So I know the result already. But you can talk about it if you like.
Meanwhile, edit -spotters may note that the The Whole 19 Yards description has been edited slightly to avoid giving away exact details on the blindfold task in case they use it again, but a description of the end game has been added to compensate. So there you are.
Connecting Walls 11 through 15 are now online, apparently.
What a stonking final!!!!
All down to the final question and the final point!
Brilliant
Actually got a group right on wall #11. Still running through my routine of spotting connections but not actually getting whole groups everywhere else.
I did pretty well on Wall #15, got all the groups but the computer didn’t count one of the answers I got, giving me 6 instead of 7.
I think with good editing (who needs all of the chat segments), and maybe using a shorter assault course (so speed becomes important), you could fit all 6 segments into 22 minutes (possibly with a 100-second GK round).
What form of words did you use for the ‘disputed’ connection?
It was for wall 15, the answer was Flying ____ but I said “things that fly.”
As for the Krypton Factor, we can do the Mental Agility and Observation rounds (which should include toss-up questions and an identity parade) in four minutes each, three minutes apiece for Response, Intelligence, and Physical Ability, and two for General Knowledge (100 seconds, questions worth +/- 1), and that leaves three minutes for credits and contestant information. Chat is kept to a minimum, leaving solid gameplay.
Great series of Krypton Factor – but the Physical Ability round was ruined tonight by the pointless dubbing in of the audience clapping everytime someone put one foot in front of the other.
Good to see it’s back next year – no major changes required IMO, though perhaps replacing Observation with Intelligence in the semi-finals, and expanding the final to an hour to include all six traditional challenges would shake things up a bit towards the end.
Connecting walls 11-15 are “available later” for me.
Also, I have a couple of good OC questions for you DB – how can I get them to you?
Surely finding my email is not beyond the wit of you…? Anyway, anything ending in @labyrinthgames.co.uk or @qwertyuiop.co.uk will get to me – thanks.
Managed to 10 Wall 11. Wow.
Got 10 on quite a few of the new walls but then I remembered quite a few of the connections from Seires 1
Also, can I say how much I’d appreciate Victoria Coren saying “BRING ON THE WALL” before Round 3? That would be epic.
*giggles*
That would be awesome, yes.
I may have shouted that before the Hitchhikers went in to play the quarter-final wall.
(I’m still annoyed that I didn’t remember to shoehorn it in to the conversation with VC at the start of the semi. I had the perfect opportunity too.)
I wonder if there is such a thing as an Only Connect out-takes and bloopers reel. *imagines Victoria stumbling over a pronunciation and then cussing like a sailor to great laughter, but only about once per series*
Come to think of it, I wonder if there is such a thing as a The Crystal Maze blooper reel.
No, there’s no Christmas tape. Not enough unusual things happen compared to a game show, really. We’ve had a couple of swearwords during the grid, and the start of a show where VC still had her coat and bag on, but otherwise it’s not exactly Calamity Central.
Whereas… the TCM Christmas tapes have been on YouTube for some time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U68PUwXUoQ
Hee hee! Hadn’t seen those before. Thanks!
Is Krypton Factor definitely back next year? Ratings were very poor from what I heard and Sage might withdraw their funding.
I’d imagine Sage, due to being a sponser rather than an advertiser, would be more interested in Reach than on-the-night viewers. Which is to say – The main show (which was rather poor at 3-3.5m, iirc) and the repeat show (which I think was getting 2.5-3m) So… Between just under 5.5 and just under 6.5 (remember to take 90% of the repeat figures, rather than the full 100%, iirc studies into percentage of new viewers, hence the ‘just under’ comment.)
The late night repeat gets nowhere near 3m. It’ll be lucky to even get 1m at that time of the ngiht.
Indeed, I had heard the first showing was as low as 2.2m towards the end, will be intrigued to see the figures for the final.
The thing with sponsorship, however, is that there is a case of diminishing returns. How many people watching season 3 won’t have watched series 1 or 2?
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=1215187&page=108
Unsure of the original source, but last night’s KF final rated 2.7m (11.4% share). An increase of around 0.3m on recent weeks. How far is that down to it being the final and/or being advertised on ITV breaks for the first time this series?
I’ve just got this feeling ITV are prepared to perservere with it off their own backs if neccessary.
I reserve the right to look stupid about this at a later date.
Excellent final, a really enjoyable watch and very close at the end!
A close final, exciting, but the show remains poorer by having no fifth, let alone a sixth, round.
I also found it too loud – all that unnecessary wooping and hollering, That’s not Krypton for me! I had a headache afterwards. It’s hard enough having a bash at the mental agility without all that carry on. I’m not sure the audience shots added much – I rather liked the suffocatingly empty studio set up.
As I feared, slowly Krypton would evolve from the straight 2009 series into a slightly more brash, louder programme with all the modern populist styles, with chatty informality and the aforementioned OTT audience involvement.
There’s undoubtedly potential in the show. Adding 5-10 minutes to the run time to enable at least a 5th round would help any subsequent series but as has been mentioned, it may well depend on Sage’s commitment in view of poor viewing figures and their assessment of the success of the brand promotion as a whole.
Watching Only Connect on Monday I realised how ambiguous the last round is. With no clock on the screen how are we supposed to know that ended fairly. To me it ‘almost’ felt like the clock stopped just to prevent the Postgrads catching up. The length of time also changes each week (I assume based on how long hte rest of the rounds lst).
Why is there no clock for that final game?
Also, Tom Scott – my girlfriend described you as “the geekiest of all the geeks that go on that show”. We’re big fans of your ongoing commentary.
Also in other news I saw one of the Series One winners – The Crossworders on the tube a few weeks ago. I didn’t ask for his autograph.
In the rules, the final round lasts anywhere from 90 seconds to (technically) 3 minutes although 2’30” is the longest we’ve ever done. The length of this round depends on how long the rest of the programme has taken up to that point. During the recording break after the wall, both teams are told how long the round will be, so they know (without timing it themselves) what the parameters are. Also, I can hear a countdown in my headphones to the second, so I know the gallery aren’t cheating it.
Sometimes quite weird running lengths like 1’45” are chosen, so if you did use a clock then it would vary a lot, and some viewers may find that hard to understand.
If we had wanted to rig it, as you imply, wouldn’t we have stopped the round before Victoria reads out the next category of questions because now that category has been exposed and we won’t be able to use those questions now?
Putting a clock on-screen would not reassure viewers in any way because – if it was rigged – then the on-screen clock would be chosen to suit whatever the apparent running time of the round was anyway, so you’re back to square one in any case.
I’m not saying it is rigged but it was the first time I’d really missed there being a clock on the screen.
Not wanting to be a conspiracy theory nut but you say:
“If we had wanted to rig it, as you imply, wouldn’t we have stopped the round before Victoria reads out the next category of questions because now that category has been exposed and we won’t be able to use those questions now?”
I say
“How do we know that there were actually questions under that category?”
What would happen in the place of a draw anyway? One more misisng vowels? Would that not be unfair if a team has been excellent at connections but lost the lead on the missing vowels round. I suggest a fight.
Maybe I should stop over analysing it and just enjoy it but the program makes my brain over active.
It has happened, the team captains had to do a missing vowel on their own, didn’t they?
Whilst the amount of points going in the missing vowels round doesn’t bother me unduly, I do wonder if it has greater weighting in the later rounds when you expect the rest of the show to be lower scoring?
I think there may have been two tie-breakers; I definitely remember “VNV DVC” and I think they also had “TTHV CTR GTS PLS”.
surely “TTHV CTR GTHS PLS”? You confused me for a bit there!
IIRC, there was no G in it either…
If I remember rightly, it was actually LBR TNSTN and VNV DVC – before our first game, we brainstormed what other tie-breakers might be, and came up with that one…
I haven’t done the stats for series 3 yet, but in series 2 the average team scored, per round:
Round 1: 3.3
Round 2: 4.2
Round 3: 5.9
Round 4: 5.1
So MV is important but not (on average) quite as crucial as it sometimes appears. In this series the scores have been a lot more close together after the walls, so there’s been much more opportunity for a turnover because there’s only been a few points in it.
Sorry David, I think I’ve confused you here, I meant ’round’ in terms of heat/quarter final/semi/final – where you expect the questions to be lower scoring because they’re more difficult.
Ah, I see. The stats for those are:
Series 1:
Heats: 4.9
Quarters: 3.4
Semis: 2.0
Final: 4.5
Series 2:
Heats: 5.6
Semis: 4.5
Final: 5.0
…so yes for series 1 but not so much in series 2.
>“How do we know that there were actually questions under that category?”
Wouldn’t it be simpler for us to call time earlier before she even started to read out that category?
In any case, the real danger is that we run out of questions rather than having dummy categories! We line up 6 sets for each show, and then after that the computer dips into a reserve file of 6 more.
Tiebreak is ‘captain only Mss ngv wl, no category given.