Glossary

Like any long-running Internet community, Golden-Road.net has spawned its own shorthand verbiage and lore that may be unfamiliar to outsiders. This guide should be helpful in deciphering unfamiliar terms.

CSS – Chatroom Showcase Showoff

Abbreviation for “Chatroom Showcase Showoff”, a game played by forum members each time a new episode airs.

As each showcase is revealed on the broadcast, members in the Discord chat tally up their own bids and submit them via PM during the commercial break before the reveal. Players are awarded points each day for how close they can get to each showcase’s ARP without going over. A cumulative leaderboard is kept each season, with a playoff and champion crowned.

FPG – Friday Prediction Game

Abbreviation for “Friday Prediction Game”, a game played by forum members typically once per week.

Pricing games typically do not repeat in a week. On Thursday night, players attempt to use the knowledge of the 24 games played so far that week to predict what Friday’s lineup will be. Correct guesses win points. A leaderboard is kept each season, with playoffs at the end and a champion crowned.

GRECO

A prediction game based on “bingo”, named after former producer Kathy Greco. Each weekend, players submit a 5×5 “Greco Card” with 25 pricing games they believe will be played during the week. Points are awarded for the first bingo… er, “Greco”, or for forming certain patterns or other criteria. Like the other forum games, a leaderboard is kept and a champion crowned each season.

HYO – Host Your Own

One of the most popular areas of the forums was the ability for users to host their own mock episodes of TPIR, with other forum members playing as participants. This section was a major draw, with waiting lists to host lasting potentially months. The quality of shows could vary dramatically, ranging from heartfelt well-executed tributes with detailed writing and graphics, to disorganized amateur wrecks.

In 2017, the section was closed for approximately two years in order to refocus the site back onto discussing actual TPIR episodes over mock TPIR episodes. The section was reopened in 2019.

Notable HYO episodes

MSTieScott’s “Reactive Budget” – hosted by MSTieScott, who would go on to work as a production assistant for TPIR for years. A fixed budget was set for this episode; any prizes won early on in the first half would mean that his “producers” would arrange more difficult setups for the second half, and vice versa. His “producers” were attempting to give away a certain amount without going over.

ilovesuperball – Legendary for how incompetently run it was. An overconfident forum member was incredibly eager to make his show work, but crashed and burned at every conceivable opportunity. An essential read. Lines from his HYO are still being quoted nearly two decades later.

Mateo’s Price is Right – Hosted by forum member Todd, with slick, sharp, and often hilarious writing. Todd as host would battle against a fictional announcer/producer named Mateo to give away mock prizes.

Mallory16’s series: Known for detailed, animated graphics (many of which have unfortunately been lost to time), sardonic writing, tricky setups that played against the average TPIR fan’s psychology, and offering incredibly expensive pens.

SideshowPA’s “Cable Access” – A reimagined TPIR as a fictional cable access show, with incredibly cheap prizes that nevertheless fit with the traditional feel and format of a regular episode of TPIR.

cu’s and Prizes’ “Price is Right: MDS #1” – A dual-hosted recreation of a “Million Dollar Spectacular” with large prizes, detailed animated graphics, and tricks that only hardcore fans would know.

gamesurf’s “Everything Old is New Again” – Played during a fictional “Recycling Awareness Week”. As the show progressed, it became clear the same prizes were being recycled over and over, albeit being used in games where their context was still relevant.

123123123’s “Pricing Game Gauntlet” – A modified format with no IUFBs. A pricing game setup was shown, with all participants having 48 hours to respond. Any player who “lost” a pricing game was eliminated. Play continued until all players had been eliminated, or six pricing games had been played. Any players who survived all six pricing games won the chance to bid on a showcase.

Fake Pricing Games

Some users created joke pricing games that lived on as gags.

“Crane Game” – A fake article created on a TPIR wiki page that confused some users into thinking it was a real game. Memorialized on the Superfan episode.

“Anvil Drop” and “The Incredible T” – Nonexistent pricing games that appeared in the dreams of Mallory16. Anvil Drop was exactly the same as Double Prices, except that there was an anvil hanging over the contestant’s head. As described by Mallory, “if she picked the wrong price, the anvil would fall on her head, presumably killing her. Fortunately, she won.”

Mallory’s original description of The Incredible T went as follows: “There were four Ts. You had to pick two of them, and if you didn’t get electrocuted (which one of the Ts would do to you if you touched it), you won.”

User-Created Pricing Games

Many user-created pricing game ideas have been submitted to the boards over the years. Some are better than others. A few were good enough to be worth remembering:

Shot in the Dark – A car game with similarities to Any Number and Pocket Change. Later incorporated into a fan-created PC game.

Around The World – A “quickie” played for a trip.

Jam – A quickie, essentially the inverse of Squeeze Play with a different theme. Later incorporated into a fan-created PC game.

“Fill It Up” or “Fill ‘er Up” – another car game with similarities to Any Number and Gas Money, although, impressively, created before Gas Money existed.

(As Fremantle is legally prohibited from taking ideas from anybody unaffiliated with the show, posting any pricing game ideas on these boards guarantees they will never appear on the actual show. After becoming a show employee, MSTieScott created “Do the Math”, which appears on the show to this day.)

CSS Terms

Some jargon used in CSS can be unfamiliar to the newcomer. Here’s a guide to some frequently used slang terms you may encounter in chat:

“DSW” – To come within $250 of one showcase. Short for “Double Showcase Winner”.

“WSD” – A “reverse” DSW. To overbid a showcase by $250 or less, painfully overbidding and losing.

“Garf” – To underbid by $5,000 or more. Named after member Garffreak, who made a notable string of massive underbids.

“Garf of the Century” – To underbid by $10,000 or more.

“Willy” – To overbid by $5,000 or more. Named after member FPGWillyT, who made a string of massive overbids several months after “Garf” was coined.

“Willy of the Century” – To overbid by $10,000 or more.

“Manx” – To underbid by such an extreme degree that you fail to cover 50% of the value of one showcase. Named after a former member.

“Heels” – to overbid by $1,000 or less. Named after North Carolina fan heelsrule1988, who had a habit of doing just that.

“Ending Avoider” – a small amenity like a dinner or excursion that raises the price of a showcase sufficiently so that a contestant who ends their bid in “000” would avoid hitting a DSW. As a way to avoid giving away Double Showcase Wins too often, no showcase since 2012 has ended with a number from 000 to 250.

“-251” – The most common ending with which CSS players end their bids.

“$20,264” – An extremely cheap showcase on 3/25/19, only $13 higher than what is believed to be the minimum value. TPIR has not offered a showcase under $20,000 since 2014. Only two CSS players that day did not overbid, with seven additional players overbidding by $150 or less.

Other Terms Used In Chat

“Fork” – Signifying confidence that a contestant will lose their pricing game, i.e. “Stick a fork in it, he’s done.” To “Fork” someone carries consequences; if the contestant goes on to win the game, everyone in the chat who inappropriately “forked” gets “sinbinned”, or muted from the chat for two minutes.

“Spoon” – opposite of “Fork”. To “Spoon” is to signify confidence that a contestant will win their pricing game.

“Limo” – A contestant who is called down among the first four but fails to get onstage after six chances to bid is said to win nothing but a “limo ride” to a gag location of the recapper’s choice (currently West Virginia). Formerly known as the “First Four Breakfast Club”.

“That’s Two Ninth” – to complain about a practically impossible setup that no contestant would ever win. Named after a string of “That’s Too Much” setups in Season 38, where out of ten prices, the correct price frequently appeared in either position #2 or #9. No contestant ever stopped that early or that late.

“Chris Cross” – To beat a setup that producers clearly did not won. Named after game producer Chris Donnan, who creates game setups. Former iterations include “You Can’t Stop The Dob” and “Can’t Fool the Fingers”.

“479” – a gag used to signify bad advice given by the audience. Taken from the April 7 2020 playing of Ten Chances, where the audience began chanting “FOUR SEVEN NINE” in unison at the contestant during a playing of Ten Chances. (Any fan familiar with Ten Chances should know why the price would never be $479).

“LFAT” – abbreviation for “Loyal Friend and True”, a title Bob would occasionally bestow upon a contestant who demonstrated they watched the show frequently.

“Joe Plinko” – slang for a casual Price is Right fan, one who enjoys TPIR but does not know or care to know about the show’s inner workings to the degree of an LFAT. Juxtaposition of “Average Joe” and the show’s most popular game “Plinko”.

!cancelbob – a command used in chat to trigger a prerecorded message. Used when watching reruns of Bob Barker episodes from the 1980s to signify that Bob was saying or doing something that would get him “cancelled” today. Usually, but not always, set off in response to Bob’s interactions with female contestants.

“Meme Trip IUFB” – Used when a trip is offered in an Item Up For Bids. The practice polarizes the chat.

“The Cheese is Now” – a memorable phrase screamed onstage by member ThatGameShowGuy when onstage playing “Now or Then”. Correctly guessing whether a bag of cheese wheels was priced “Now” or “Then” would win him a $49,000 trailer. During the break Drew and George joked that “The Cheese Is Now” was a short-lived soap opera. (The Cheese, was, indeed, “Now”.)

Go back to About?