The car runs smoothly some of the time when it does start, so the plug wire order is fine. Let's not have him chance down impossible causes.

Like Stephen and Roman said: check the basics.

Excessive cranking with no start will cause your plugs to smell like fuel. If it's flooding, when you pull a plug out of the head, there will generally be enough fuel to be able to pour some into your hand from the plug (it gets trapped up around the cathode).

It sounds like you have fuel. Check spark.