There seems to be a lot of suspicion online about this win.
The oddest thing is how amazingly blase and non-emotive the host is about the win. Did something happen off camera in this show that caused this reaction?
Not sure how true it is but I found this which would explain his reaction.
The show was not swindled, any more than Press Your Luck was swindled by Michael Larson. The system was successfully gamed.
Getting cues from the audience is part of the game for The Price Is Right, just as the board patterns were part of the game for PYL.
That this contestant found an associate who could keep all the prize prices in memory, and quickly add them up (for the showdown) is no more a swindle than Larson’s memorizing the PYL patterns. Frankly, I’m surprised someone involved never saw this coming years ago.
They didn’t even exploit a loophole in the rules - they played the game how it was meant to be played, they just did it better than most people could. That’s not a swindle, that’s just the show’s bad luck. (PYL improved the boards’ randomness after the Larson incident (in which the company decided he wasn’t cheating), to keep other players from doing the same. I have no idea what PIR could do to keep this from happening again, other than completely changing the way the game is played. Except maybe increase the number of prizes they use, or ones with more volatile pricing.)
How could someone memorize all the prices? Do they use the same items repeatedly on the show? That seems like it would be unwise. Or, was the guy some sort of savant who knew the price of everything everywhere?
Yes, or at least they used to. They still have repeat prizes, but they absolutely learned from this lesson and will be mixing it up a bit.