Duration: 6:26

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"Rat Race" is the first new game since Gas Money, and completely engineered by Drew.

PRIZES: A car, four-digit and three-digit prizes can be won.

REVEAL: Identical to 10 Chances, complete with the same first cue.

STAGING: The game is right on the stage, taking up quite a bit of space between the turntable and door 2/3, which oddly also sums up 10 Chances' space. :P

PROPS: There is a S-shaped track, a results LED screen, and a table for the products to be priced. Drew and the contestant stand in front of the LED screen.

TIMING: Since today was a bit long with its premiere, I'd say on average 6 minutes, but maybe 6.5. This puts it among the upper tier but not the longest ever.

RULES:
There are 5 toy "rats", identified by colors - blue, orange, pink, green and yellow. By prizing products correctly, rat(s) can act in the contestants' favor.

As Drew explains quite well, any combination of prizes can be won. If any one of the rats you choose is the winner, the car is awarded. If any one of them is 2nd, the four-digit prize is won, and the same for the three-digit. Therefore an EXACTA for this game is the scenario in that the contestants' three rats all finish in the top 3.

But to earn all of those rats, some pricing must be done, as alluded to. As of this playing there is a grocery product, two-digit small product, and interestingly a small three-digit prize on its own, not a small product.

In what is best described as Walk-of-Fame-esque, the contestant submits a guess for each product that must be within a certain range high-or-low. The GP must be guessed within $1, the SP within $10, and the small prize within $100. It can be inferred that Drew's experience with "Power of 10" led to these ranges.

When/if a contestant wins a rat, the color is chosen, and the track it will run on the S-shaped course is lit up. Whenever a rat has an inside track on a turn, it will have an equal and opposite outside turn, so the same distance is run by every rat.

Once the pricing portion is complete, the rats in favor of the contestant are marked on the LED screen, and the race is started by a model. This is where the logistics are unclear - somehow, the speeds of each rat are randomized at the start of the race. There is no fast or slow machinery that the producers can switch colors on every show.

What results is a good exciting 10 seconds as the rats come to the finish line. A motion sensor somewhere (above the finish line, that red strip at 5:54?) records the results on the LED screen, which appropriately matches up the contestants' rats and displays the prize(s) won.

Richard DiPirro, the director, showed an instant replay at the finish line today heading to commercial. It is unclear if this will be a mainstay (but I'm sure everyone hopes it will be).

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LOVE this game on its first playing. Wipeouts look hard to achieve. $400 is a bit high though, clearly within $100 on a prize, not a product is a gimme to avoid the wipeout but it infringes too close to the watch's price.

At the same time, $1 on a high-end GP could be evil... we'll have to see in September.