The Price is Right - 6/13/12 Episode

The Price is Right will often set up games to be won or lost, sometimes more obviously than others.

In yesterday's episode, it was pretty clear where all six games stood.

Karla got a pretty brutal setup in "Lucky Seven":

As so often happens in this game, Karla got off to a reasonable enough start, only for a guess of '5' as the fourth digit to destroy her chances of winning. She needed to get the last digit right on the nose, and went with '3'. As we've seen before, random digits pop up in that spot on occasion. I had a hunch it was a '9', but then again, I've seen this game played a lot lately.

In "The Bargain Game," Matthew did what nearly everyone would've done (myself included) and guessed the motor scooter...

...only for that to be the cheapest motor scooter ever ($1,586, just a $500 bargain), compared to the apparently bionic washer/dryer ($3,198, a $1,500 bargain).

"It's in the Bag" was a typical setup for Aynne, with these groceries...

...and prices of $0.99, $29.99 and $9.99 to start things off. Bizarrely, Aynne originally tried putting the pain reliever in the $29.99 slot, with the audience immediately yelling at her that it was the wrong move. She changed her mind quickly enough to the krill oil supplement, put the pain reliever in at $9.99, and bailed with $4,000 during the reveal.

Then came the second half of the show, which producers decided would be the winnable half. In "Shopping Spree," Brooke needed to pick the three prizes that combined to cost more than $8,500.

From left to right, those are Christian Dior accessories, an HD television, a kitchen range and a ping-pong table. The accessories and range are easy choices here, and if you've been paying attention to the prices of televisions lately, the ping-pong table was also a safe bet. Brooke nailed it and took all four prizes.

Sometimes, it's better to be lucky than good, as Julie showed us while playing "Switcheroo."

The strategy for this game is to fill in the prices of the other prizes first, then the car. Julie, like most other contestants before her, for some reason try and guess the missing number in the car first. Considering it's the fourth digit in the price, it's a completely random 5-to-1 guess. In her first round, she had the '5' in the car slot, while thinking an electric knife sharpener would cost only $13. Interesting.

In her second go at it, Julie simply switched the '1' and the '5', and went from having one right number to three, at which point we all knew she had the car.

Here's the thing: this game was clearly also set up for a win because no one would (or should, anyway) think any of those prizes were less than $20, except for maybe the beach towel set (the name badge system was kinda high-tech). Julie bypassed that logic altogether, but won anyway.

And then we had Timothy playing "Double Prices" for a trip to Ireland. It was a four-day trip, with a four-day VIP package to the Volvo Ocean Race added in. I'm thinking this is an $8K or $9K trip. Here were Timothy's two choices:

Say what now?

Timothy went with the $13K price, and won, which one has to assume is what The Price is Right wanted, given that it offered two seemingly outrageous prices for the trip. In that situation, you almost have to take the lower one. If they wanted this game to be lost, they'd have put up the $13,911 price and something else in the $11K range. Timothy likely would've taken the $11K price (as I would have done, also).

So, there you have it: a 50-50 day on The Price is Right. Just a few more shows to go in Season 40.

Oh, and I almost forgot...

DIABEETUS

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