At least Bill Gates admitted at the outset that it had been “a long time” since he’d been in a supermarket, because, when Ellen DeGeneres put his grocery-item price-guessing skills to the test, nothing could have been clearer to us regular folk who do our own shopping.

During the Microsoft mogul’s appearance on DeGeneres’s talk show last month (his first visit, apparently), the host/comedian challenged him to guess the prices of common-people grocery items, such as Rice-A-Roni, Tide Pods and Totino’s Pizza Rolls. If the billionaire was able to estimate three of the five item prices within $1, the audience would win a prize. If he got all of them correct, DeGeneres quipped that the show would take care of his kids’ student loans. Ha ha.

“No danger there,” Gates mused before gamely trying to nail the numbers and quickly displaying a cluelessness that was both to be expected and strangely startling. (Watch it here — definitely worth the time.)

Rice-A-Roni Rice Pilaf? That’s $1, sir, not $5. And those Tide Pods will set you back not $4 or even $10, but rather a cool (clean) $19.95.

You gotta love the shocked look on Gates’s face when that Pods price was revealed. Yeah, it’s a pretty safe bet the tech whiz doesn’t do his own laundry, but is it possible that he procures his own dental floss? Because he got that one spot-on, confidently guessing $4 for the $3.78 package.

Good one! But Gates needed serious audience help with the last two.

Who would pay $22 for an $8.98 package of frozen pizza rolls? Or $10 or more for a $3.66 TGI Fridays frozen spinach and artichoke dip, even if it is “branded”?

I guess now we know. 

Photo: John Lamparski / Stringer, GettyImages