According to Victoria Coren’s Twitter, there are five new Connecting Walls up. They are numbers 16-20, you will need to scroll to get them.
I’m not going to advertise it every week.
Stat Attack on The Krypton Factor Part Deux
Just before I start, I’m disappointed that last night’s Minute to Win It is currently nowhere to be “found”. Sort it out, America!
Also I can’t read the lyrics to our Eurovision entry (“You bring the sunshine, I’ll bring the good times!”) without adding “…and I’ll get to Scotland befoooorrre you!” in my mind. I largely suspect this is just me now but you’ll all be doing it by May.
Also also, it’s the last night of Man in Box this evening, the thing that literally nobody’s talking about. I am interested in what happens tomorrow with the reveal, though.
Anyway, you might remember me doing a post before this year’s Krypton Factor attempting to lay to rest the idea that the general knowledge round is rather unfairly weighted and came to the conclusion that although it might look like that sometimes, generally speaking the numbers suggested otherwise – it gives the impression that anyone can win (and that is, in fact, the point), but the person leading going into it still usually wins.
That was based on KF 2009 numbers, where the show was five rounds and the GK round was 70 seconds. This year there were only four rounds and the length of the GK round had increased to 90 seconds. Now is it properly game changing?
Here are the numbers, numbers in brackets are the scores at the end of the round. The first heat ended in a tie, I’m not including the result of that for statistical purposes.
Heat 1: 26 (30), 16 (16), 20 (30), 10 (22)
Heat 2: 22 (23), 16 (16), 14 (19), 16 (25)
Heat 3: 10 (16), 14 (23), 14 (14), 30 (36)
Heat 4: 18 (27), 18 (23), 14 (14), 16 (15)
Heat 5: 16 (26), 18 (23), 14 (12), 22 (22)
Heat 6: 10 (18), 22 (20), 20 (29), 18 (22)
Heat 7: 16 (16), 18 (20), 22 (26), 12 (11)
Semi 1: 18 (20), 10 (13), 20 (21), 18 (25)
Semi 2: 16 (20), 14 (21), 14 (14), 26 (38)
Final: 20 (19), 18 (27), 14 (26), 14 (22)
What does this show?
- Averaging (mean) scores on a like-for-like basis (all the best scores, all the second best scores and so on) reveal the averages for the round to be 9.3, 6, 2.9 and (hilariously) -0.6. Rather closer to the traditional round scores than last time. Total of averages is 17.6, so still below the amount given in other rounds. On three occasions a player scores more than the 10 points on offer in other rounds.
- More interestingly, the leader going into the round only wins five out of the ten shows. The average lead going into the round is 5.2. The lead of the five players who go into the round as the leader averages at 7.2 (this includes two rather large outliers of 10 and 16), but leads of people who don’t go on to win is only 3.2 which seems an entirely reasonable turnover.
- The most interesting result is the one for the final in which loads of points are scored, but if you were to convert the performances into 10, 6, 4 and 2 would still give broadly the same result (in fact Pete and James would tie on 24 points each).
What does this all prove? Beats me, only that the current system used is more ‘alright’ than ‘not alright,’ and this year’s series had me feeling rather bored which definitely wasn’t the case last year. So let’s instead look at the New Zealand 1990 KF final and possibly the dullest Mental Agility round I can recall seeing. Your ten seconds of concentration starts… now!
Weekend Specials
Sorry kids, your Krypton Factor analysis is going to have to wait until tomorrow as I am currently distracted.
Despite that, I’ve put up to more old new weekend specials on the Specials Board:
- LeGaf it up with Le Bigdil!
- A word or two about A Word or 2!
Good.
Board of Excitement 14th – 20th March 2010
Dear UK Producers, it is wrong that there are more US shows of interest right now than British ones. sort it out please thanks.
- Minute to Win It (Sunday, NBC) – Two hour debut of the show that’s The Cube but without The Cube and with a time limit.
- The Amazing Race (Sunday, CBS) – Things I learnt from the race this week: a) Cowboy hats don’t come off ever, even while bungee jumping. b) If somehow England meet the USA at the World Cup in the knockout stages, we don’t have to fear penalty shoot-outs. c) German Beatles tribute bands are hilarious. So does this mean they aren’t actually going to Liverpool, then? Bother’s Bar: right again.
- Only Connect (Monday, 8:30pm, BBC4) – Unless they do it later in the series then I look a bit silly but that is the risk you take in being cutting edge but without doing any of the associated research. Anyway, it’s the third quarter-final of this this week, Neuroscientists vs strategy board gamers. Speaking of which, I was very surprised and excited to learn this week that Robert Florence (of brilliant BRILLIANT video games shows Consolevania and BBC Scotland’s Video Gaiden and currently writer and performer in BBC Scotland’s comedy Burnistoun) has his own site devoted to board games. That a minor celebrity (and a fairly talented one at that) does this pleases me immensely.
- St Patrick’s Day (Wednesday, Ireland) – do you like a drink? Well why not have one on the one day a year where it’s legally allowed!
- There’s no Survivor This Week (Not Thursday, Not CBS) – because of March Madness. Some people play basketball, it’s crazy, apparently. So you’ll have to wait another week to find out what other inventive and surprising ways the Heroes could self-destruct. What we have learnt quite specifically is that the Heroes are really rubbish at anything that involes spatial awareness. As many of the puzzles in Survivor challenges seem to involve spatial awareness, that is a problem.
- Solitary v4.0 (Saturday, Fox Reality) – by my reckoning only two more episodes left, so only two more chances to use my ‘I confidently predict this will be like the previous episode, but with one less person in it’ joke you all look forward to on a weekly basis. Last week gave us a brilliant test in a virtual maze followed by THE CHAIR AND CROWN OF NAILS (STUMPY PEGS) (my title), the first treatment this season to genuinely look like an implement of torture. How do you follow that? I don’t know, but otherwise’I confidently predict this will be like the previous episode, but with one less person in it. Edit: Actually, it’s the final next week!
Your Country Needs You!
Tonight, six acts will be doing some singing, the prize is to sing Pete Waterman’s song at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Norway.
I’d like to say there’s ‘Norway’ I’m going to miss this (the joke here is that ‘Norway’ sounds a bit like ‘no way’. Do you see?) but unfortunately I just might. But don’t let that stop you: the punters have a natter about it, and you can do that here if you want.
My money’s on Uni 5, for no reason other than it sounds like a local bus route. Busses are relatively environmentally friendly = green vote.
Oi! GAMESMASTAAAAAHH!!!
There is no way that this will end well.
Although saying that, it can’t be much worse than Game Face on Bravo I saw a while ago which I think might have been the worst video gaming show I’ve ever seen. Maybe it has improved in the interim, I’m not sure I dare check. The horror. THE HORROR.