1976 - Present
This is a car game that requires both skill and luck. For each digit in the price of the car, the contestant rolls a die. If the roll of the die equals the digit exactly, the contestant is notified and moves on to the next digit. If not, the contestant must guess if the roll of the die is higher or lower than the corresponding digit in the car. If the contestant gets all four digits right, s/he wins. One mistake and the game is lost.
The original rules allowed for any number between 0-9 to appear on the board. Of course, since a die only goes from 1-6, that meant that the contestant would have no chance of getting a 0, 7, 8, or 9 exactly right. Plus, it made the game nearly impossible to win. Now the digits in the cars for this game are limited to 1-6.
Name Change: In the period between 1983-1992 in which both four- and five-digit cars were used on TPiR, Dice Game existed under two names: Dice Game for four-digit cars and Deluxe Dice Game for five-digit cars. An extra number that represented the first digit of the car was stuck on the left side of the board and given to the contestant for free. This looked very tacky. By 1989 or so, TPiR was no longer giving away cars that were less than $7,000, so the fifth digit became a permanent (and less tacky) addition and the game was known as Dice Game from then on.
Set Changes: In addition to the changes mentioned above, the entire board set up went from red on white to red on yellow in the late '80s. The board was then given an updated logo with nifty dice in the early '90s.
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| Here's the first Dice Game board. Once again, we have a tacky extension cord sticking out from behind it... | This is a pretty good close-up shot of one of the dies...that first digit has to be higher than a three! |
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| She agrees...the light surrounding the window above the die indicates that she thinks the first digit is higher than three. | This shows how hard it was to win before the 1-6 rule; rolling a 5 on the last digit only gave her a 50/50 shot of winning that digit. Note that she nailed the third digit on the nose. |
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| Here's a Dice Game win with the 1-6 rule from 1979. This car price was screaming Dice Game...two 6's and a 5! | It's a Trans Am...wait...in 1983, we can't play Dice Game for a Trans Am... |
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| Let's play DELUXE Dice Game! | They differentiated between Deluxe Dice Game and regular Dice Game for a few years in the 1980's. Eventually, cars worth under $6,666 were hard to find, so we just had five-digit Dice Game |
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| Here's the current Dice Game setup from December, 1998. | And we have a winner! She rolled sixes on the first three dice and a three on the last one. Good stuff. |