TTD bonus round question

[SuperMatch93]

On early episodes of the syndicated TTD, Wink asks contestants if they want to quit during the bonus round to avoid finding the dragon and keep their money, the same way Jack would ask Joker's Wild contestants if they wanted to stop along the way. On later editions, however, contestants plow on and pick numbers without Wink offering this.

Does anyone know if they still had the option to walk away even though it wasn't stated, or was that rule changed? Also, does anyone recall a contestant stopping prematurely in later episodes of the series?

[splinkynip]

Yes the option was always there even when Wink stopped asking. I do not recall though anyone in later years ever stopping.

[ivoryman1986]

Allan Lichtman is one that opted to take the money he accumulated in the bonus game once. I don't think any other player after him have ever opted to take the money they accumulated in the bonus game unless some of y'all remember seeing it on the CBN reruns. We were surprised to find out that episodes from the second season appeared on CBN.

[Neumms]

Another question: Did a standards-and-practices person see what was under each number at the start of each bonus round? I don't remember if there was a shuffle before number-picking started or not.

[clemon79]

Another question: Did a standards-and-practices person see what was under each number at the start of each bonus round? I don't remember if there was a shuffle before number-picking started or not.

There was, but, it being a computer program, it was a meaningless animation. One would think, if they were really that deep into it, they would merely need to have the S&P department (or more likely, a duly designated representative thereof, because I'm guessing the likelihood of an S&P guy in the late '70s understanding even BASIC is about the same as me reading ancient Mongolian) review the program code once to make sure it preassigns the values into an array 1-9 (or 0-8, whatever) before the game begins and then displays the values based on that array, which doesn't change through the course of play. From that point forward, it would have to be on the honor system that they were running the same code each time, unless they got the $100,000 Tune safe with the spinning carousel to hold the floppy disk in between uses.

[Neumms]

Thanks, Chris. Now I’m thinking about how they rigged the 50s version. Did they feed players nine categories of answers? Or did they plot how the mechanical shuffle—which wasn’t much of a shuffle—went so Dan would have more control and the player less memorization.

[Adam Nedeff]

Thanks, Chris. Now I’m thinking about how they rigged the 50s version. Did they feed players nine categories of answers? Or did they plot how the mechanical shuffle—which wasn’t much of a shuffle—went so Dan would have more control and the player less memorization.

The one account I've seen from a contestant who played the rigged game was that she was told the specific order in which to pick categories in order to cause a tie, which tells me that the shuffling mechanism was pre-determined.

[rjaguar3]

Thanks, Chris. Now I’m thinking about how they rigged the 50s version. Did they feed players nine categories of answers? Or did they plot how the mechanical shuffle—which wasn’t much of a shuffle—went so Dan would have more control and the player less memorization.

The one account I've seen from a contestant who played the rigged game was that she was told the specific order in which to pick categories in order to cause a tie, which tells me that the shuffling mechanism was pre-determined.

From what I remember the shuffling mechanism just rotates the categories through the board a specific number of positions.

[The Ol' Guy]

A visit to the Getty Images site has several 1950s Tic Tac Dough pictures, including a behind-the-game board shot of someone loading the categories. It could well be that there would be a good chance that the producers would know which categories would show up where.  https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?family=editorial&phrase=Tic%20Tac%20Dough

[rjaguar3]

A visit to the Getty Images site has several 1950s Tic Tac Dough pictures, including a behind-the-game board shot of someone loading the categories. It could well be that there would be a good chance that the producers would know which categories would show up where.  https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?family=editorial&phrase=Tic%20Tac%20Dough

As I said I believe the shuffle was deterministic and very simple, so it's a straightforward mathematical exercise to figure out which category will be in which box each round.

[parliboy]

As I said I believe the shuffle was deterministic and very simple, so it's a straightforward mathematical exercise to figure out which category will be in which box each round.

Yup, this is basic modulus math since they're moving each wheel forward by 5.

[Otm Shank]

Another question: Did a standards-and-practices person see what was under each number at the start of each bonus round? I don't remember if there was a shuffle before number-picking started or not.

I'm not going to be able to find the video for evidence, but the beat the dragon game was not randomized by the computer. There is an episode where they played the endgame twice, and I thought the dragon was in the same place for both games. Rewind the video and find out the board was exactly the same configuration. I'm sure there would be a problem if the contestant said "Well, the dragon was behind number 9 before, so I'm going there," and then it would be noticed. It would appear that they preload the configurations and someone selected the same one by mistake.

Judging by the computing power of the day -- which was already impressively running the board -- I would also venture a guess that the maingame board was already loaded with a pre-randomized shuffle sequence, and maybe an S&P person picks which pattern set to apply or where to start in the pattern to head off a fix. This might be the technical reason why early episodes had a shuffle once per turn instead of once per contestant, because it meant less shuffles. Again, maybe.

[Adam Nedeff]

Judging by the computing power of the day -- which was already impressively running the board -- I would also venture a guess that the maingame board was already loaded with a pre-randomized shuffle sequence, and maybe an S&P person picks which pattern set to apply or where to start in the pattern to head off a fix. This might be the technical reason why early episodes had a shuffle once per turn instead of once per contestant, because it meant less shuffles. Again, maybe.

I would actually say they just did it that way because that's the way they always did it--the shuffling rules for the 1950s version were once per round instead of once per contestant. My guess is they changed the shuffling rules because they had this cool gigantic electronic toy onstage and they liked showing off what it could do.

[rjaguar3]

I would actually say they just did it that way because that's the way they always did it--the shuffling rules for the 1950s version were once per round instead of once per contestant. My guess is they changed the shuffling rules because they had this cool gigantic electronic toy onstage and they liked showing off what it could do.

One effect of this rule is that on the CBS Tic-Tac-Dough, a champion could often force the challenger to block with a tossup box. (Without seeing the CBS episodes, we may never know how bad of a problem this was in practice.) It seems like if this wasn't by design, then shuffling after each player's turn would be logical to introduce at the start of the CBS version when tossup boxes are introduced to the game. But the change to shuffle after each turn didn't happen until syndication.

I wonder why the change happened so late.