Back when syndie Link had been running for a few months, I made a bit of an effort to work it out deductively. Here's what I'm 99% sure of:
1) The first consideration is the number of questions answered correctly or incorrectly. A 2-1 record beats a 2-2 record, a 1-2 record beats a 0-2, etc. It's been so many months that I can't remember whether there was a need (game-wise or mathematics-wise) to give right answers or wrong answers more tiebreaking weight.
2) If two or more contestants have identical right-wrong question tallies, the next consideration is who banked the most money.
3) If two or more contestants have identical W-L records (no pun intended) and also banked equal amounts of money (and even this did happen fairly often), they're ranked based on who answered the highest-valued question correctly. If that's tied, they'll look at second-highest and third-highest and so on. Note that none of this has anything to do with the money subsequently being banked.
For example, two contestants have 3-0 records, and neither banked any money. The first contestant answered questions worth $2500, $1000, and $250. The second contestant, $2500, $1000, and $500. Second contestant is stronger.
Second example, to show that this is
not a cumulative total they're judging: First contestant $5000, $250, $250--second contestant $2500, $2500, $2500--first contestant is stronger.
4) If, after all that, there's
still a tie (it happened at least twice while I was keeping records), I have not a goshdarned clue how that tie is broken.
The weakest link, while unimportant to the actual mechanics of the game, was determined in much the same way, only the first consideration was who had the
worst question record, the second was who had banked the
least, etc. One interesting point: if two contestants had the same (worst) W-L record, the same amount of money banked, and the same levels of questions, they were simply declared to
both be the statistical weakest link(s). In your face, superlative suffix!
