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Clock Game is a Pricing Game on the American Television Game Show '' The Price Is Right ''. It is played for two prizes, each worth between $500 and $1,000; and a $1,000 cash bonus.


GAMEPLAY

The contestant has 30 seconds to deduce the price of two prizes, one at a time.

The contestant makes a guess. If he is wrong, host Bob Barker will tell the contestant "higher" or "lower," and the process repeats. The idea was to quickly narrow in on the exact price of the prize and win it.

If the contestant successfully guesses the price of the first prize within the 30 second time limit, he uses whatever time was remaining to bid on the second prize, as before.

Successfully arriving at both prices nets the contestant a $1,000 bonus. However, if time expires while he was bidding on the second item, he still wins the first prize.

The contestant is allowed to take shortcuts in pronunciation; for example, saying "nine seventy-one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine" will test all prices in the range $971-$979. Any contestant who knows Binary Search will win easily; as such, this is the only game on the show in which skill guarantees a win.

The audience, which sees the prices just as the viewer does, must remain silent during the bidding process; they cannot help the contestant in any way while the clock is running.


TRIVIA

  • Clock Game represents TPIR's third, successful attempt to create a game requiring a contestant to narrow in on the actual retail price of a prize through successive guesses. Two earlier attempts - the original Bullseye and 2-Player Bullseye - were marked failures and were both quickly retired.


  • The cash bonus was added in December 1998; a $5,000 bonus is awarded on the recent prime-time specials.

    • : But this was not the first time a cash bonus was given. During the 1986 prime-time specials, a winning contestant chose a cash bonus from one of four envelopes. The available bonuses were $1000, $2000, $3000, and $5000.


  • For a brief period in the early 1980s, Clock Game was played with four-digit prizes, including cars, but the large numbers proved to be too hard for contestants to handle in the fast-paced game. Spotting contestants the thousands digit and not requiring them to say it didn't help matters.

    • : In fact, the $1,000 bonus was added in 1998 to compensate for the cheapness of two three-digit prizes, since previous attempts at using four digit prizes were failures.


  • The record is 6 seconds (24 seconds remaining).


  • When the current Turntable wall colors debuted, the "bluescreen" corner of the Clock Game board was the same shade of blue as the walls, which created undesirable effects. The producers initially placed a large, yellow circle behind the prop to circumvent this problem, but it was removed after two playings in favor of completely repainting the board.


  • On some occasions, audience members have blurted out answers despite being told not to. If this happens, generally, offending members are removed from the studio and the act is reshot. At least one occurrence of this has aired; Bob asked, in a rather serious tone, for the audience member to be removed.


  • Clock Game is the first game to have its own unique sound effect (the clock ticking).



SEE ALSO