And now we are down to the final five. Only a few more weeks to go until we’ll know for sure who The Mole is. Personally, I’m just hoping to find a much needed clue or two. One of the contestants with a sign saying “I am The Mole, seriously” might be nice. Then I could discard him or her.
You know what else I noticed. Both Mark and Clay are still in the game. It is interesting that this partnership seems to be working. At least for now.
As we join the five remaining contestants in Mendoza, Argentina, we are told that it has been nearly a month since the game started. I would have guessed that each episode represented three days. That would only be 18 days, so obviously I am wrong about that.
For the first mission, they divide themselves into three smart players and two dumb players. The smart players are Paul, Clay, and Mark while the two dumb players are Nicole and Craig. The challenge is called “Go Figured,” and each team is given a set of clues to locations all over the city. When they get to the location, they will have to figure out a number and remember it to bring it back to enter into the computer. The dumb team has five numbers while the smart team has three. Oh, and they can’t write any of the numbers down.
There is one twist, however. The dumb team has easy math problems to figure out their five answers while the smart team has to deal with much bigger numbers. Personally, I’ll take the dumb team. I’ve never been good with math in my head. And I’m an accountant.
Okay, I take that back. The dumb team has some bigger numbers, too.
I think Nicole put too much stalk into the Craig messing up the one math problem. I know I’d do that, too. It’s easy to mis-add, especially when you are reading the clue. However, I am curious what happened with Clay and Mark and their first math problem. Even when I mess myself up doing math in my head, I can talk it through faster then they did. Then, of course, there is Paul sending them in the opposite direction for their last clue. I’m really thinking it’s one of the three of them. I do find it interesting that Nicole also messed up a math question later on. So she’s as suspicious as Craig by her own accusations.
When they entered all the numbers, the dumb team got one of their answers wrong. Unfortunately, it was the last one. The one where they had all the trouble. They had 20 minutes to send one person back to correct it. And they sent Nicole back, the person who was struggling with it the first time around. She came up with a different answer, but it still wasn’t correct. Instead, Clay came up with the sequence of the numbers, saving the day. And he starts calling himself a math genius. Yet he’s the one who was corrected by Mark earlier.
That night, Mark and Clay talk their strategy. They took the last quiz straight Nicole. Or at least Mark did. He’s now convinced that she is The Mole.
Clay, on the other hand, goes to Nicole and they both say they went with Craig on the last quiz. In fact, Clay thinks it is either Mark or Craig.
So, assuming Mark voted straight Nicole, but Nicole and Clay voted straight Craig (and they could be lying to each other), then why did Alex go? We didn’t have a tie last week. So why did Alex go if one of these people (or more) is so far in left field?
The teams travel to Buenos Aires at this point, the capital of Argentina, and start talking about how much they miss their family.
As the next challenge (“Ticket to Ride”) gets started, the players are asked to name the person they trust the most. Clay and Mark get two votes each (Nicole voted Mark just to tie things up), with Clay voting for Nicole, much to everyone’s surprise.
At this point, Jon announces that various family members are arriving in trains in the city. And they head off to the train station.
Now comes the hard part. Clay and Craig are up first. Clay has three minutes to get answers from Craig to 30 questions about his girlfriend. Then Clay will be asked 5 questions. If he gets 3 of the 5 right, Craig will get to visit with his girlfriend. Otherwise, she heads back home. They got through all 30 questions, but Craig didn’t know the answer to some of them. But they managed to get three of them correct.
Next come Clay and Nicole. Nicole is trying to learn as much as she can about Clay’s wife. Nicole was a machine, even having time to go back and recheck answers. She easily got the answers right.
Third is Mark and Nicole. Nicole’s family member is her mother. Mark is asking the questions too slowly for Nicole’s taste. But it didn’t matter because he got the question correct.
Fourth is Clay and Mark. The pressure is really on this time because one of the questions Clay got asked Mark didn’t have an answer for. Therefore, Clay had to get three out of four correct. But he did it. Frankly, this was the one I was most concerned about. Maybe it’s the name, but I have always really liked Mark.
Finally, comes Mark learning about Paul’s wife. Paul passed on the first three questions, putting the pressure on Mark. In fact, he wasn’t sure about very many questions, which makes things very hard for Mark. But they still managed to pull it off.
I didn’t mention that each reunion also adds $10K to the pot. So, they earned $50K. And as they said, The Mole would have to have no heart to sabotage that mission.
The players had the next day with their loved ones. Nicole spent the time complaining about everyone else. In fact, she complained so much that she let her mom talk her into leaving. It’s hard to take her seriously since she has complained since day one. She is such a drama queen. And her mother wasn’t impressed when she found out about Nicole’s threats of murder. I honestly wonder how she feels after having watched how she is edited. Anyway, Nicole plans to throw the quiz so she can leave with her mother. Frankly, I think a lot less of her knowing she is quitting in such a manner after all this time. Heck, I even have more respect for the player who was bribed. Nicole claims that by leaving on her own terms, she isn’t letting the others beat her. Yet she is leaving because she can’t deal with them any more. Paul especially has been trying to drive her away. Seems kinda like he won to me.
After a family dinner, the players take the next quiz. Then everyone comes together for the execution. We’ve got a tie this week, so it will be the player with the slowest time. I wonder if Nicole took a long time. She said “Oops” when the tie was announced.
And in the end, Nicole didn’t do it right. The executed player was Clay.
I’m sorry, Clay. This is all my fault. I said that you and Mark had a good partnership going. And now you are out of it.
So, I wonder if Nicole’s comments about not being able to throw it is a cover for messing up or a cover for being The Mole.
So, going back to the conversation between Mark and Clay. Mark took last week’s quiz straight Nicole and stayed in. Clay answered Craig and stayed in. Yet this week he is gone. So, I wonder if he answered Nicole this week and that why there was a tie or if he got Mark to switch. Or if Clay answered Craig and was wrong, which will get Mark to switch from the truth.
Yes, I’m confused, and I wrote it.
I am still looking at Paul as The Mole, however. I think the thing with the map was just too suspicious. I’m sure it was the editing and we’ve been set up not to like him. Heck, he’ll probably turn out to be the winner and Mark will be The Mole. But I’m sticking with Paul for now.
While I don’t think Clay is a math genius, he may have truly known the answer to that problem (at the time, I thought he knew it because he was the mole).
If, for some reason, he’s memorized the first twenty numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, he would have known the number was 233.
The first numbers in the sequence are 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181.
The numbers in that mission were 13, 21, 89, 144, 233, 610, 2584, 4181. All of them are numbers in the Fibonacci sequence and, conveniently for 233, the previous two numbers in the sequence were on the screen.
Even with all that information, I still tend to think it was luck!
I would think that would be an easy mission for The Mole to sabitoge, however, so I wouldn’t expect The Mole to be the hero at the end.
And obviously, I need to memorize the Finbonacci sequence. Just don’t tell my cousin I can’t remember their significance. Again. :)
Comments are closed.