The "Classic Concentration" bonus round wasn't random 

They don’t have to run it by standards and practices if it is allowed by the rules.

I say Stan’s was more impressive cause he had the basetime of 35 seconds on the clock Geargeann had 55

I'd love to see the other "boards" used over the series. It makes sense that there would be a "hard" board for say the first time champion, versus an "easy" boars that the producers would put up on the champion's fifth day.

They would often start off with 2 that are directly across from one another or adjacent to one another (1-2, 1-3, 1-4 for example).

That would've been nice. It would add to their winnings from the main game.

Seeing how she knocked out three pairs of cars without having previously seen their matches, she never even opened the door for the unmatchable car, and she told Alex that she taped and rewatched each episode (as the director quickly cued the closing theme)... She put in the work and she earned a car for it.

@Brandon Taylor Probably because unlike the PYL example this one didn't cost NBC over $100K

Pyramid in 1987, in a $100K tournament

Sale of the Century: The Winner’s Board, but because of the amount of choices, it would be much harder(easier since there’s less chances of needing to rearrange a board)

This is purely anecdotal and unconfirmed, but when I was a kid I watched TTD incessantly, and I swear the dragon seemed to be behind the number "6" way more often than once-every-9-games-on-average. Of course, I was a child, but I remember cringing and yelling "WHAT - DO YOU EVER WATCH THIS SHOW?!" whenever someone picked 6 as their first selection 🙃 ... not sure if anyone ever did a deep-dive into the stats of the dragon distribution, but if I were to bet money on it, it has to be 6 😇

Assumption (or perhaps more accurately, a presumption). I went backward from episode 689 and discovered 14 different arrangements -- I stopped somewhere around episode 620 because it had been a while since I had seen any new ones. (It would not surprise me to learn that different collections of arrangements were used before and after this time period; I didn't check.) In all 14 arrangements, the pairs were spread out so that a contestant employing one of the most frequently used strategies (1-2, 4-5... or 1-2, 3-4...) would see very few matches amid their first four calls. "The producers" is a catch-all term that I used because I don't know the exact chain of command regarding which production employee(s) oversaw the implementation of the bonus round.

@@MSTieScott That is what I was wondering, if "the producers" meant you actually talked to some, or it was just an "assumption". Given no definitive knowledge from producers, I have an slightly alternate theory to the "they had 12-15 (or whatever) combinations that they rotated through". I'm not running "through" all the combos, but, I'm not sure if there are only a "dozen" or so boards that can be made given you don't want a same "letter" on the same row or column (at least in the example in the video, that is true, I'm thinking that might have been the criteria). If that is the case, I wonder how many different configurations there are (given that obviously if you switch two pairs of letters completely, that is still a same "configuration"). In all of the ones you saw, was the above true (letters were never in the same row or column), or was it more just something like "letters have to be 2 away from each other"? Either way, seems like one could figure out how many there are. If it is truly a very low number given the specifications of the boards they wanted (ie, under 2 dozen), that would certainly explain it then. If there still should have been like 100 or so different combinations at least, then I'll post my theory I've put elsewhere: "The thing I wonder though is was it a "purposeful" setup (ie, they made the software just rotate through a dozen or so board setups, which was the PYL issue, because it wasn't even very computerized, as much as just going through a bunch of light/projector patterns), or was it supposedly "randomized" (ie, they did have the software "randomly" create a board)... but the software developer didn't handle the random seed correctly (which on software in the 80s, I wouldn't put past someone), and so whenever you boot up the software, etc, you then get the same boards "again" (and nobody maybe even really "noticed" on the show, since you'd put in different cars each time.) Since after a day or two of taping, they likely shut down the computer, then you'd get that "reboot', and without a random 'seeder', you'd get the same random patterns again" I might be off there, and it was just sloppy producers again making 10-15 patterns and thinking they could just rotate through them and nobody would notice.

One more thing I'll point out though is given the fact that all of the "boards" they wanted started at minimum A-B-C-D, and maybe even A-B-C-D-E, that really brings down the number of combos (especially with other "demands" to the boards being given). If you have the board "orders" you could post up here or elsewhere that you noticed so far, that would be interesting (the 15 letters going across down the board).

There are two things you can almost guarantee you won't see that often or not at all. #1: something like a match, consisting of 3-4, 6-7, etc. #2: a match of two consecutive numbers next to each other (1-2, 5-6, 7-8, etc. I've seen the latter happen, only a couple of times. Other than that, the pairs were either two away from each other or diagonal.

For the same reason they didn't on PYL... it isn't "cheating" to figure out the board isn't random.... that's on the people running the show.