1. For the 5+1 winner to be better than 41 5+0 winners the lump sum prize would have to be bigger. The Power play of 5 listed above would require an advertised jackpot of $90 Million or so, assuming a single winner.
2. Even then, 41 5+0 winners could potentialy be the better deal. If a single person with 41 winners wanted to share with 40 friends and relatives they could simply give each person a ticket and avoid any tax complications.Depending on state tax rates, the collective tax savings could be about $1 million.
3. In the unlikely event that an unusually high number of tickets are 5+0 winners, MUSL would not be forced to pay anything more than was allocated to that prize level, because the rules allow them to pay on a pari-mutuel basis. If they sold 20 million tickets for that drawing they would expect about 5 5+0 winners, and they wouldn't have anywhere near the $8.2 million nominal payout for 41 winners. They chose to pay the full amount when 120 people won with the fortune cookie numbers. If the extra payout was small they would probably pay the full amount again, but if it was large they might decide that since the tickets had been bought by a single individual that they should make the pari-mutuel payout.
4. There would be no reason to consider which is better because if you played the same combination with all 42 power balls you wpould have the 41 5+0 winners and a jackpot winner.