Two questions on about HR 87:

1. Which mini-game, if it was played on the premire episode, would then still have enough time to play the Big Numbers?

2. In addition, which mini-games do you think ranged from taking the shortest to the longest?

Can't answer the first one, but for games that took just one roll of the die (Around the World, etc), I'm pretty sure that's some of the shortest.

I'm remembering another one, where rolling an odd number won a certain prize, and rolling even got you something else. Add that to the list for shortest...

Mind you, I haven't seen the show in about 15 or so years, so my memory isn't the greatest. :-P

The one with a prize for rolling odd and another for even would probably be Dice Derby where you roll 3 odd numbers before 3 even numbers, $1,000, otherwise a new car.

This is the Dice Derby game, which would take as many as seven rolls(Even and Odd were the two horses). I believe it took four odd or four even numbers for a horse to cross the finish line. It Takes Two could take as many as seven rolls, as each number 1-6 corresponded to a prize, and the first number the player rolled twice determined the prize won. Those two were among the longest.

Ahh, now it's coming back to me; thanks both of you.

Now, while we're on the subject, I vaguely remember another two others called Love Letters and Driver's Test. The latter, I believe, was set up like a Monopoly board (less spaces of course), and the object was to get all the way around the board in a set number of rolls (kinda like Monopoly's bonus round), and if you did, I think you won a car (that Jeep Cherokee Chief that 5-time champs got). I think there might have been penalty/reward spaces as well, i.e. "Go Back 2 spaces" or "Free Roll", etc.

Does that sound about right?

Driver's Test was a twelve space board, with cash amounts from $100 to $2500 and a car space. The object of the game was to land on the car space in six rolls or less. Rolling the dice moved you the number of spaces on the roll. If a roll forced to you pass the car space, future rolls would send you counterclockwise rather than clockwise. If the car was not landed on in six rolls, the contestant got the cash amount in the square they landed on on their last roll. The car played for was either a Jeep Wrangler or a Mazda 323.

The Jeep Cherokee Chief was offered to five time champions early in the run, but they discontinued offering the car to undefeated champs by the time they had their first one.

Love Letters had contestants trying to guess a six letter word to win a new car. The contestant would roll a die up to six times. Each time they rolled a number they hadn't already rolled before, a new letter in the word was revealed. After the sixth roll, they had to guess the word to win the car or win $100 for each letter revealed if they didn't guess the word.

Love Letters is one of the longest ones I can remember. The triclk is to reveal as many of the 6 letters without repeating a number. It also helps to get the first & last letters & any key constanant or vowel needed to solve it.

As for the shortest, I remember the Rabbit Test. This was where 2 models were seen wearing jackets(red & green I think). Under one of them is another jacket(I think a fake mink) The other one had a REAL mink fur coat. All the player had to do was pick wich model had the fur coat by "feeling" both jackets & deciding who had the fur. It's a simple 50/50 game that hardly took a minute of playing time.

Gosh, thank you for that, Craig. Truly a thoughtful and insightful piece about a two-minute side game. I had no idea that repeating a rolled number could be so...disastrous.

For that matter, did anyone notice how it's almost the same thing as the Blitz Bonanza?

(As a kid, I always hoped that if they were going to do a side game, that it would be Driver's Test, since the others were done so quickly. Then again, that's sort of like wishing that your dentist would hurry the hell up with your root canal so you can get to your audit.)

If Merrill Heatter wants to steal from his own game, let him.