I suspect CBS would have planned for at most two winners, one of them on Clock Game. They got three, one of them on Clock Game.

One Away: Get all 5 numbers in the price of the car right on the first try.
Odds: 1 out of 24 or %04.1666
Opinions: This is a good choice, in my opinion. It’s difficult, yet rewards smart shoppers.

Range Game: Predict the price of the car EXACTLY.
Odds: 1 out of 600, or %00.1666
Opinions: If CBS wants a $1,000,000 win, would they give it a 1:600 chance of being won? Remember, the specials were taped out of order, so budget problems can’t be the reason they made it so hard. I think it’s just so there’s NOT a $1,000,000 winner every episode.

Plinko: Win at least two chips, put three chips in the $20,000 slot, and then do something with a special gold chip.
Odds: Assuming that the object was to put the gold chip in the $20,000 and that all slots have an equal chance of being hit, the odds would be about %00.02032210.
Opinions: This was almost completely luck-based. You can improve the odds slightly by getting more Plinko chips, but aside from that, there’s not much else you can do. On the plus side, this was a classic game and it was almost mandatory that they use this as the Million Dollar Game.

1/2 Off: Win $25,000; then give it up for a chance to chose one box that could have $1,000,000.
Odds: The odds of winning are 1:16 assuming you know nothing about pricing and have a 50:50 shot at every small prize. You will have better odds the more you know about pricing. The odds of winning $1,000,000 is 1 in 240, or $00.041666
Opinions: CBS probably threw 1/2 Off in to give the show a Deal or No Deal feel. Giving up $25,000 for a slim shot at $1,000,000? I think that the usual TPiR contestants are there to win maybe a dining room group, a TV, or, if they’re lucky, a car. Would you, a casual audience member, give up a relatively high amount of cash for a small chance at $1,000,000? Not me.

Clock Game: Win both prizes in less than 10 seconds.
Odds: This entirely depends on how fast you can talk.
Opinions: If you know binary search, then this is the easiest game in the rotation and you are virtually sure to win in 30 seconds. If you are a fast talker and can bid smartly, you are virtually sure to win in 30 seconds. But can you combine the two and win in 10 seconds? Also, you are rewarded if you are a Loyal Friend and True. If you watch the show often, you know that prizes in Clock game usually end in 99.
In Cynthia’s case, when she picked the $899 on the first try, I was screaming. I was hoping for something slightly harder on the second prize, maybe $979? But when the $999 popped up on the screen, I was confident we would have a $1,000,000 winner. She started out shakily, but as we know won the big money.

Million Dollar Showcase: Bid to within $1,000 without going over on your showcase and win.
Odds: Depends entirely on your knowledge of pricing and the difficulty of the showcase.
Opinions: I think it is just good luck that we’ve had two out of five $1,000,000 winners. The usual winning range for daytime showcases is $5,000 to $10,000; while on the Spectacular’s it’s not uncommon to see people be off by more than $25,000 and still win.

Oh well. Trial and error is just part of the job of running a game show! :P

Similarly, viewers are much more excited over big wins if they haven’t been spoiled on the results beforehand. Hint.

Anyway, it’s obvious CBS wanted one million-dollar winner, but there really was no planning for three. How often do you see people guess MDS-level showcases, or any showcases for that matter, to within $1k? Not often that’s for sure. And most of the pricing game stipulations were near-impossible to win - even this one was only won because of the prices and a great first guess.

As for clock game being easy? I agree this is likely the game that CBS wanted to give away the million, but how many times do we see someone win clock game in 10 seconds let alone guess a prize exactly right on the first guess? Setting up the prices as 899 and 999 also helped, whereas if it were something like 913 and 762 - there would be almost no way they could’ve given away the million here. I personally think that CBS didn’t want to 3 $1M winners in 5 shows, but I’m sure they didn’t want to go through the entire set of 6 MDS’s without a $1M winner for ratings purposes - so they set it up with some DSW friendly showcase prices, and a couple of moderately rare but achievable stipulations for the $1M games and they got what they wanted.

As for those of you who said the clock shouldn’t have moved - you’re right, but I believe it was part of the insurance policy that a correct guess on the first bid requires a 1 second runoff - just like how in basketball you can’t make a basket without any time off the clock.

Re: Frank
From the positioning of the turntable, the contestant is able to see most of the audience but the audience is NOT allowed to say anything during the playing of the game. While the contestant COULD possibly see hand signals - it wouldn’t be clear enough for the contestant to decipher immediately. Not only that - during Clock Game the lights are dimmed on the audience too - during the one-bids and come on downs there are lights that illuminate the audience but during gameplay and commercials they are dimmed.

Drew also does not seem very excited to me in terms of giving away a million dollars. He was much more excited when he gave away the million on Power of 10, yet I’m not sure why. Maybe that’s just his personality. I always try and remember that he is a stand-up comedian by trade, not a television host.

- Frank

Drew is now- the new Price guy and who is give a damn about a barrel that goes up and down on a screen, for near unwinable, unimaginable $10 million. Producer Mike Davies has to realistically- consider getting a NEW host for that show, if it is to survive and regain…its…own…identity!

As for TPIR’s MDS, I actually do think that there have been a lot of winners. Firstly, if you want to give away the money in the Showcase round, reduce D-S zone down from $250 to (maybe) $100 (the old zone)…don’t increase it.

Also, as soon as $999 went up on the screen, I *knew* the $1,000,000 was in the bag. Maybe I’ve watched the game too often, but I have seen $999 as the second price *way* too often…and I predicted the $999. As for the lucky first guess, who knows? Maybe she saw it on a previous episode…I’ve seen it happen.

I did like the other M-D games, though…needing all 5 right on “One Away” on the first try, or needing $60,000 in Plinko to try for the Million…both were great. But, my favorite (so far) was trying to get the one box (out of 15) on 1/2 off…did someone say “Treasure Hunt” or Deal or No Deal?”

Here’s a thought…get a bigger Punchboard, and have 1 (and only 1) slot for the million.

But to answer the question of too many millionaires, I think we have crossed the fatal line. It’s no longer surprising, it’s no longer delighting. At least for me, the era of million-dollar-joys is coming to a close, or is over. I’ll admit, I find myself getting very happy when a family wins $20,000 on Family Feud, or a $25,000 bonus on WoF (yes, even the lowest amount still makes me happy!) but with almost (almost) every primetime show being worth $1 million, it gets old really quickly. (I can’t really comment on syndie WWTBAM, none of the local stations carry it anymore.) It’d be really nice to see primetime shows just completely back away from the million-dollar format for a while, and maybe offer a top prize of only $100k. Heaven knows I’m probably alone on this one, but it’s hard to enjoy some of these shows anymore. Will the top prize ever come down? No, now that it’s up there and firmly rooted there since the original WWTBAM and its copycats, we’re going to stay with 7-digit prizes til kingdom come. And that saddens me.

I didn’t watch either TPIR or Duel on Friday btw, I totally forgot, I’m more interested though in watching Duel just based on what I’ve been hearing.