Make Your Move
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Make Your Move is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. Debuting on the Season 18 premiere on September 11, 1989, it is played for three prizes – one small prize (worth up to $99), a prize worth between $100 and $999, and a prize worth more than $2,000.
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[edit] Gameplay
The contestant is shown a board containing a string of nine digits containing the prices of three prizes, and three markers that represent each prize. The red marker represents the two-digit prize, the yellow marker is the three-digit prize, and the green marker is the four-digit prize.
Host Bob Barker instructs the contestant to place each marker beneath what he thinks is the corresponding price for each prize by announcing, "Make your move." Each digit in the sequence must be used, as the prices never overlap. If the contestant is correct about all three of his choices, he wins everything; if not, he wins nothing. At the end of the game, win or loss, the correct prices light up in the appropriate colors.
[edit] Trivia
- In two early-1990s episodes, Make Your Move was played for two three-digit prizes (one of the digits indeed overlapped). Even though one of the contestants won, the format was confusing enough that the idea of using a digit in more than one price was quickly scrapped.
- Make Your Move was played somewhat frequently for cars through the mid-1990s; in fact, it was played for a car on its premiere, causing some viewers to mistake it for a car game. This practice ended when the show stopped giving away cars worth less than $10,000.
- During the first few years the game was played, the contestant's choices would light up one by one before determining the game's outcome (to further illustrate the contestant's selections). This practice was discontinued because the audience frequently misinterpreted this as the reveal of the answers.
- One player in the early 90's encountered an extremely rare and interesting outcome -- having two prizes correct but still losing. Ordinarily, this is supposed to be impossible, but an unusual number combination for that playing allowed it to happen. The numbers on the board were 305030519, and the actual prices were $30 for a spice rack, $519 for a sewing machine, and $3050 for a wall unit; the player got the spice rack and sewing machine right but had priced the wall unit at $5030.
- Make Your Move holds the distinction of being the only pricing game to actually be played by Bob, after a contestant on a 1998 episode spent over four minutes trying to figure out what she was supposed to be doing while repeatedly creating overlapping prices. Despite not knowing the right answers, Bob won, after which he jokingly proclaimed that he -- not the contestant -- would be awarded the prizes.
[edit] Foreign versions of Make Your Move
The game is played the same way as the US, often with minor differences. In Mexico, for example, sometimes there were two three-digit prizes (however, the board had ten numbers in this case to prevent similar incidents from the US version from ever happening). In France, the top prize had five digits instead of four (because of the French franc's exchange rate at the time).
On the Netherlands' Cash en Carlo and Spain's El Precio Justo, the studio lights are dimmed down to reveal the correct prices.
In Australia (at least during Larry Emdur's runs), the board does not light up to reveal the correct prices. Instead, three models display the prices on yellow (for two-digit), red (for three-digit), and blue (for four-digit) placards.
