Cover Up (pricing game)

Cover Up is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. It is played for a car.

The game debuted on the Season 22 premiere on September 13, 1993. However, the episode was never seen in most of the United States; it was pre-empted by a CBS News Special Report. The show was broadcast in a Small number of East Coast markets that were airing The Price Is Right an hour early at the time. CBS considered it officially aired and never reran it.

Gameplay

A false price for a car is given on a gameboard, each digit being incorrect. Alternative digits are provided above each incorrect digit - two options for the first digit, three for the second, up to six options for the fifth digit. The Contestant must choose an alternative for each digit and cover up the original digit.

Once all five digits are covered up, any digits that are correct are lit up. If the contestant all five correct, they win the car. If, however, they have at least one digit correct, but not the whole price, they are given another opportunity to cover up the wrong digits with different alternatives. This is repeated until the contestant has all five digits correct and wins the car, or has no new digits correct, in which case they lose.

Strategy

The safest strategy, under ideal conditions, would be to get only one digit correct on each turn, starting with first, and working to the end. This would eliminate the most alternate digit options. However, in order for the strategy to be viable, the contestant must ensure that they can get at least one digit right in each round, which may not be possible.

Another possible strategy is to save the first or second digit, usually easily guessable, by intentionally guessing it wrong, hoping to get another digit right in the first round. Then, in subsequent rounds, a player can ensure getting at least one right by guessing these digits, and eliminate more alternatives for the more difficult last three digits.

This is one of the more difficult car games to win, as the most difficult digits to guess have the most options (as opposed to One Away, for example, in which each digit has only two options), and a contestant often has only two or three chances to select from the four to six alternatives for those digits. There are also no "secrets" to Cover Up (such as the last digit always being zero, as in Ten Chances).