That is a good distinction between swap and redistribution, tullfan. But the two are also similar in that they do a redistribution that stands to break up early alliances.

Other seasons worth mentioning here would be Palau and Fiji, where tribes were not assigned before the group had a chance to mingle for a day and a night, and then were sorted by pickem.

My spec on the One World twist is that the producers are responding to the unbreakable alliances by tribe seen in S22 & 23. IF I were in their shoes, I would want to try to encourage everything to break down that absolute blind loyalty to tribe and alliance.

Now in most cases after the first seasons where it was used, swaps have turned into a situation where the tribe that gets a numeric advantage of one then works to eliminate former members of the other tribe who are threats, prior to the merge. The exception being when the tribes have strong fractures prior to the swap, which was the case for the first swap in Africa, where Frank and T-bird tried to join Boran.

So ... swaps don't necessarily work to encourage the kind of play where alliances shift radically (although Nicaragua worked well).

My spec is that they start out by dressing the players in coded colors of warm tones (orange/pink/yellow/red) vs. cool tones (blue/green/purple) and warm vs. cool neutrals. As we have seen, this color coding is not sorted by gender.

The tribes will think they know who is on what tribe. I am wondering if the producers might pull a Fiji/Palau and leave them to mingle for a day, thinking they know how they will be sorted -- as everyone is on to the color schemes by tribe at this point.

One way to prove or disprove this idea would be to see if the supply grab is same gender only working together. I find it hard to tell in the caps so far. There is one of Greg and Michael heading out with supplies, but that is only two.

In any case, if castaway is right, they will then sort the tribes by gender.

I think we know from the caps, though, that they will do a swap, and the swap will confuse the color coding even more. There will be red clothing wearing blue buff, and blue clothing with blue buff, and the same with the orange buffs.

My guess would be that the shuffle is done by pickem, but if the producers really want to screw with alliances they will use a random mechanism.

The chaotic color scheme will work (hopefully) to decrease tribal identity, as a supplement to the twist where they all live on the same beach.

In sum -- I think that the producers want to mix things up in order to kill the possibility of yet another "first day" alliance that makes a pact to go to the end. If they have three seasons in a row where that works out, it's going to kill this franchise.

In S22 I am sure that they wanted Rob to win. Rob is a star. But in 23, they got, in their eyes, a dud winner, Sophie -- who really just rode the alliance and let Coach take the heat, but was not herself particularly well-liked or respected, only less-hated.

If I were planning it, I would do an early swap, say Episode 3. Especially if they start out men vs. women. They have acknowledged in the past that gender sorting puts a big cramp on the types of challenges they can do in order to make them equitable. I doubt they'll want to do that for very long. Having good challenges is much more important now than it was in S6 or S9.

But could well be completely wrong, as per my usual track record.
Looking forward to some footage!