GSN, and probably some other places I can't think of now, had a habit of doing that. They'd tape a couple episodes, figure some things out, and change course for the remainder of the run, burying the "test" results late in the airing season. To wit, Idiotest had a different bonus round with 5 questions in 60 seconds, rather than one test both players tackled. The first two taped episodes of Whammy! had the players start on 0, rather than with $1,000.
And I managed to find my old website that detailed some of the other Cram rules. "The Rant" had 10 ideas to match vs. 8 words or phrases, and teams started with 0 points. In one round 2 variant, the player answering Graham's questions had to stand on a question mark to do so. That resulted in a lot of dead air vs. the later way of doing things where they alternated no matter where they were standing. And they had another version where the 10-points-per-question was only scored if the team managed to do 2 things right in the stunt, with a bonus of doubling all the question points if they played the stunt perfectly.
-Jason