Let 'em Roll
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Let 'em Roll is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. Debuting on the Season 28 premiere on September 20, 1999, it is played for a one of two possible prizes: a car or a cash consolation prize of up to $7,500. This game uses grocery items.
[edit] Gameplay
This two-part game (based on Yahtzee) uses special cubes. On three sides of each cube are pictures of a car. On the other three sides are cash amounts: $500, $1,000 and $1,500. Each cube is identical.
In the game's first part, the contestant is given one roll of the five cubes to begin the game and can earn two more by answering two questions about grocery items. Three grocery items are shown. The price for the first item is given, and the contestant must determine whether the next item in the line is higher or lower than the one preceding it. The contestant can win up to two extra rolls in this manner.
In the second half of the game, the contestant is given a bucket containing the cubes and directed to a table to deposit them. After each roll, the contestant has one of two options:
- Keep any cash on the non-car cubes and forget about the car.
- Bank any cubes whose faces showed the picture of the car, and roll the cash cubes again.
The contestant wins the car if all five cubes have cars showing on their faces. But even if there are fewer than five cars showing on the final roll, the game is not a total loss: he keeps the sum of what shows on the cash cubes (minimum win is $500, assuming four cars are rolled).
[edit] Trivia
- In May 2003, Let 'em Roll's original table was replaced by a much larger one with a much longer ramp. This larger set was previously used on a Million Dollar Spectacular weeks before it made its daytime debut, making it the first game to have a set change on a Million Dollar Spectacular and the third to have a set change on a primetime special (the other two being Any Number and Lucky Seven on the 1986 Specials).
- A Plexiglas barrier was added around the table on March 9, 2005 to combat a recurring problem of cubes flying onto the floor.
- Contestants frequently try to remove the cubes from the bucket and roll them one at a time; Bob never allows them to follow through with this. Even if only one cube remains, Bob insists that they dump it from the container.
- This game, one of the few in which it is impossible to win nothing, also has the highest minimum prize of any pricing game; it is impossible for a contestant to not win at least $500, and up to $7,500 in cash can be won without winning the car.
- The cubes were originally made of Styrofoam. When little bits of them began breaking off, they were remade into wooden cubes.
- The odds of winning the car with three rolls of the cubes is just over 50/50 (approximately 51%).
- The grocery portion of Let 'em Roll has been adapted on Joe Pasquale's UK version of The Price Is Right as a pricing game called "Walk the Line". The player is shown five items and must make all four guesses correctly to win a prize.
- Most foreign versions of the show model their Let 'em Roll props on the game's original set. While the game is usually played for cars, it is sometimes played for other prizes on Portugal's O Preço Certo em Euros.
- Let 'em Roll has only been won on the first roll only two times. As both such contestants made a mistake during the grocery portion of the game -- a portion which producer Roger Dobkowitz intentionally tries to make easy -- it has still never been played perfectly.
