And that’s just the women.
I’m not surprised with the Globetrotters. They suck at mental puzzle stuff, and that’s just the way it is. They couldn’t do the watch challenge and if I remember correctly, during the gold weighing challenge, with a calculator, they still took a slow, brute force method of just adding an ounce at a time until they finally got it. The quicker teams seemed to figure out division would work faster. Isn’t the final challenge usually heavily mental, like remembering lots of details about the whole race? Better those guys just left now.
It drove me crazy watching Meghan struggling to remember the letters in the Kafka challenge. The phones, the desks and it appeared the whole room was purposely covered in dust just so you could jot down the letters with your finger, then erase them before you left. It’ll be kind of a travesty if those two don’t win, but luck does play a part in this race.
The brothers: Still cute, even when they’re evil. Dan still needs a sock shoved in his mouth. It never occurred to me that they’d get docked for a broken arm on the golem. In the past other teams have broken plaster of paris type animals and such but as long as you get all the parts to their destination, it counts. That challenge looked difficult enough as it was, I doubted the rabbis would actually decline one of the golems, no matter how bad it was. It’s like when the task is to score points against a professional sports team and obviously the professionals let them win after a certain amount of time.
Not much to say about Brian & Erica. Brian is cute, Erica is shrill and grating. They’re one of those teams that make me wish they’d switch the rules and allow racing teams to swap partners so two nice racers could dump their ball and chains and win together.
However, if you’re smart enough to realize that the “A” has to go in the middle and that FR almost certainly has to go together, the number drops a lot.
I join in the “older brother hatred”.
That said, I’m not sad to see the Globetrotters go–I’d rather the brothers or Mr/Mrs America went–the brothers hate everything (the older one at least) and Mr/Mrs America are simply incompetent (and she’s shrill as hell).
I’m rooting for Ken & Barbie.
When (on their first trip) Brian dropped one or two and Ericka dropped all of hers, there was a long, lingering shot of the shattered glass left on the sidewalk accompanied by the Chimes of Doom.
I wonder if there was something about “If you make a mess, clean it up so drunken Chech soccer hooligans don’t slice up their feet”? If so, that would explain the time lost.
I have thought the same thing—In a perfect world, Brian would dump his shrew of a wife (“Beauty Queen” my ass, she is one of the least physically attractive women on the entire Race) and hook up with Meghan, who has shown herself to be a much more classy and fairminded racer than Shane, who is, in my opinion, both arrogant and underhanded…
OK permutations & combinations one more time:
With 5 letters, there are 5! possible combinations: 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 120.
Given an “F” in the first spot, that reduces it to 4!, or 24.
If you assume you’re looking for a word, then yes some combinations make more sense than others. But if you didn’t immediately see “Franz” you could just as well assume that it’s an acronym or something otherwise totally arbitrary.
I think she’s actually quite attractive, physically…although the GT’s impression of her calling “Brian! Brian!” is an all-time fave TAR moment.
When Meghan & Cheyne were wheeling the golem and Cheyne was throwing his little hissy fit, I wanted to point out to him that it might time to man up, grow a pair, etc…his girlfriend is considerably more macho than he is. And he has ridiculous hair.
Surprisingly, there just aren’t that many animals that start with ‘N’. Nematode and nautilus, perhaps. Unless you cheat with something like “New Hampshire Spotted Owl”.
Can anyone think of a more common animal that begins with ‘N’? No adjectives like “Nevada” or “Northern”, please.
Cross my heart, the first thing I thought of was narwhal.
newt
narwhal
naked mole rat
nine-toed sloth
nauga
nutria
My wife immediately thought of “nutria.” I’m more of a “newt” guy, myself.
ETA: Although I do like “nauga,” cute li’l fellers.
Hunted for their skins, are they?
Farmed. For their hides, actually…
Veritable Jekyll and Hydes of the animal kingdom.
Swear to god, I’m a trained puzzle professional, and I couldn’t come up with anything. I’d’ve defaulted to “nice.”
Yeah, and the Canadian woods are just teeming with mo.
I think having to listen to Erika whine is penalty enough, don’t you?
I thought the same thing at the pit stop. I think there was a penalty we didn’t see.
As for animals-I went with gnu because it was just silly enough that I would remember that it was n and not g. (Although I would still probably prefer to use a sentence like “rabbits, zebras, and ferrets never argue”).
Also, not getting the Cheyne hate. I love the fact that they balance each other so well. When she gets stressed she gets controlling and he chills her out; when he gets stressed he gets whiny and complaining and she helps him calm down and proceed logically. They are some of the best all-around racers we’ve ever seen. They seem to be good at both the physical and the mental tasks. His hair doesn’t bother me.
The Globetrotters made a stupid decision out of frustration, and should have been able to solve the puzzle systematically. That said, I think this is an example of how standardized tests can be culturally biased.
First of all, I don’t think any of the racers entered the telephone room and though to themselves “How Kafkaesque!” I think they looked at the letters they had and thought “Hey, I’m in Eastern Europe, Franz is a good guess!” I’m a white guy and I’ve travelled internationally, plus I went to school in Wisconsin - I’ve met dozens of Franzes in my time. The Globetrotters grew up in the poor part of New Orleans, probably never left the region, and attended historically black colleges. Neither of them may have ever encountered a Franz in their entire lives.
I don’t think I’ve ever met a Franz, and for a minute I forgot if it was Franz or Frank Kafka, but still, even if you had never heard the name before you’d think it would be obvious to start guessing things like FRANZ, FARNZ, NARFZ, etc. instead of NFZRA, FZRAN or FNZAR. It’s just common sense. The thinking should have been, “It’s highly unlikely the producers would have the answer be a random combination of letters that could only be gotten by guessing, let me try by starting with words I can say or reasonably pronounce.”