In game show terms, a money ladder is made up of the dollar amounts available to be won, depending on how well a contestant does in his or her game. Money ladders can also be referred to as "money trees."
A money ladder almost always begins at the lowest dollar value available to be won on a game show. The values progress, higher and higher, eventually reaching the top prize or maximum cash prize available to be won. Occasionally the ladder is cumulative, meaning that the contestant adds the previous amounts won to the current prize. Most often, however, the individual cash values stand alone.
The term "ladder" applies here for two reasons. First, contestants "climb" a money ladder, reaching higher prize levels as they rise or continue in their game. In addition, each dollar amount can be referred to as a "rung" on the ladder being climbed towards the top prize.
Money ladders on game shows are normally displayed prominently as part of the set. They are usually brightly colored and lit up with neon lights. As a contestant works his or her way up the ladder, the current prize value that he or she is playing for is highlighted.
Numerous game shows have used money ladders to illustrate not only the available prize amounts that contestants are playing for, but also to show viewers where these contestants currently sit in their games. Some recent examples of game shows using money ladders include:
- Million Dollar Mind Game
- Duel
- Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader
- Don't Forget the Lyrics
- Power of Ten
- The Moment of Truth
As you can see, the games themselves are very different, but the prizing format is very similar amongst all of these titles.
Technically, the prize wall on Deal or No Deal could also be considered a money ladder, even though contestants don't play straight through to the top prize in this game.
Money Tree – The term money tree can be used interchangeably with money ladder. The word "tree" is associated with growth, which ties in with the growing prize amount. In this case, the individual prize amounts would be referred to as "branches," rather than "rungs."
Also: Prize ladder, prize tree
Here are two examples of different money ladder formats. The first, from the game show Minute to Win It, is a classic example of how a money ladder works. The show is made up of individual games that contestants must complete to advance and win cash. As each game is successfully completed, the contestant moves up to the next rung on the prize ladder.
The Minute to Win It money ladder is formatted as follows:
- $1,000
- $2,500
- $5,000
- $10,000
- $50,000
- $75,000
- $125,000
- $250,000
- $500,000
- $1,000,000
As you can see, there are ten rungs on this ladder ending up with the top prize of one million dollars. The prize values are not cumulative, so when a contestant moves up, his or her current rung is the total amount of cash won so far.
The money ladder on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire works a little differently. When the game starts out, contestants are shown a money ladder for the first half of the game that looks like most others, arranged from lowest to highest dollar value. That ladder looks like this:
- $100
- $500
- $1,000
- $2,000
- $3,000
- $5,000
- $7,000
- $10,000
- $15,000
- $25,000
After the values are shown, they are randomly jumbled so that contestants are playing for an unknown amount on each question – the dollar values assigned to the questions are only revealed after the question has been answered.
The other main difference with the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire money tree is that the values won are cumulative. When a contestant answers a question correctly, the amount won is added to his or her bank, and he or she continues to collect money with each correct answer.
The second half of Millionaire works just like the classic money ladder format illustrated above, with four dollar amounts leading to the top, million dollar prize.
