Taco Bell Carnival Games

In my match.com days, I met quiet a few interesting people. One of which was a nice girl who was raised by carni-parents. When I heard about her upbringing, I took her out to the San Mateo county fair for our first date. She showed me some of the inside tricks for the skill games on the arcade. Ultimately we were a horrible match, but it was a fun date.

Speaking of carnival games, some of you have may have noticed that they took the water out of the "free burrito" game at Taco Bell. Now it is very easy to earn free burritos because you don't have to worry about crazy random fluid dynamics. After about five minutes of practice, I can score one 50% of the time. Even when you lose, all the money goes to charity. How good is that?



RULES OF THE GAME:

To win, land a coin on the bottom yellow platform. You control the platform position by turning the knob at the top of the machine. Prizes vary depending on the value of what you drop:
Nickels = cinnamon crisps
Dimes = tacos
Quarters = bean burritos

STRATEGY

(1) Practice and perfect your game with pennies. You won't win anything, but you won't lose much either.

(2) Position the platforms so that your coin will land directly on bottom most orange platform. The winning yellow platform is not reliably dropable from the top coin slot.

(3) Drop a few pennies into the inside slot to judge this position. You want to use the inside slot because while it might be harder to get a lucky orange platform bounce, it will be easier to spin the coin to the yellow platform. With perfect placement, you will get a lucky bounce and land about 60% of the time.



(4) Now the skill part is moving the coin from the bottom most orange platform to the yellow platform. There are two methods for this. One is the knock-bounce where you repeatedly nudge the knob in the opposite direction to scoot the coin to the yellow. This method is preferable if your coin dropped near the outside edge of the orange platform. The second method involves short quick mini-twists of the knob to try to scoot the coin over. typically centripetal force will move the coin over and out. So you have to make sure you don't fling your penny out too much.

If you perform this well you will achieve victory with your pennies:



(5) Once you master this technique. Play to win. I prefer using dimes because

• Dimes are smaller so it is easier bounce them in between the blades onto the lowest orange platform. 
  
• Dimes weigh less and have lower static friction so it is easier to nudge them onto the winning yellow platform.
  
• I like tacos.
  

So there you have it.  Have fun and share your results using my technique by commenting on this post.