Re: Odds are surprisingly high
Remember, even if the plane of the mystery Earth-like planet crosses its star from our viewpoint, the planet will cross the star only about once a year if it's the same distance from its star as we are. This is going to take either a lot of luck or a lot of watching.
Hopefully, the old-fashioned technique of detecting planets by star wobble can be used to winnow the candidates a bit.
Question: is there some way the "star wobble"* technique can be used to tell if the ecliptic of a star system is so placed that the planets would cross the sun from our viewpoint?
*A technical term