Season 40 Hopes/Predictions; Confirmed Changes

Please link the pictures! I can't find them :/

Good Morning America did a segment on the new season today. It shows a bit more of the new board, including the new category strip, and some words from Bellamie. A couple puzzle spoilers, but no major gameplay spoilers.

Oh, this XL week is clever marketing in its wording, and pretty much irrelevant. Note that the numbers below assume you have the XL wedge on hand, somehow magically by default. Anywho. Here's why:

Roughly the odds of giving away the million are supposed to be about 1/1,000 in normal gameplay, notably enough by my estimates, not just in actuality, but from what I can surmise. This includes: Landing on the wedge, picking up the wedge (correct consonant), solving that puzzle, not bankrupting the wedge, winning the main game, hitting it on the bonus wheel, then solving that puzzle. Mathematically fascinating given what 1,000 squared is. Assuming equal main game spin power of female spinners*, this should make it about 2.67x times easier to win, or about 1/625 shows. Within the span of a given week, it goes from 1/200 (1/1,000*5) to just over 1/125 (((1-(1/2.67))*1000)/5). 2.67=2x2x2/3, since each part doubles, then multiplied by 0.67 for the player distribution of 2:1 female; see the asterisked noted below.

Thus, the expected value of this change is $1,536 per game at 1/125, assuming the secondary XL wedge replaces a $40,000 space, or $1,600 (1,000,000*1/1,000*200/125; multiply by .96 to adjust for the $40K presumed replacing) if it replaced a hypothetically blank (imagine that...) bonus wheel envelope. Thus, $7,680 for a five-show week.

The in-math says this is so immaterial that adding the TTU meant more financially at its onset, even before the triple-solve bonus came to be. If they ran this promotion all 39 weeks/195 episodes, it would cost the show an average of $299,520 more. Even if you consider a man at literally 1/2 his female counterpart (which is bad math, but for argument's sake) to solve a MDBR for that amount, this is still $2,304 +EV to the players per show, for an average given (aired) five-show week total of $11,520, or $449,280 for a full 195 episode season. That's pretty hilarious.

*Yes, this matters, given the average spin power tends to favor a woman playing a million-dollar bonus round by a material degree, in relative proximity to round starting points, let alone the non-skewed (2:1) player distribution cast by the show.

After reading the press release, I like the changes they are making such as upgrading the puzzleboard and putting two millions wedges to give contestants two chances to win $1 million.

Well one thing hasn’t changed. Cringy mom is still doing “the floss.”

There are audiences now. They just didn’t have them the first three weeks of taping.

Next week had an audience.

Okay, that’s cool. Thanks.