Hey folks, sorry it too so long again, but at least you have a Sunday night to chew on my posts (plus I actually do have a bonus for you this week). Been
hunkering down on a major reanalysis today and I did find a couple interesting things.
Since I'm a bit of a dessert first guy, I'll actually give you the bonus first. As promised I have analyzed all of the quiz questions from the first 6 episodes to see if there were any patterns or suspicious things. I also needed to analyze specifically where Ali actually fit into all this in the first 3 quizzes as I just couldn't get over Bobby's reaction when she took the bribe and he realized the execution would continue - it struck me as pure defeat and I think it's quite possible that he targeted her on his quiz (at least that night, perhaps even earlier).
Now even as I present this, it needs to be taken a bit with a grain of salt in terms of its usefulness for analytical purposes. We don't know how the contestants are performing on their quizzes and that may be a big factor in determining how unique or clustered the answer choices may be.
One other thought - I noticed a post noting "Nicole's unfair advantage." This is true in a technical sense. If she's a player, she is the only woman and therefore will always get Question 1 correct. However, in looking back at the prior quizzes, there are plenty of instances of "gimmee" questions benefitting one player or another (Did the Mole ride in a Wheelbarrow? Did the Mole get into a sleeping bag? Are two such examples.) I do think that the producers do their best to balance such things out. I also think that it's one of the unfortunate things about the switch in the quiz from the 20 questions of season one to the 10 questions of future seasons.
Anyhow, the analysis.
Basically I did a very simple thing. For each player on each quiz I counted the number of other players that coincided with the player as a choice on each quiz question (I included the player themselves in the total). For example, in episode 2, question 1 had two answers, Male and Female. For the Males there were 6 people who fit the bill, and for the females there were 5. Thus each male had 6 added to their total. Each female 5. Obviously for unique questions, like "Who is the Mole", everybody got 1 added to their total. The higher the number, the less "unique" that player was as answer to a question. Theoretically, it would seem to make sense to try and hide the Mole, especially early, by making them a choice amongst many, though of course that might not actually be true. That's pure speculation on my part. Anyhow the numbers will follow in the next post. I'll spare you the gory details for now, but may post them later on if you really want me to.
Quiz 1 uniqueness scores in order. The remaining 5 players are listed in ALL CAPS. They go from highest (least unique) to lowest (most unique).
Victoria: 54
Marcie: 51 <----------- executed
CLAY: 51
Ali: 48
MARK: 48
Kristen: 48
Bobby: 47
Alex: 46
NICOLE: 44
CRAIG: 42
Liz: 38
PAUL: 36
If they are hiding the Mole early, this would be a plus from the CLAYFOMOs. Of course, the flipside of this is if they figure it's too early for the players to suspect Paul as the Mole, maybe they'd go out on a limb and make him the most unique answer. The former does make more sense to me btw.
Quiz 2:
CLAY: 63
Ali: 62
CRAIG: 61
Victoria: 60
NICOLE: 60
Alex: 54
Bobby: 54
PAUL: 52
Liz: 51 <----------- executed
MARK: 43
Kristen: 42
Again Clay is pretty well "hidden" as is Craig and Nicole. Paul and Mark, not so much. As an aside, getting back to the issue regarding advantage on the quiz, I would have to say that the lower you are on the list, the more of an advantage you SHOULD have. You can eliminated yourself as a choice if you are a player, obviously and increase your odds. The downside to this occurs when you happen to be paired with the Mole of course (for example if Paul is the Mole, suddenly Liz sharing the pig catching duties with him probably hurts her most on the quiz, since she would be much less likely to pick the answers where it's just her and Paul.
Quiz 3:
CRAIG: 46
Kristen: 42
NICOLE: 42
Bobby: 41 <-------- executed
Victoria: 39
Ali: 38 <-------- bribed
CLAY: 38
PAUL: 38
MARK: 36
Alex: 34
Everybody's quite a bit more clumped in this episode. Mark and Paul still seem to be more unique overall and now Craig pops up as being a bit more "hidden." I'll have the special Ali analysis after I'm done with this part.
Quiz 4:
PAUL: 46
CLAY: 46
NICOLE: 44
MARK: 42
Alex: 40
CRAIG: 40
Kristen: 34
Victoria: 33 <----------- executed.
A bit of a reversal here especially with Paul blending in more than on any other quiz. Victoria couldn't take advantage of being more unique an answer on this quiz and found herself executed. The numbers are steadily decreasing so far (less players to be coincidental with).
Quiz 5:
PAUL: 27
MARK: 26
Kristen: 24 <-------------- executed
NICOLE: 24
CRAIG: 23
Alex: 22
CLAY: 22
Things radically changed in terms of the quiz answers for quiz 5. A whopping FIVE questions have a unique answer for everyone. 2 More had a 6/1 split, and 2 more had a 5/2 split. (The other question, with a 4/3 split concerned whether the Mole wore shorts or pants.) The answers in totality are clumped enough that minimal advantage seems to be at play. It's curious to ponder that maybe the players ALL actually have a bead on who the Mole is or whether they are trying to just weed out some of the pretenders who played it safe and got by to leave the game to those who have truly figured it out. Still a definite change.
Quiz 6
MARK: 25
PAUL: 25
CRAIG: 25
CLAY: 23
NICOLE: 21
Alex: 19 <------------- executed
Again there are 5 questions on the quiz that are purely unique. Even being given one answer automatically correct (Question 8 where it was asked how much the Mole put into the pot in "Swing Out". The answer was obviously $0 since Alex was the only one to put money in the pot there).
What does it all really mean? I'm not sure but I thought you'd enjoy this. Ali analysis is next
Okay so as I previously mentioned I have pondered the possibilty that Bobby may have gotten himself eliminated by gunning for Ali on at least his last quiz. Looking at his face when she took the bribe was telling, but even more telling was his apparent complete despondence when Jon told them the execution would continue. Well taking that ball and running with it a little, I pondered the question: If Bobby was gunning for Ali all the way and stayed in through the first 2 exeuctions but not the 3rd, who shared the most answers with Ali on the previous quizzes of the 5 remaining people?
Quiz 1 leaves the comical result below:
Clay: 3
Craig: 3
Mark: 3
Nicole: 3
Paul: 3
No help whatsoever there!
Quiz 2 was a different story:
Clay: 8 (!) (he shares an answer with Ali on every question but gender and who is the Mole)
Nicole: 6
Craig: 5
Mark: 4
Paul: 4
This also was a rather weird quiz in that it had many instances of essentially the same answer being asked multiple times. Questions 3 and 4 are exactly the same for all practical purposes. On the flip side Paul and Liz are lumped together on 3 questions. Since the goal is to not get eliminated - it's possible that Bobby targeted Ali and still got enough to stay in even if Mark or Paul is the Mole. Still it's interesting.
Quiz 3:
Ali Matched:
Nicole: 4
Paul: 4
Craig: 3
Mark: 2
Clay: 1
Coupled with what's shown in Quiz 2, I have to say that I have developed a talking point for the CLAYFOMOs to point to. Even if Bobby decided to start targeting Ali with just the 3rd quiz, if Clay is the Mole it's almost impossible to think that he WOULDN'T get executed. Then again, if people were playing odds, it's still totally possible that Nicole or Paul could still be the Mole at 4 - it just means everyone would need a bit higher score.
And of course I could have totally read Bobby wrong.
But I thought you'd guys would find it interesting
On to the episodes. I can't say that I found the recap episode all that compelling in and of itself, but it still brought out some food for thought. I bet the biggest spoiler of all would be to watch the Mole with an FBI interviewer who can pick up on people's truthfulness much easier than you or I can. I recall watching some year's ago (I believe on ABC's 20/20 in fact) a segment that talked about how to tell someone is lying to you. There are certain giveaways that many people let off when they are telling a lie that are rather involuntary. One of these is supposed to be that someone will raise their eyebrows when they are lying. The other that I recall is when someone's head position doesn't match what they are saying (e.g. their mouth is saying yes, but their head is shaking no).
I'm not sure that I'm reading things correctly and I didn't go into a full rewatching of the whole season but there was a little bit of this going on that intrigued me. Basically I didn't pick up much in the way of Paul and Craig on this basis to make me believe they are the Mole. (Paul seemed to raise his eyebrows when he said "I could be the Mole"). Nicole raises her eyebrows AFTER she says I am the Mole and I think I played it well (paraphrasing), though one might infer that she is the Mole but didn't think she did a good job. Mark and Clay were a little tougher for me to gauge. Mark seemed
to maybe raise his eyebrows when he said he wasn't the Mole. Clay did seem to raise his eyebrows when he said "I am the Mole". As an aside the
executed players all were pretty uniform when they said they weren't the Mole: in each case their head agrees with their mouth and they are shaking their
head "no" as they say it. Could be all psuedoscience on my part but again I figured you might find it interesting to ponder .
Btw, for the conspiracy buffs - if I didn't point this out earlier Jon was holding 10 (pesos?) at the beginning of the Travelers challenge. Only connection I could make is that Mark has Journal 10. A clue? Maybe a stretch.
As for the episode, once again we have a real challenge in sorting things out. This group either likes to totally succeed or totally fail it seems. Every time there's been a close call it seems like it's a win. Very very challenging. Still I was happy to see how multi-faceted the Grapes of Cache challenge was. Lots of potential sabotage points make for good Mole play, especially when there is a division of labor and communications going on.
By the way I totally overanalyzed the brain tesaers, but if there's something buried in there I've yet to find it. Here's a list of the names of the people left in phone code. Maybe the answer is in there somewhere:
CLAY: 2529
MARK: 6275
PAUL: 7285
CRAIG: 27244
NICOLE: 642654 (and why not OBGYN: 62496)
MOLE: 6653
On to the meat and potatoes that is the rankings. In spite of the challenging nature of the full success and failure, there definitely was cause to shake up the rankings.
They start next..
Episode 6 Breakdown:
6) Alex. Well Alex isn't the Mole. I've at least gotten good at telling who the Mole ISN'T lately. A total of 0.2% was liberated by Alex's departure. I will
point out that they have practically beat us over the head with "Alex think's Nicole is the Mole for the entire season." Part of me truly smells
set up and this falls in line with something a said early about anticipating a "shock" Alex execution and then a further shock of a Nicole Mole
reveal. Maybe he changed his mind about her along the way and loudly voiced his opinion she was the Mole to throw the others off? Maybe he never suspected
her in the first place, again to throw the others off? On the flip side, the fact that Clay and Mark seem to want to get rid of him and do so actually on a
time basis may mean that they all have zeroed in on Nicole in spite of anything said on the confession (this has occurred before - in season one when they were
down to Charlie, Steven, Jim, and Katherine all three players had her pegged as the Mole). Anyway it looks like he did have one too many. Alex is definitely
NOT the Mole.
5) Craig. Yep, Craig has leapfrogged down to the bottom of the rankings. He could've taken the easy way out on the challenge (heck he got a pretty good throw off). He wasn't fabulous at the puzzles, though he did get at least one of them solved so it wasn't a total bust. His demeanor does seem to be most consistent with that of a player that really does let everyone else do the work for him - that his sorta laziness is enough cover for him to play Mole, but not too hard. I just find the case for everyone else much more compelling. Craig is NOT the Mole. Mole probabilty 1% (all whole numbers this week).
4) Mark. Yes, Mark takes a big time tumble this week. If he ends up being the Mole, I think that he should be kicked out of the Mole union - it'd be practically unethical for the Mole to put $70,000 into the pot almost single handedly in the middle of the game (yeah, yeah, I know that Bill put like $100k in the pot but that was at the end and heck he might've been suspended from the Mole union for a little for that one for all I know). 55 minutes on a treadmill, probably the last half of which was a real exertion. That's a tough one to really swallow, espeically when you add in that he solved about 1/2 of the brainteasers as well while he was doing it. It was a heroic effort and it really hurts his Mole stock a lot. In the Swing Out challenge his effort, while missing the Mark, did seem to be a very game try and just a little short (by the way Craig's effort similarly seemed not all that bad ultimately). His competitiveness should be channeled to screwing up more stuff that he has if he's the Mole. But he's NOT. Mole probabilty 9%
3) Paul. PAULFOMOs rejoice! I really had just about totally counted him out but his performance in this episode made me feel the need to really take another hard look at his track record over the game. One of the hallmarks of Mole play, in my opinion, is that the Mole will work their way into crucial roles on occasion. While it's true that Craig and Nicole both chose "thinker" quickly and Mark and Alex simlarly chose "runner" in the same fashion, Paul successfully lobbied Clay into giving him a role on the talking team. He then followed up right away in getting the communicator role. It does seem a bit easy for that to have happened like that. He had a very bumpy ride in that role - did he purposely make a mistake or two initially on the coordinates? Maybe. I am not certain if there was an impact to his jumping from question 3 to 7 - that only would be the case if the bottles were to be discovered in a sorta consecutive order - that is not certain to be true. I did write down all the coordinates from the game (except question 2 - those weren't shown I don't think) so maybe I'll plot 'em out and see if I can figure it out. He also does start off with Nicole by using the eraser - there seemed to be a decent amount of time where they were fighting and not helping get wine bottles found. I can't totally discount him anymore - maybe he laid low a little bit in the middle of the game. Early on he didn't have a huge record of success (over the falls and a weak performance on the beach and in the soccer). Still, at the end of the day, I'm not sold yet - and I'll guiltily admit that maybe I did sense something in the way he gave answers that suggest he's not the Mole. Score one for QG's psuedoscience! Paul's back in the hunt, but Paul is NOT the Mole. Mole probability 15%
Oops one last pro-Paul Mole note though - that throw of his was comically bad from the bungee cord.
Anyhow...
2) Clay. I'm not quite certain that Clay really deserves this bump up This is more of a general sense than perhaps a true indicator of how I feel about his performance in this episode. Then again, it's a double-edged sword a bit. He falls into the role of runner (going against my theory that the Mole sometimes positions themselves). This was a weird task though. If the Mole were a runner, the idea would be to succeed in finding bottles early to speed up the treadmill for the timekeeper. Once 5 or 6 bottles are in tow, THEN the Molish thing would be to have trouble finding the last bottle or two, threatening failure for the task. Clay did seem to find the middle 4 bottles and possibly the last one even (though Alex was right there). I do take his suggestion of drinking the wine to Alex as a joke rather than a straight Mole play. Maybe he just thought Mark wouldn't be able to keep up in the time allotted if he's the Mole. On the bridge, Clay was comically bad even closing his eyes. I guess the thing that through me was looking at the review and when he talks about whether or not he's the Mole. It's totally possible. The fact that he was so common with Ali as an answer one week and not the next in terms of my theory on Bobby's execution is a small factor too. Still, though, Clay is NOT the Mole. Mole probability 31%
1) Nicole. Finally I can say that at least a little of my faith in my original pick has been restored! True this was a bit of an "over the top" case again, but it's totally possible she's playing the Mole that way - only the quiz answers can say for sure how on track they really are. I think it's accurate to say that she didn't get one of those questions right on her own - she only wrote down correct ones when Mark said them first. Question 1 was actually kinda comical when she said she liked plastic and it wasn't even an answer choice. I wouldn't blame the anti-Nicoles to see that as a case of
trying too hard. A bigger moment came when she chose to return fire on Paul and repeatedly kept it going. Paul does get credit for starting it, but Nicole
did take a lot of valuable time away from the solving by continuing it and continuing it (even putting her face in front of Craig while he was trying to do
some solving in the midst of her ranting at Paul). While her form on the jump was suspiciously great, her actual throw was comically bad. My gut just tells
me they are throwing the surprise curve at the end that Alex somehow got off track. Her mannerisms in terms of the analysis of her statements is actually a
bit mixed. When she said "I am here to stay" in episode 3 she clearly believes it's true. Now whether that's because she's confident or
because she's the Mole is certainly open to debate. I'll vote for the latter . Nicole IS the Mole (still) and finally I feel I can at least up her % a little. Mole probabilty 44%.
So there you go folks! As a final random thought I'm curious as to what would have happened if anybody had guessed closest. Were they guaranteed an exemption or would they have pulled that much out of the pot in order to get the exemption (e.g. say they had scored $30,000 - would Nicole have to take $28,000 of that $30,000 to seal the exemption deal or not?).
Have a great night Mole fans!!!
-QG
Since I'm a bit of a dessert first guy, I'll actually give you the bonus first. As promised I have analyzed all of the quiz questions from the first 6 episodes to see if there were any patterns or suspicious things. I also needed to analyze specifically where Ali actually fit into all this in the first 3 quizzes as I just couldn't get over Bobby's reaction when she took the bribe and he realized the execution would continue - it struck me as pure defeat and I think it's quite possible that he targeted her on his quiz (at least that night, perhaps even earlier).
Now even as I present this, it needs to be taken a bit with a grain of salt in terms of its usefulness for analytical purposes. We don't know how the contestants are performing on their quizzes and that may be a big factor in determining how unique or clustered the answer choices may be.
One other thought - I noticed a post noting "Nicole's unfair advantage." This is true in a technical sense. If she's a player, she is the only woman and therefore will always get Question 1 correct. However, in looking back at the prior quizzes, there are plenty of instances of "gimmee" questions benefitting one player or another (Did the Mole ride in a Wheelbarrow? Did the Mole get into a sleeping bag? Are two such examples.) I do think that the producers do their best to balance such things out. I also think that it's one of the unfortunate things about the switch in the quiz from the 20 questions of season one to the 10 questions of future seasons.
Anyhow, the analysis.
Basically I did a very simple thing. For each player on each quiz I counted the number of other players that coincided with the player as a choice on each quiz question (I included the player themselves in the total). For example, in episode 2, question 1 had two answers, Male and Female. For the Males there were 6 people who fit the bill, and for the females there were 5. Thus each male had 6 added to their total. Each female 5. Obviously for unique questions, like "Who is the Mole", everybody got 1 added to their total. The higher the number, the less "unique" that player was as answer to a question. Theoretically, it would seem to make sense to try and hide the Mole, especially early, by making them a choice amongst many, though of course that might not actually be true. That's pure speculation on my part. Anyhow the numbers will follow in the next post. I'll spare you the gory details for now, but may post them later on if you really want me to.
Quiz 1 uniqueness scores in order. The remaining 5 players are listed in ALL CAPS. They go from highest (least unique) to lowest (most unique).
Victoria: 54
Marcie: 51 <----------- executed
CLAY: 51
Ali: 48
MARK: 48
Kristen: 48
Bobby: 47
Alex: 46
NICOLE: 44
CRAIG: 42
Liz: 38
PAUL: 36
If they are hiding the Mole early, this would be a plus from the CLAYFOMOs. Of course, the flipside of this is if they figure it's too early for the players to suspect Paul as the Mole, maybe they'd go out on a limb and make him the most unique answer. The former does make more sense to me btw.
Quiz 2:
CLAY: 63
Ali: 62
CRAIG: 61
Victoria: 60
NICOLE: 60
Alex: 54
Bobby: 54
PAUL: 52
Liz: 51 <----------- executed
MARK: 43
Kristen: 42
Again Clay is pretty well "hidden" as is Craig and Nicole. Paul and Mark, not so much. As an aside, getting back to the issue regarding advantage on the quiz, I would have to say that the lower you are on the list, the more of an advantage you SHOULD have. You can eliminated yourself as a choice if you are a player, obviously and increase your odds. The downside to this occurs when you happen to be paired with the Mole of course (for example if Paul is the Mole, suddenly Liz sharing the pig catching duties with him probably hurts her most on the quiz, since she would be much less likely to pick the answers where it's just her and Paul.
Quiz 3:
CRAIG: 46
Kristen: 42
NICOLE: 42
Bobby: 41 <-------- executed
Victoria: 39
Ali: 38 <-------- bribed
CLAY: 38
PAUL: 38
MARK: 36
Alex: 34
Everybody's quite a bit more clumped in this episode. Mark and Paul still seem to be more unique overall and now Craig pops up as being a bit more "hidden." I'll have the special Ali analysis after I'm done with this part.
Quiz 4:
PAUL: 46
CLAY: 46
NICOLE: 44
MARK: 42
Alex: 40
CRAIG: 40
Kristen: 34
Victoria: 33 <----------- executed.
A bit of a reversal here especially with Paul blending in more than on any other quiz. Victoria couldn't take advantage of being more unique an answer on this quiz and found herself executed. The numbers are steadily decreasing so far (less players to be coincidental with).
Quiz 5:
PAUL: 27
MARK: 26
Kristen: 24 <-------------- executed
NICOLE: 24
CRAIG: 23
Alex: 22
CLAY: 22
Things radically changed in terms of the quiz answers for quiz 5. A whopping FIVE questions have a unique answer for everyone. 2 More had a 6/1 split, and 2 more had a 5/2 split. (The other question, with a 4/3 split concerned whether the Mole wore shorts or pants.) The answers in totality are clumped enough that minimal advantage seems to be at play. It's curious to ponder that maybe the players ALL actually have a bead on who the Mole is or whether they are trying to just weed out some of the pretenders who played it safe and got by to leave the game to those who have truly figured it out. Still a definite change.
Quiz 6
MARK: 25
PAUL: 25
CRAIG: 25
CLAY: 23
NICOLE: 21
Alex: 19 <------------- executed
Again there are 5 questions on the quiz that are purely unique. Even being given one answer automatically correct (Question 8 where it was asked how much the Mole put into the pot in "Swing Out". The answer was obviously $0 since Alex was the only one to put money in the pot there).
What does it all really mean? I'm not sure but I thought you'd enjoy this. Ali analysis is next
Okay so as I previously mentioned I have pondered the possibilty that Bobby may have gotten himself eliminated by gunning for Ali on at least his last quiz. Looking at his face when she took the bribe was telling, but even more telling was his apparent complete despondence when Jon told them the execution would continue. Well taking that ball and running with it a little, I pondered the question: If Bobby was gunning for Ali all the way and stayed in through the first 2 exeuctions but not the 3rd, who shared the most answers with Ali on the previous quizzes of the 5 remaining people?
Quiz 1 leaves the comical result below:
Clay: 3
Craig: 3
Mark: 3
Nicole: 3
Paul: 3
No help whatsoever there!
Quiz 2 was a different story:
Clay: 8 (!) (he shares an answer with Ali on every question but gender and who is the Mole)
Nicole: 6
Craig: 5
Mark: 4
Paul: 4
This also was a rather weird quiz in that it had many instances of essentially the same answer being asked multiple times. Questions 3 and 4 are exactly the same for all practical purposes. On the flip side Paul and Liz are lumped together on 3 questions. Since the goal is to not get eliminated - it's possible that Bobby targeted Ali and still got enough to stay in even if Mark or Paul is the Mole. Still it's interesting.
Quiz 3:
Ali Matched:
Nicole: 4
Paul: 4
Craig: 3
Mark: 2
Clay: 1
Coupled with what's shown in Quiz 2, I have to say that I have developed a talking point for the CLAYFOMOs to point to. Even if Bobby decided to start targeting Ali with just the 3rd quiz, if Clay is the Mole it's almost impossible to think that he WOULDN'T get executed. Then again, if people were playing odds, it's still totally possible that Nicole or Paul could still be the Mole at 4 - it just means everyone would need a bit higher score.
And of course I could have totally read Bobby wrong.
But I thought you'd guys would find it interesting
On to the episodes. I can't say that I found the recap episode all that compelling in and of itself, but it still brought out some food for thought. I bet the biggest spoiler of all would be to watch the Mole with an FBI interviewer who can pick up on people's truthfulness much easier than you or I can. I recall watching some year's ago (I believe on ABC's 20/20 in fact) a segment that talked about how to tell someone is lying to you. There are certain giveaways that many people let off when they are telling a lie that are rather involuntary. One of these is supposed to be that someone will raise their eyebrows when they are lying. The other that I recall is when someone's head position doesn't match what they are saying (e.g. their mouth is saying yes, but their head is shaking no).
I'm not sure that I'm reading things correctly and I didn't go into a full rewatching of the whole season but there was a little bit of this going on that intrigued me. Basically I didn't pick up much in the way of Paul and Craig on this basis to make me believe they are the Mole. (Paul seemed to raise his eyebrows when he said "I could be the Mole"). Nicole raises her eyebrows AFTER she says I am the Mole and I think I played it well (paraphrasing), though one might infer that she is the Mole but didn't think she did a good job
Btw, for the conspiracy buffs - if I didn't point this out earlier Jon was holding 10 (pesos?) at the beginning of the Travelers challenge. Only connection I could make is that Mark has Journal 10. A clue? Maybe a stretch.
As for the episode, once again we have a real challenge in sorting things out. This group either likes to totally succeed or totally fail it seems. Every time there's been a close call it seems like it's a win. Very very challenging. Still I was happy to see how multi-faceted the Grapes of Cache challenge was. Lots of potential sabotage points make for good Mole play, especially when there is a division of labor and communications going on.
By the way I totally overanalyzed the brain tesaers, but if there's something buried in there I've yet to find it. Here's a list of the names of the people left in phone code. Maybe the answer is in there somewhere:
CLAY: 2529
MARK: 6275
PAUL: 7285
CRAIG: 27244
NICOLE: 642654 (and why not OBGYN: 62496)
MOLE: 6653
On to the meat and potatoes that is the rankings. In spite of the challenging nature of the full success and failure, there definitely was cause to shake up the rankings.
They start next..
Episode 6 Breakdown:
6) Alex. Well Alex isn't the Mole. I've at least gotten good at telling who the Mole ISN'T lately
5) Craig. Yep, Craig has leapfrogged down to the bottom of the rankings. He could've taken the easy way out on the challenge (heck he got a pretty good throw off). He wasn't fabulous at the puzzles, though he did get at least one of them solved so it wasn't a total bust. His demeanor does seem to be most consistent with that of a player that really does let everyone else do the work for him - that his sorta laziness is enough cover for him to play Mole, but not too hard. I just find the case for everyone else much more compelling. Craig is NOT the Mole. Mole probabilty 1% (all whole numbers this week).
4) Mark. Yes, Mark takes a big time tumble this week. If he ends up being the Mole, I think that he should be kicked out of the Mole union - it'd be practically unethical for the Mole to put $70,000 into the pot almost single handedly in the middle of the game (yeah, yeah, I know that Bill put like $100k in the pot but that was at the end and heck he might've been suspended from the Mole union for a little for that one for all I know). 55 minutes on a treadmill, probably the last half of which was a real exertion. That's a tough one to really swallow, espeically when you add in that he solved about 1/2 of the brainteasers as well while he was doing it. It was a heroic effort and it really hurts his Mole stock a lot. In the Swing Out challenge his effort, while missing the Mark, did seem to be a very game try and just a little short (by the way Craig's effort similarly seemed not all that bad ultimately). His competitiveness should be channeled to screwing up more stuff that he has if he's the Mole. But he's NOT. Mole probabilty 9%
3) Paul. PAULFOMOs rejoice! I really had just about totally counted him out but his performance in this episode made me feel the need to really take another hard look at his track record over the game. One of the hallmarks of Mole play, in my opinion, is that the Mole will work their way into crucial roles on occasion. While it's true that Craig and Nicole both chose "thinker" quickly and Mark and Alex simlarly chose "runner" in the same fashion, Paul successfully lobbied Clay into giving him a role on the talking team. He then followed up right away in getting the communicator role. It does seem a bit easy for that to have happened like that. He had a very bumpy ride in that role - did he purposely make a mistake or two initially on the coordinates? Maybe. I am not certain if there was an impact to his jumping from question 3 to 7 - that only would be the case if the bottles were to be discovered in a sorta consecutive order - that is not certain to be true. I did write down all the coordinates from the game (except question 2 - those weren't shown I don't think) so maybe I'll plot 'em out and see if I can figure it out. He also does start off with Nicole by using the eraser - there seemed to be a decent amount of time where they were fighting and not helping get wine bottles found. I can't totally discount him anymore - maybe he laid low a little bit in the middle of the game. Early on he didn't have a huge record of success (over the falls and a weak performance on the beach and in the soccer). Still, at the end of the day, I'm not sold yet - and I'll guiltily admit that maybe I did sense something in the way he gave answers that suggest he's not the Mole. Score one for QG's psuedoscience! Paul's back in the hunt, but Paul is NOT the Mole. Mole probability 15%
Oops one last pro-Paul Mole note though - that throw of his was comically bad from the bungee cord.
Anyhow...
2) Clay. I'm not quite certain that Clay really deserves this bump up This is more of a general sense than perhaps a true indicator of how I feel about his performance in this episode. Then again, it's a double-edged sword a bit. He falls into the role of runner (going against my theory that the Mole sometimes positions themselves). This was a weird task though. If the Mole were a runner, the idea would be to succeed in finding bottles early to speed up the treadmill for the timekeeper. Once 5 or 6 bottles are in tow, THEN the Molish thing would be to have trouble finding the last bottle or two, threatening failure for the task. Clay did seem to find the middle 4 bottles and possibly the last one even (though Alex was right there). I do take his suggestion of drinking the wine to Alex as a joke rather than a straight Mole play. Maybe he just thought Mark wouldn't be able to keep up in the time allotted if he's the Mole. On the bridge, Clay was comically bad even closing his eyes. I guess the thing that through me was looking at the review and when he talks about whether or not he's the Mole. It's totally possible. The fact that he was so common with Ali as an answer one week and not the next in terms of my theory on Bobby's execution is a small factor too. Still, though, Clay is NOT the Mole. Mole probability 31%
1) Nicole. Finally I can say that at least a little of my faith in my original pick has been restored! True this was a bit of an "over the top" case again, but it's totally possible she's playing the Mole that way - only the quiz answers can say for sure how on track they really are. I think it's accurate to say that she didn't get one of those questions right on her own - she only wrote down correct ones when Mark said them first. Question 1 was actually kinda comical when she said she liked plastic and it wasn't even an answer choice
So there you go folks! As a final random thought I'm curious as to what would have happened if anybody had guessed closest. Were they guaranteed an exemption or would they have pulled that much out of the pot in order to get the exemption (e.g. say they had scored $30,000 - would Nicole have to take $28,000 of that $30,000 to seal the exemption deal or not?).
Have a great night Mole fans!!!
-QG
