Pricing note

Shoe size

Big feet, hard-to-find shoes, and a very small market adjustment.

Shoe size matters mainly because very large sizes are harder and more expensive to fit. The quiz only scores it after age 16 on the male track and after age 14 on the female track.

Score: male sizes 9–10 add $2,000 and 11–12 add $10,000. On the female track, sizes 8 and below add $10,000; larger sizes subtract $20,000.

Foot facts

  • About one quarter of the bones in the human body are in the feet.
  • At roughly 10,000 steps a day, a person can walk the equivalent of several trips around Earth over a lifetime.
  • Actor Matthew McGrory, who stood 7′6″, was widely reported to wear a U.S. size 29½ shoe and needed custom footwear that cost thousands of dollars per pair.

Big feet in pop culture

King of the Hill turned Peggy Hill’s unusually large feet into a long-running character detail. She was teased as a child, struggled to find shoes, sometimes wore men’s styles, and was mortified when a store clerk told her she had grown to size 16½ and could someday reach “the big 2-0.”

One episode sends Peggy to a man who promises to make her feel secure about her feet. He points out that they contribute to her balance, posture, athletic ability, and freedom from back problems, then offers to make her a star. She later discovers he is a foot-fetish filmmaker posting the footage online.

By the end, Peggy accepts the feature she had spent years trying to hide. The joke works because shoe fit can be a genuine nuisance while the trait itself can also be an asset.

Reflexology

Reflexology, also called zone therapy, applies pressure to points on the feet or hands that practitioners associate with other parts of the body. A reflexology chart divides the foot into zones said to correspond with organs, muscles, and other structures.

Practitioners describe tight or gritty areas as signals from the corresponding body part and believe that pressure can encourage healing. Many people use the practice for relaxation and massage, although claims that it diagnoses or treats disease are not supported by strong medical evidence.

How the shoe-size score works

On the male track, sizes 9 and 10 receive a token bonus and sizes 11 and 12 receive the highest one. Other sizes are neutral. On the female track, size 8 and below receives a small bonus and larger sizes receive a penalty. The question is ignored below the age cutoffs because feet may still be growing.