Price the Cart

Guess today’s grocery total.

Streak: 0

Today’s basket

    You’ll hear too high or too low, and the range narrows. Hit the exact total, to the cent. Unlimited guesses; fewer is better.

      Guess today’s grocery total

      1. Everyone gets the same basket — items and amounts, not prices.
      2. Guess the official U.S. average total (BLS, October 2026).
      3. Each guess is too high or too low, and the range shrinks until you hit it exactly.

      A game, not a contest. Share a card that never shows the total.

      How to play

      1. Everyone, on the same calendar day in Eastern Time, gets the same grocery list — items and quantities, not prices.
      2. Guess what that basket would cost at official U.S. average prices for October 2026 (BLS Average Price Data).
      3. After each guess you are told too high or too low, and how close you were. The possible range shrinks, so the puzzle is always solvable.
      4. You can peek at one item’s unit price. That is marked on your share card.
      5. Share a result card that shows your guesses as high or low marks — never the total, and never your dollar amounts. You can optionally include a year-earlier percentage, still with no totals. Don’t spoil the answer.

      This is a game, not a prize contest. The prices are national averages, not a store receipt.

      Past days

      Play a previous basket (from 13 November 2026 on). Future days stay sealed so everyone is on the same puzzle. Playing a past day does not change today’s streak.

      Where the prices come from

      Prices were retrieved on 13 November 2026 from the official BLS Public Data API. Every item uses the October 2026 (M10) U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted. Series titles and identifiers are shown with each item after you ring up the basket, and match the official BLS series in the catalog.

      BLS publications are U.S. government works and are in the public domain. Cite the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS does not endorse this game, and cannot vouch for analyses made after the data were retrieved.

      We do not invent prices. If a series had no October 2026 value, it is not in the catalog. October 2025 average prices for these series were not published (official BLS footnote: “Data unavailable due to the 2025 lapse in appropriations”). A year-earlier comparison, when shown, uses a nearby published 2025 month and labels that month.