WIDM ’18

Get your Molboekjes ready, Wie is De Mol? returns on January 6th for another run of celebrity sabotage hijinks and it will have to do great things if it’s to match last year’s hugely entertaining series. Ten Dutch celebrities are off to Georgia to complete challenges set by Art Rooijakkers to earn money for a pot which the winner will take home, but one of the ten is a secret saboteur. The winner is not the person who does best in the challenges, but the person who best works out who the Mole is and remembers everything they’ve done.

As usual, we ask our international friends not to spoil episodes until the brilliant Marieke has put up the English subtitled eps. The following links will take you straight to the relevant parts of the discussion.

Let’s meet the contestants, from left to right:

  • Writer and philosopher Stine Jensen
  • Comedian Emilio Guzman
  • NOS Journaal presenter Simone Weimans
  • BNNVARA presenter Jan Versteegh
  • Fashion designer Olcay Gulsen
  • Tears & Marble band member Bella Hay
  • Fokke and Sukke (comic characters) draftsman Jean-Marc van Tol
  • Pianist and singer Ruben Hein
  • Actress Loes Haverkort
  • AVROTROS presenter Ron Boszhard

Happy Mol hunting!

272 thoughts on “WIDM ’18

  1. Dale

    I think he may have been told to take it easy since they had a rough start. if he was a bit full on all season and they didnt win money it wouldnt be fun. I am surprised he didnt sabotage the pot though. I think Jan had a feeling that Ru was going to win and didnt want to take from him.

    Reply
  2. David

    In some cases the producers actually tell the Mole to help the team win if they can- in the first US season the final three had an escape their individual rooms challenge, and the producers gave the Mole the entire solution so she could be the hero and possibly throw the scent off of her; but the other two players laughed the challenge off (tying up the only phone line so she couldn’t talk to them), which ended up costing the winner an extra 75K….

    I think the producers have a target range of what they want the pot to be at the end, and can tell the Mole to play hard or ease up depending on the situation at the time; they can’t control how the others will play in the challenges, so sometimes the team will sabotage themselves with no Mole help.

    Reply
  3. Andrew, the Yank

    Yeah, I think the mole not sabotaging everything, indeed sometimes helping earn money, is fine. Not only does it help make it more difficult to figure out who it is, but it would be very easy to just sabotage everything so the winner gets nothing, and that would not be very interesting or even really fair, honestly.

    Reply
    1. Dale

      In the USA format the mole is not allowed to intentionally sabotage every assignment. Production gives them the information to sabotage one of the games and lets them know what to expect. I.E. the treasurer will have a major role the next day. Ultimately they want to winner to win something. I think this may be the case too as we are only shown the the mole directly sabotaging one assignment per episode.

      Reply
      1. David

        I think there’s also the issue of nobody wanting to be on the show if the prize isn’t worth the hassle. Indeed, I’ve heard last year’s “double the pot if you win” final challenge was implemented specifically because the super-low prizes in the two previous seasons (€13,020 in 2016 and €10,500 in 2015; for comparison, the 2012 season with that negotiation challenge that wiped out the pot halfway through the season ended up at €12,601) meant they had a LOT of trouble finding people to take part in the season.

        Reply
  4. Daniel Peake

    It’s time for the results of The Suspect List 2018!

    Thank you to everyone who took part this year, there were a whopping 31 of you, 18 of whom played for eight or 9 weeks!

    Whilst the Netherlands was equally split as to whom the Mole was, going in to the final week, 55% thought it was Jan, 35% Olcay, 10% Ruben. So, for a change, we were on the ball.

    Without further ado, let’s reveal the results of the Suspect List! If you managed to put The Mole at the top of your Suspect List every week, and answer all the bonus questions correctly, you would score 130 points (100 for the List, 30 for the bonuses). No-one did that though.

    I’m going to do a “Eurovision” and all the points award from the List part first, then add on bonus points later. So, list points only:

    Dale 96
    Scott Rux 96
    Michael Harmstone 57
    Daniel Peake 54
    Nico W 9 44
    Jack Pitts 35
    Reid W 34
    Andrew Warren (the Yank) 33
    Aprilbride15 33
    Joseph Bolas 28
    Joseph Monticello 19
    Martin 14
    Ben aka Clicky 13
    Muis 12
    Shaun Klein 11
    KimJ 8
    Aiden 7
    Greg Lowe 7
    Nick Gates 7
    David S 6
    Steve L 6
    Ali 5
    Gwilym 5
    Stephen 4
    Zeus 3
    Art 2
    Matt Clemson 2
    Jules 0

    Jan was a difficult Mole to spot. There are many people who played for 8+ weeks and didn’t make it into double digits of points! Let’s just say you’d have seen your red screen fairly early in the series. There’s a healthy mid-table of “people who probably made sure they scattered their lists around”, i.e. just like me. And finally there are two people – Dale and Scott Rux – WAY WAY out in front with 96 out of a possibly 100 List points. Incredible. Both put Jan consistently at the top except for one week (Week 2 for Scott, Week 3 for Dale). It’s going to come down to bonus points.

    So, for everyone who doesn’t stand a chance, here’s how things look with bonus points added.
    (Name, BONUS points, TOTAL points)
    Michael Harmstone 12 69
    Daniel Peake 9 63
    Nico W 15 59
    Aprilbride15 12 45
    Jack Pitts 9 44
    Reid W 6 40
    Andrew Warren (the Yank) 3 36
    Joseph Bolas 3 31
    Joseph Monticello 6 25
    Martin 6 20
    Muis 6 18
    Gwilym 12 17
    Nick Gates 9 16
    Ben aka Clicky 3 16
    KimJ 6 14
    Shaun Klein 3 14
    Steve L 6 12
    Greg Lowe 3 10
    Matt Clemson 6 8
    Stephen 3 7
    Aiden 0 7
    Zeus 3 6
    David S 0 6
    Art 3 5
    Ali 0 5
    Jules 0 0

    There’s actually very little change this year with the bonus points! Nico W scored the most bonus points, with 15 out of 30, followed on 12 points by Gwilym, Aprilbride 15 and Michael Harmstone who should be congratulated for coming third.

    So – WHO WON?
    Scott managed to score 21 bonus points, taking him to 117 in total.
    Dale, though, pipped him to the post with 24 bonus points (one question!) and WINS THE SUSPECT LIST 2018 WITH 120 POINTS! Well done Dale.
    Just to rub it in, if Scott had played his joker in a week where he’d got the bonus question correct, i.e. weeks 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, he would have won by 3 points. Unlucky, old chap. (Though, to be fair, Dale jokered the only week where he didn’t put Jan at the top or get the Bonus question right, so if he had played it any other week he would have been a clear winner!)

    When you played your joker had an impact – either Dale or Scott could have won depending on when their jokers were played!

    If you took the average of everyone’s Suspect List and entered that, you would have scored 58 points (43 + 15 bonus), which would be 6th place. This year, David Bodycombe once again got his D10 out and provided us with a random entry – this year he scored 54 points (51 + 3 bonus), again this would be 6th place. If you took the order in which people’s names were entered into the execution screens and made that your Suspect List, interestingly you would have scored 63 points (48+15), and been in 4th place.

    The last interesting statistic is how much Jan was suspected. In Week 1, he was the most suspected candidate, but he plummeted to least suspected by a country mile for weeks 3, 4, 5 and 6, before returning to most suspected by week 9. The graph is truly astonishing – you can find it on the “Week by Week graph” tab of this google doc spreadsheet:

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dsiB3E1342HytZTI5KfpMMp_18q3cDdL_D_KezUHGaA/edit?usp=sharing

    In that spreadsheet you can see what everyone put each week, see the averages, see some nice pretty graphs and see the final league tables with all the scores. Basically, geek out over it.

    Thank you to everyone who took part, and I look forward to seeing you all again for The Suspect List 2019. I’m tempted to tweak things substantially for next year – so hold on to your hats.

    Success!
    Dan P

    Reply
        1. Scott Rux

          I checked the results, and I simply wrote an incorrect bonus in week 3.
          You won fairly and deservedly, congratulations. 🙂

          Reply
    1. David B

      Some comments:

      – Delighted my little lump of plastic did so well again.
      – It was actually a D20.
      – Knowing when to play the joker was a tricky complication, because it could only be done once. I took a vague guess at a ‘fair’ system and modelled it as: “Roll D20. If, in week X, I roll any number from 1 to X+1, play the joker.” So, for example, in week 3, I needed to roll a 1, 2, 3 or 4, and indeed I rolled a ‘4’ so that’s when it was used up.
      – I’m not sure if I buy the “order in which people’s names were entered into the execution screens” model. Surely that’s just a function of where the mole’s name comes in the alphabet?

      Reply
      1. Scott Rux

        I did the entry for that as a side project.

        During each execution, Art calls names in some fashion (until there is a red screen). That was the ordering I used in the “Camera” suspect list. The remaining slots were filled in by seat order from camera left to camera right.

        I was just curious if the Mole would have had their name called (showing a green screen) or just not have their name called at all.

        Reply
        1. John R

          In one of the American series, one of the clues was the Mole’s name never being called up during execution.

          Reply
    2. TVs Michael Harmstone

      Well done guys – me and my 82* points are quite satisfied although I wish I’d never switched in Week 2!

      *should be 82 really because a glitch in the matrix meant my Week 8 pick for Jan didn’t go through for some reason.

      Thanks Dan for running this again and I’ll see you all to lose my 7th in a row next year!

      Reply
    3. Nico W.

      Wow, congratulations Dale and thanks to Dan for providing us with this little game!
      I actually guessed about 2/3 of the bonus questions, because I never remember the details. And I put Jan in last place the most of the candidates. Guess it comes down to luck a lot in The Suspect List. Would love to know how the Suspect List would have been if someone else (mainly Stine or Simone) would have been the mole. They seemed to me to be everyone’s mole most of the time!

      Reply
    4. Matt Clemson

      2 points from the main list! Oh, that’s beautiful. Particularly because I was basically either going to have a near-perfect score, an okay score or a disastrous one.

      Reply
  5. Dale

    I’m so surprised I won it! I really thought I screwed myself over with switching that one week (darn Olcay). I had a great time and cant wait to play again next year!

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      Well done Dale and thanks Dan for running it!

      Amused by the points on the graph where the most favoured contestant then got the chop.

      Did I really miss Week 7? I expect I’d have scored about 100 points that week. Anyway I was amusingly way off.

      Reply
  6. Steve

    Congrats to Dale and thanks to Dan for running this again!

    But seriously, I’m stunned I was the only person to play their Joker on week one. My reasoning was that I’d probably not be much more confident at week 8 than week 1, so I might as well go for a week when I could have more opportunities to get higher doubled points (double-6, 7, or 8, rather than only double-10, 1 or 0). Even then it still didn’t pay off since I got double-1. Though I guess there’s a surge on weeks 2, 3, and 4, when there’s been more than one challenge to suss out clues from, so maybe I wasn’t entirely off in my reasoning. I probably should’ve waited a week for more intel.

    Reply
    1. Andrew, the Yank

      My thinking was one episode was too small a sample size, but I didn’t want to wait too long for the reason you mentioned that it would be nice to get a high point value doubled even if I had the wrong person as my top choice. Hence, episode 2.

      Reply
  7. Reid W.

    Congratulations Dale! A most impressive accomplishment.

    And thank you Dan, for the opportunity to participate in The Suspect List. This was my first year participating. It was loads of fun and greatly enhanced my viewing of the show itself as well. Already looking forward to participating with everyone again next year!

    Reply
  8. Andrew, the Yank

    Congratulations, Dale. And thank you Dan for hosting! Was quite fun, even if I’m still salty I got so close to picking Jan early.. alas.

    Reply

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