The Mole: Wie is de Mol 2014!

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I was pretty sure...

Spoiler: episode 4 spoilers

Ellie was the mole, until the last episode where she unlocked the box on the cliff. Then I was like, okay, surely there's no reason to do that if you're the mole.

My backup guess is Taeke, because he wrote 41-something on the bid to take money out of the pot! Obviously the correct play for the mole is to put the maximum amount, to ensure the next highest bid gets picked. It is possible Taeke opted for a tenth of the pot, €410, but that just seems a bit weird. I was pretty shocked someone went so high as €2,345 and I wondered if they really meant to do that, or misunderstood the game...? I hope it gets revealed after the show

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I wonder if Taeke is sophisticated enough to pull off some of these sabotages.

I find it pretty hard to identify when sabotages are actually happening! Like in the last episode,

Spoiler:

multiple people definitely screwed up the sentences they were given - Marjolein, Cecile, Tim, maybe Taeke. And in the cycling one, *everyone* missed numbers 1 through 7 at the start. I find it really hard to spot what the mole is doing wrong when the challenges are hard and everyone makes a lot of mistakes.

I'm still on Taeke too though. There was the moment in the cycling challenge where he kept making Tim repeat the answer and almost missed the deadline. And in the previous episode with suitcase challenge, the first riddle about Jokers, Taeke starts off by asking "what's on the Jokers?" and then 5 seconds later he's insisting "it's the mole on both sides! It's 100%" which seems a bit weird.

Although CES pointed out that Klaas then votes for giving 50% as the answer, haha.

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TaekeTaeke totally biked ahead and grabbed all them missing envelopes at the start and then moseyed out and grabbed the ending ones between camera shots of him and Art this is so ez guys come on.

OMG of courrrrrrse

That's beautiful, it makes so much sense I feel silly I didn't realise it.

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So... are the disbelievers onside with Team Taeke yet??

Spoiler:

I really enjoyed the last episode! The bellboy challenge was hilarious to watch. I couldn't tell if there were any clear sabotages - I did notice Taeke played a total of -750 in the wooden cards game, but feasibly that could have been the correct play at the time in terms of personal gain. In the previous episode there were couple of moments - like maybe him driving the car the wrong way(?), and wasting time when using the phone in the cable cars.

The failed trade between Klaas and Annemieke was annoying. They would both have been better off if Annemieke had given Klaas 3 or 4 of her jokers, and he had given her the black token in exchange, on the agreement that she would never play it (which she had no incentive to do). Then they would both have had more jokers than the other players. Whereas by playing the black token, Klaas merely puts himself on level pegging with the others.

The current official poll has Klaas as the most suspected candidate, at 48%! I am still a firm believer in Taeke, I just don't think any hypothetical sabotage tops him stealing the envelopes on the bike.

CES is still unconvinced though! He just agreed to bet against me - I win if it's Taeke, he wins if it's any of the other 3. I only wish we had made this bet 2 episodes ago so I could be even more insufferably smug when we find out the truth

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peg it is like you want to double down on being wrong

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Spoiler: episode 8

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Spoiler: episode 8 again

I got a bit worried during the clock challenge, and then...

All that money, though! That was a lot of successful challenges.

But so... what the hell happened with the bike challenge! And who on earth is the mole?!

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I think the only possible explanation here is that there is no mole.

Or maybe Taeke really is the mole... and they're planning to do a surprise bring him back next week. That'll be it.

Or it's Klaas.

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Spoiler: Klaas

If it is Klaas, what sabotage has he done? I can't think of anything specific... granted I haven't been watching him so closely. Oh except, he was pretty stupid and useless in the clock challenge.

Maybe I've gotta go back and watch all the previous episodes now.

Edit: Oh, haha. CES has pointed out two other moments:

• During the riddles for the lockbox, with the question about the probability two jokers land on the mole. There was a disagreement over whether the jokers had mole on both sides or just one, so whether the answer was 25% or 100%. Klaas still chimes in with "well, I think it's 50%".
  
• The boat challenge collecting the wooden tokens with the correct symbols. Klaas was the only one who actually got out of the boat and got the money out of the box. There is a theory that there could have actually been €2,000 in the box, but he only took out €1,000. I wonder if that was true?!

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^ me too

well done here btw

I didn't come up with it... I think it was mentioned on moltalk or one of the fansites. CES thinks he might have thought it himself. Anyway, the idea of Annemieke and Tim watching that episode at home afterwards, and realising the possibility, is perhaps the best bit.

Mainly I thought the clip that peg posted at the top of this page was the (hilarious) clincher!

There were a bunch of fan theories that were posted throughout the series, most of which were true:
http://www.widm.nl/hints.html

That page did previously have theories about alternate moles, but they seem to have gotten rid of all the other ones now, which is a shame. It was interesting to see because there were a lot more about Klaas, which made it a bit of a shame and less of a surprise when it really was him.

I'm looking forward to next year!

Also - Eastermeet, *shiftyeyes*

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Enjoyed 2017 episode 1...

Spoiler:

The binoculars and bridge challenge was a lot of fun to watch. I enjoyed Roos' attempt to lie to the others about getting the exemptions, and then the twist in the cinema.

I found it annoying when Vincent didn't use his exemption in the end, and yet Roos, Thomas and Jeroen all used theirs because they thought Vincent wasn't gonna back down. Seemed like if Vincent had made it clearer that he had changed his mind (perhaps the issue was, he didn't make his mind up soon enough) then he could have persuaded the others to go with the group exemption and he wouldn't have been sent home. Roos and Thomas seemed open to doing the group exemption anyway, and I suspect they could have pressured Jeroen into it.

Shame that there doesn't seem to be a good quality English sub available yet - if anyone has one, please share as I know a few people who want to watch! There is a version on youtube and dailymotion but it's very low quality - although the subber says she's working on improving it for next time.

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Whose your pick, Zito?

Mine is...

Spoiler:

Jochem, for his proposal about the division of labour over the envelopes. He suggested that one group go for the £1,000 and £750, whilst the other go for the ?, £250 and £500. Seems like it would have made much more sense to split the £1000 and £750 between the two groups, and have those be the priority; the £250 and £500 could be left if necessary.

There was a lot of speculation on Moltalk about whether Immanuelle deliberately walked past the envelope because she was the mole, and whether her excitement on finding it was faked, but I think it was totally genuine. Also, Diederik looked pretty nervous during the results of the test, and I think that seemed genuine too. I'm going to be more thorough in my mole guessing this year... so I'm currently at:

Mole: Jochem
Not mole: Imanuelle, Diederik
Unknown: Jeroen, Sanne, Sigrid, Yvonne, Roos, Thomas

Also I think this is meaningless but funny, the t-shirt Diederik was wearing:

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Ouch.

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KittyMo and everyone else we should have invited you to our mol skype chat, I've put most of my thoughts this season in there.

Spoiler: Pre-final speculation

Tho going back to the auction, it does amaze me that candidate!Jochem is the one that privately said 3 jokers are worth nothing to him with no further screentime on that convo & and mole!Thomas privately put them as worth $2000.

I hadn't looked back at this with Thomas as mole. But I can understand a candidate saying 'nothing' and then bidding, as they weren't told in the first round what their valuation meant, and a candidate could have assumed that giving a low number might mean they could get a joker for cheaper. So I can imagine candidate!Jochem saying 0. I'm not sure why mole!Thomas doesn't give a low number, but perhaps he doesn't think it'll make that much difference, or he doesn't want it to be obvious to the viewers that he has prior information about the task.

Mole activity for Thomas:
* Dunes challenge, presumably he did something here to add or remove half a €1,000 note to make it worth negative.
* Lasso challenge, seemed to like he hesitated and ran around the bales for no reason which made it easier for the guy to catch him before he got out.
* Mounted balloon shooting challenge, he got a really quick time in the first round and then fails to score anything in the second round, and apparently doesn't hear any of the others shouting and whistling him to turn back.
* Polaroid challenge, seems likely that he threw away one of the photos so they could only get 9 points ; also I don't think he tried to guess a single one of the proverbs, he just let Sanne do them all.
* Alphabet challenge, put the Z in the wrong place and then seems to do nothing useful for the rest of the challenge

I haven't looked back so I hope there are some more surprises that I've missed!

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Wie is de Mol 2018 has begun! English subs are up already too! If anyone wants to join our skype chat then let me know.

Spoiler: My E1 thoughts

Pretty amazing episode. LOVED the countries reveal!

Bit frustrating watching the teams not communicating much throughout the later bits of the challenge.... e.g. most of them ringing Art just to hear the same message about M18, a bunch of them spending figuring out the TBILISI password independently of each other.

It was funny that Jean-Marc seemed to be considering that they might have to get to Tbilisi during the two hour challenge.

No idea who the mole is...

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Well, it's taken me a while after the final episode to settle on a mole from the Final Three, but now I have done I'm pretty sure of it.

Spoiler: my mole is....

Jan

Spoiler: evidence 1: only read this if you want to know where the negative money came from during the white water rafting challenge

After this challenge played out I thought, surely you could go back and see what capsules each person was meant to grab, what ones they actually took, and figure out where the negative money came from. Luckily I didn't have to actually do this because the lovely people on the WIDM official forums had already done it, aha

Olcay's was obvious because she 'accidentally' took two from the same flag, but as for the other two? What happened was:
1. Jan gets given England - Orange and Italy - Blue.
2. Jan tells everyone: 'just remember our own colours, otherwise it will be chaos'
3. At some point, Simone starts to say out loud 'I have Georgia blue, and Hungary...'. Jan immediately cuts her off with: 'guys, just remember your own colours.'
4. Later Jan starts to chant: 'Blue, Orange, England, Italy' - this makes it sound like blue is England and orange is Italy - in Ruben's voiceover he actually talks about Jan chanting 'England Blue, Italy Orange'.
5. Jan proceeds to take the Blue from England and the Orange from Italy... bam, twice negative money.

Although it's possible that a real candidate could muddle their colours and countries accidentally, there are two things that make Jan's actions suspicious:

• The contrast between him telling everyone 'just remember your own colours' and then proceeding to chant his own colours.
  
• The weirdness of him wording it as 'Blue, Orange, England, Italy', instead of the more natural 'colour country, colour country,' that everyone else was using.

Spoiler: evidence 2: how much money each candidate has contributed to the pot, up to E07, according to Moltalk

Don't really know how they calculate this, but here it is. I wouldn't rely on this on it's own, but combined with evidence 1...

Also as I mentioned before, me, CES, myko, Patrick, KittyMo and Faraday have been discussing throughout this season in a skype chat - if anyone else wants to join - PEG, Zito, LLD? - then just let me know!