second prize was the middle price, and the third prize was the most expensive. "231" means the first prize was the middle price, the second prize was the most expensive, and the third prize was the cheapest.

• 123: 3 playings (4.48%)
• 132: 28 playings (41.79%)
• 213: 13 playings (19.40%)
• 231: 14 playings (20.90%)
• 312: 6 playings (8.96%)
• 321: 3 playings (4.48%)

How often each card had each option (seasons 40-47)

Card  # picks  CAR   C   A   R

1         8     1    3   0   4

2         6     0    4   0   2

3         9     0    5   0   4

4        11     0    4   3   4

5         9     1    3   0   5

6         3     0    2   0   1

7        21     0   10  11   0

8         7     1    3   1   2

9        13     0    3   9   1

10        6     1    3   1   1

11       14     4    3   6   1

12       13     0    8   4   1

13        3     0    1   2   0

14        4     0    1   1   2

15       10     1    2   6   1

16        5     0    2   1   2

17        7     0    3   3   1

18        6     2    1   2   1

19       11     1    7   1   2

20        5     0    2   2   1

21        5     1    3   1   0

22        5     0    1   4   0

23       19     1    9   8   1

24        9     3    2   1   3

25        6     0    4   2   0

26        7     0    3   1   3

27        3     0    2   1   0

28        5     1    0   0   4

29        4     1    0   2   1

30        4     1    1   1   1

Note: Bold means a CAR card was found behind that number at least once.

Strategy

Part 1: Small prize pricing

There's not much that's foolproof here, but your guesses should be never be less than $20 for the small prize. They've never used a small prize less than $10 (at least since season 40) and I doubt they ever will. On the high side, they've never used a prize greater than $80, but that's not to to say they can't stretch that some day. Do note that for the ordering of the prices, the "132" combination comes up much more often than any other combination, so if you're not sure, you should assume that the first prize is the cheapest, the middle prize is the most expensive, and the last prize is between those two. That's far from guaranteed, though, so use that only if you're not at all sure of the prices.

Also, as several people at golden-road.net pointed out, small prizes in Spelling Bee rarely end in 0 or 5. To be more specific, as AvsFan pointed out, just 3.5% of small prizes in the last 5 seasons ended in one of those digits--check out his post with a graph of the various endings. This means your guess should never end in 0 or 5 unless you're certain of the price. This is for two reasons:

1. You're more likely to get the price exactly right with an non-0 or 5 ending.
2. Even if you're not exactly right, you're "wasting" fewer numbers in the +/- $10 range. For example, if you guess $20 for the prize, your range is $10 to $30 inclusive, which is a total of 21 possible prices when you include both endpoints. But since the prize is very unlikely to end in 0 or 5, the values 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 are "wasted", so you really only have 16 possible prices. But if you guess $19 for the prize, your range is $19 to $39. You've only wasted four numbers now--20, 25, 30, and 35. So you have 17 possible prices instead of 16.

Part 2: Which cards to pick

• Do NOT pick #7!! It's the most often picked, but when it's been picked, it's never had the CAR card or even the R.
• Interestingly enough, though, #11 has frequently had the CAR card, as has #24. So those should be your two free picks.
• Beyond that, you should lean towards #s 1-5. That's where the R's are most frequently hidden.

Part 3: Should you bail out?

As I've mentioned in other articles, it depends on how much the car is worth to you. Do you plan to sell it? Then its value is whatever you can sell it for. If you plan to keep it, then it's worth the actual price. If you plan to turn it down, then its value is $0 and you should of course always bail out. Once you've decided that, then here's a chart that tells you mathematically when you should play the game and when you should bail out:

At the start of the game

# of picks   Minimum value of the car

  earned      to you to not bail out

    2               $15,264

    3                $8,067

    4                $6,850

    5                $6,804

If you have one pick left

# of cards already  Letters already    Minimum value of the car

    revealed           revealed        to you to not bail out

       1             Any of them              $14,500

       2            Just one letter           $14,000

       2               C and A                 $3,500

       2          C and R or A and R           $2,154

       3            Just one letter           $13,500

       3               C and A                 $3,375

       3          C and R or A and R           $2,077

       4            Just one letter           $13,000

       4               C and A                 $3,250

       4          C and R or A and R           $2,000

A couple of notes from the tables above:

• It would make the tables too big to include the "intermediate" values (e.g. if you've revealed two cards and have two left, should you keep playing?), but suffice it to say that if you have two or more cards left to reveal, it's never correct to bail out in the middle of the game if you didn't bail out at the beginning, unless you change your mind about how much the car is worth to you.
• If the value of the car to you is at least $15,264, then you should never bail out, period, even if you have just one card left and you need it to be a CAR card.
• Of course, these tables assume the value of each card is $1,000. They have played with higher value cards; if they do that again, you need to multiply the tables above by the amount in thousands of dollars each card is worth. For example, if each card is worth $5,000, multiply the above numbers by 5.