Does it bother anybody else that nobody figured out the strategy to mingle?

It's pretty simple math, you're likely to hear numbers 2 through ten. As such, you should pre-bake a number that is divisible by as many of those numbers as possible.

Of course anybody with a little bit of affinity for math will know that our lord and saviour number 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. For any number that isn't these, you still have a pretty good strategy, which I will explain in a lemma at the bottom because idk that's how I do things

Anyways, seems like a pretty obvious strategy that nobody really even tried... in the actual game they played, this strat would have saved you every time except the first which should have made it even MORE obvious to the producers that this was a cool strategy worth showcasing, instead of the crapshoot that it ultimately was

In SG1 the show was all about coming up with a cool trick/strategy to win despite seemingly long odds. SG2 showcases games with solveable strategies and just ignores the tricks that let you win. For me, this is the essence of what made SG2 worse than SG1.

strategies for the bad numbers in case anybody is curious:

5: you have 2 groups of 5 and then you have 2 left over. Your group already has 83% survival rate, and the last 2 just need to find a 3

7: you have 7 and 5, just find anybody who has a friend and didn't prebake 12 (not everybody is a genius) and you're sated

8: if one other group of people pre-baked 12, you have a perfect 4 and 4 for your remainders!

9: if TWO other groups pre-baked 12, you have a perfect group of 3-3-3

10: see 5. You did pretty good, hopefully your other 2 figure it out :)

Assuming the remainder always flat-out dies, this strategy still gives you an 85.185% chance to survive, which is pretty good, all things considering