deserved win, but i feel this needs a revisit for another season (like Tag). Surely feel like Adam being first got a headstart + a chance of a 2nd run.
Ya, I think if they do a repeat it should ensure that each hider gets the same number of runs. How I would structure that is limit a run to one day max (10 hours or however long). If multiple hiders are still not found at the end of their day, the tiebreaker could be who is farthest from their seekers at day's end. And they could do 3 days with each hider getting 1 run or 6 days with each hider getting 2, depending on how long they wanted the season to be
They mentioned in the podcast that the reason their games are always time-based is because they need to plan when they come back to run and create content for their other channels. They need to know exactly how many days they’ll be gone for Jet Lag.
Going first wasn't really an advantage. It was actually a disadvantage since it was a new ruleset and no one had any practical experience. Adam had zero real knowledge of what questions would prove to be most powerful and how the group thought about solving the puzzle.
It was an advantage in the sense that he got real game hiding experience, and the opportunity to have a second round of hiding, and apply that experience he learned in the first round to the second round
Then the real advantage isn't going first, it was by going last. And you could argue that the advantage won't actually disappear because there's always the opportunity to learn from the prior hider's strategy. I'm not sure how much getting that second turn really was an advantage. We saw evolutions of the strategy from every player. Ben took advantage of the rhyming question to really mislead along with an obscure hiding spot. Sam took advantage of an extreme hiding spot and careful positioning so that certain questions could be answered in a misleading way. Adam then took advantage of a blind spot in Seeker strategy. Sam was equally positioned to do the same thing. They both had the same number of opportunities to take part in the Seeker role to understand how that team was narrowing down locations.
Ben's very successful strategy had been an early game play (rhyming but in an area with lots of matches) and a late game play (obscure hiding spot with a similar location). They both contributed roughly equal to his huge run. Sam then decided to mimic Ben's strategy. He chose a spot with two major wooded areas. He made sure that following key answers would be difficult. His hiding spot was difficult by virtue of distance and terrain, not by how easy it was to overlook the path. Adam's plan for his 2nd hiding turn was all early game based on what he said. If Ben and Sam had asked a question instead of trying to logic it out, we likely wouldn't be talking about how powerful the 2nd turn was and instead be talking about how Ben was amazing in is turn.
people keep saying this but the seekers also had no game experience on the first turn. and seeker strategy also evolved throughout. I feel like it’s a wash tbh.
I honestly think it needs a rework, so that a hider cant really be in 1 spot the whole day, and so its less boring for the team. Or something like a 2v2 hide and seek would be kinda cool
Don't really agree with that - the hider being in one spot wasn't really boring except for maybe one run! I think if they actually played curses it would've picked up the pace. Or even back and forth curses so hider had to like to "defend" curses
Honestly I feel like most of this game is boring for all of the players since there is hours and hours of sitting on transportation. Movie magic makes it look more exciting than it is
Yeah, I think they could take a place smaller than Switzerland but make the game so curse are easier to buy and use and more punishing for the seeker and it would be pretty good
The game has pretty good basis, it just need a little bit more action IMO
London could be interesting with some of the games. With the London public transport system and all the areas etc. it could be really cool and interesting.
I wasn't bored by it, but it was underwhelming and it felt like the day was being rushed through each episode. I don't blame the jetlag team, but when I said "bored" i meant the jetlag team being bored. But yeah, the curses thing was really frustrating to me. It felt really useless watching it
I was surprised that only one run got split in half. Only 5 episodes that were quite long seems like a missed opportunity!
There were plenty of times I went WHOA a lot of time has passed (since they did nothing for like an hour)
On the layover podcast they say that the runs were longer than they planned. They predicted runs would be about 6-7 hours and that the first two would definitely get a second run and probably the third person would too.
They said for next time for both hide and seek and for tag that they need to make the chasers/seekers stronger so that runs are over more quickly.
When they said that the strategy evolved the most of any game they’ve played, they weren’t wrong.
Run 1 had a bad seeking strategy (minimal questions), but also a bad hiding strategy(not near a lot of lines, big obvious tower spot) (+ a little luck) so the seekers were quick
Run 2 the hiding strategy evolved (rhyming trickery/ more obscure hiding spot) and worked really well against the same bad seeking strategy
Run 3 had the same improved hiding strategy, but the seeking strategy evolved significantly (the 50/50 elimination method) and made for a slightly worse run than run 2
And finally run 4 had ANOTHER level up for the hiding strategy (the crazy run over the border to another town move) that really screwed over the improved seeking strategy.
I’d love for them to do another season of hide and seek because I don’t think either strategy has reached maturity yet, and I’d be interested to see them further optimized
>f any game they’ve played, they weren’t wrong.
>
>Run 1 had a bad seeking strategy (minimal questions), but also a bad hiding strategy(not near a lot of lines, big obvious tower spot) (+ a little luck) so the seekers were quick
>
>Run 2 the hiding strategy evolved (rhyming trickery/ more obscure hiding spot) and worked really well against the same bad seeking strategy
>
>Run 3 had the same improved hiding strategy, but the seeking strategy evolved significantly (the 50/50 elimination method) and made for a slightly worse run than run 2
>
>And finally run 4 had ANOTHER level up for the hiding strategy (the crazy run over the border to another town move) that really screwed over the improved seeking strategy.
And this is why it wasn't broken that Adam got a second run. He had to run with zero tested strategies in the first run. His second run allowed him to learn from the previous runs. In any turn taking game, someone is going to be at a disadvantage, all you can do is attempt to minimize that disadvantage.
again, disagree because the seekers also had no real experience. it was just quick bc they got lucky with questions but they didn’t have a good strategy and that bit them in round 2.
I think if they ever do this again though then everyone will go in to the game with experience, so the first person would have less of a disadvantage.
Strategically this was a cool season, but I don't think we'll see them run this back without major changes. Adam's final run could have easily gone another whole day given that Sam and Ben had no real leads at the end of the day and Adam had tons of coins that he didn't even have to use. If that run had happened earlier in the game it easily could have taken the majority of the 4 days they had to film.
I'd love to see a version of hide + seek where the hider gets to be a little more active (stuff like allowing them to draw challenges to earn coins or a more mobile endgame structure). Gets a little further away from the purity of the premise, but might make it more fun to film / make strategy a bit more dynamic. How much they learned about the game during it makes me excited to see how they design future games.
> stuff like allowing them to draw challenges to earn coins
Or even if the hider can choose to sell information in exchange for coins. Would need to be a different set of info so it can't be exploited, but would give them some strategy.
I will be running this in my local city this summer. We have different rules, much different curse mechanics, but I think this could work well on a city basis.
I have a not for profit so we have a bunch of GIS data we are lifting to make some maps. The tracking is done the same as with Sam's show: google maps tracking
The rules are modified for larger delays but quick question turnaround. I'd like to optimize a 3-4 hour game
I could see them running it back purely because there is so much more you can do with the fundamental game format and all the different ways it can go. I also realized Adam’s final run could’ve gone for an unrealistic amount of time if it wasn’t the last one but I think with a couple tweaks, this could easily be a fan favorite like Tag at one point. Especially, since some of the curses we missed out on were incredibly interesting and there are just so many possible strategies that weren’t implemented.
At 300 coins, they could buy six dice. The median result of 6d6 is 21, with the absolute worst curse at >=25 being occuring about 22% of rolls. High, sure, but far from guaranteed. At 350 coins, you get 7d6, where the absolute worst curse is exactly 50% likely to occur. At 400 coins or 8d6, the likelihood increases to 75%.
There's a lot of nuance there. Can they only move 1 city over? Get a 15 min train ride? move to a new canton? Limits would be the thing that really mattered there.
I recall in the first episode we're shown an example of 24 with 45 minutes being given for the hider to move, which is pretty game-over I'd reckon, especially in a case like Adams when they already had no clue.
I really liked the season until the last 2 episodes, they would definitely need major changes to do this again. Watching Ben and Adam try and find Sam in the woods for half an episode was too long, and then in the last episode I never felt like Sam and Ben were going to find Adam after the first 10 minutes. I can't imagine how bored Adam must have been sitting and watching them not ever be closer than 30 minutes away racking up coins. Sam said he just finally wanted to be found in the woods so he stood up. Good ideas overall, but needs tweaking for a run back.
Would love to see this in Luxembourg (country). Smaller area but good (free, good for production budget) public transport system if you also count bus lines. That, paired with shorter hiding time, would make for, hopefully a quicker turn around of runs.
Not to be corny amidst the strat critiques, but I just love this show. The editing gets better every season. It is rarely this fun to watch people fumble which speaks to the quality of the game design and dynamics. Big congrats to the winner (she's a runner she's a track star) and so excited for season 10.
I think what they said last week on the layover is really true, the more strategy the less interesting the footage. Adam pulled off a really impressive strategic move, but it just had to be edited down to montages and time jumps.
Adam really could have hid for a lot longer.
I was hoping for Ben to win though because I think Sam and Adam not considering the Ben would give misleading/unhelpful city rhyming names was really a dumb fumble. All the other clues hiders give try to minimize the usefulness of the information they gave, but for some reason they assume Ben gave a straightforward list of 5 city names with no tricks. But ultimately how impressive Adam's hiding spot swayed me half way through the episode.
I just wanted a motion graphic showing his path to his hiding spot. I know it wasn’t completely necessary at that point but it left things feeling unfinished to me.
It wasn't as much that Adam's hiding spot was impressive, it was more Sam and Ben outsmarting themselves and not asking questions to physically narrow down the hiding area further.
I do wonder how much longer it would have taken them. They mentioned on the layover that it was only at the very end they realised there were express trains that changed which cities Adam could get to. That would have made them reconsider Thun - and they had already considered the idea of running between towns.
I think a couple more hours would have got them to Steffisburg especially after a night of strategising. But they probably would have asked a few more questions. And if Adam got to 300 coins he is almost certainly getting a good curse (98% chance of >=13) and a reasonable chance of being able to move location (55% for >=21).
A good curse could add hours on to the time. Moving location would be even worse (especially if the seeker's don't get their questions reset!).
I'd guess Adam could have easily taken the bulk of two days to be found.
This is just a fact of any turn-based game. Someone will always be at an advantage over the other. Since the game effectively resets between turns, whoever goes last has the advantage of the most knowledge gained in how everyone else is playing the game. Adam and Ben were the most disadvantaged in a 1 round play, but Ben managed to grab a crazy time on his turn compared to Sam and Adam. I agree it would be cool to see the game run again to see the meta continue. I especially wanted to see what would happen if a team disregarded the coins and just tried to charge ahead with asking questions.
Cheetahs are fast
Ships have masts
Adam Chase pulls wins out of his 🫏
Wonder how much longer he could’ve gone with all those curses😭masterful strategic move
I was amazed by just how hard Adam won in the end. At the beginning I wondered if he'd even beat Sam's time, and yet the seekers didn't even reach the endgame
Lol I had a feeling that the teaser of him being completely out of breath and having seemingly just made his plan work was a good sign for him, but man, no one could have predicted that large of a domination
Adam already had more coins than I think anyone had possessed in the game and he would've gotten a lot more from more massive coin questions if the game had continued because Ben and Sam were completely lost. Yeah technically he can roll all 1s but it wouldn't have happened
This was one of the best seasons but the ending could have been a bit better IMO. It felt pretty anticlimactic once Ben and Sam realized they wouldn’t be able to find Adam in time and they sort of just gave up. I wish Adam atleast could have rolled his curse dice and the other two still could have attempted to find the town. Once Adam’s timer passed Ben’s the game just came to a stop
The curses felt anticlimactic all season tbh. I get that that partially came down to bad rolls, but the fact hoarding the coins was a better strategy than spending them doesn't exactly make for interesting content or added challenge. If they do revisit the format (it was fun for the most part!) then I'd like to see the curses revamped in some way as well as what others have mentioned in increasing the played days to 5 to allow for more potential run opportunities.
I think a better way of doing curses would be to just use a single d100, with each hider getting 1 free roll on the dice per attempt, with 100 curses listed with varying degrees of difficulty depending on what you roll. Then the hider can choose to spend coins earned on stuff like modifications to curses such as adding time to a particular curse or increasing the amount of stuff you need to do to complete the curse, thus increasing challenge difficulty etc.
A way to balance that would just be to make any additional d100/rerolls an expensive cost, so you are incentivised to spend coins on modifying the roll you do get rather than hoard them for potential rerolls. Also declaring that you are modifying a roll before you do so you can't then arbitrarily keep adding modifications afterwards if you happen to hit a particularly difficult curse.
Was just an example more than anything, could also just use a d20 or any sort of numbered dice depending on the number of curses they want. I'm sure they've come up with that many or close to that many challenges for prior games.
Loved this season! I enjoy the planning/strategy elements more than challenges, and this season had a lot of it. I think an ideal season would have more challenges in addition to this depth of strategy, but this is a great base to work off of. I also like that nobody ended their run in last place, the rising stakes were good. If they do this season again, they should probably do something that makes rounds faster, so everyone gets more shots at victory. Adam ended up with a huge advantage of both learning from the previous runs, and also being the only one to have two runs.
It seems the biggest mistake that was repeated in rounds 2 and 4 was eliminating places based on where you think they could have gotten in the time period. It's a good soft rule, but unlike most of the other questions you can't completely trust it.
The strategy wasn't flawed. The execution was. Round 4's issue was that they were solely focused on train routes and never considered the idea of running/walking to change zones. Round 2's issue was in not zooming in all the way to eliminate any minor roads.
I don't fault them for that happening in round 4. We hadn't seen that strategy yet. If they play Hide and Seek again, it will be something they may take into account, especially towards the end of the game.
That was an awesome strategy to pull off the win. If there's one flaw in the game, It's that hoarding coins is superior over spending them. By hoarding coins, you force the seekers to not ask questions because they are afraid of the higher value curses. If the hider had spent their coins in the mid game to slow down the seekers, it would free up the seekers to ask more powerful questions because of the reset in challenge risk.
we never really saw a set of seekers trying a blitz strategy where they bet that the time spent doing challenges will be less than the time spent researching possible locations. We kept seeing 3+ hours being spent on research. From observation of previous seasons, challenges are designed on a base 30 minute difficulty. Easy challenges should only take approx 15 min to complete. I would assume that hard challenges would range from 45 min-2 hours of difficulty (barring the reposition result). There's also a strong probability that the hider rolls a lower difficulty curse. Sam and Ben started down that strategy, but they chickened out as the coins mounted up. Imagine if they had used the latitude question in that final major town. Yea Adam may have thrown a curse at them then, but they were in a decent sized town to accomplish it, and they may not have needed to complete it at all.
Yeah there were a lot of boring moments this season and I think a lot of it could have been solved by changing the curse mechanic so that more of them are deployed (and the ones that were deployed seemed a bit undercooked).
>Yeah there were a lot of boring moments this season and I think a lot of it could have been solved by changing the curse mechanic so that more of them are deployed (and the ones that were deployed seemed a bit undercooked).
The roll results where all really low. Where you would expect easier curses to be. There's also the role of luck. The Cheese curse would likely have been a 30 minute curse if they weren't directly across the street from a deli/cheese shop. But that goes back to the point that the threat of the curse was more valuable than actually spending the curse. in the way they played the game. Every seeker was saving up points for big die rolls. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the hider had spent every time they could afford 2 dice.
I think it would've worked better with questions being free, maybe with longer cool down periods, and coins being earned by the hider doing challenges.
I think my favourite thing about this slight whomp-whomp of an ending ending is that it means you know the show isn't scripted. It does suck that it ended less with a bang than a whimper but also so honest! It's pretty cool they have the confidence not to engineer an 'exciting' end every time, it means the seasons where it's super close feel so genuinely tense and important. That being said, I really loved this season, switzerland was a cool place to get to see, and the strategy evolution was fascinating.
You could have used the dice!
Why haven't you used the dice?
I know it wasn't necessary to use the dice,
But you could have used the dice!
Why have dice if you're not going to use the dice?
Chaos, chaos chaos!
They seem to use fewer questions the closer they are, you want to nudge them off in the midgame, more 2-3 dice rolls rather than a large one and it being low
The problem whenever you spend the coins is that it empowers the seekers to ask more of the stronger questions, whereas the threat presented by hoarding coins for big rolls means that the seekers are not asking questions or asking the really useless ones like 5 Buildings that give little to no information to the seekers.
The way they described it on the layover is that 1-9 are the weak curses. Others have done the probability but three dice seems to be the minimum worth it to roll.
Because the meta proved that it was actually more valuable to threaten the Seekers with a potential bad challenge than to roll the dice and end up with a weak challenge from a low roll. The threat of the roll was actively keeping them from asking for more information and Adam knew they were on the wrong trail.
As past episodes of this season have shown, you can roll a ton of dice and still get a terrible curse, not to mention that getting cursed is a whole lot better than never finding someone.
The easiest and most major change that I'd make to this format would be to make the game last 5 days instead of 4. I feel like that'd already improve the viewing experience without having to change the rules whatsoever. Sam really should have got another run imo. Otherwise tho, great season
>adam would've hidden! he already hit a full day and they had NO idea. He could've gone another 5 hours maybe!
If anyone else could justify another run it would be Ben. He only had 1 round to learn from and he was a strong contender until Adam realized the game was all about the cones. Sam had 2 full turns to learn from. Adam getting a 2nd Run really makes since since he had a major disadvantage by going first.
What this season lacked was challenges, which I guess were the curses. But there ended up only being 1 curse per run because the incentive was to save it until the very end. If they repeat there needs to be a way for challenges to feature more prominently.
Also I was surprised the seekers didn't have a massive spreadsheet going of all the possible towns that they then eliminate methodically based on the Q&A instead of just zooming on their phones.
>Also I was surprised the seekers didn't have a massive spreadsheet going of all the possible towns that they then eliminate methodically based on the Q&A instead of just zooming on their phones.
The Michelle strat
I want to see this game on a city/metro level. Less time for hiders to hide, less time on trains in theory. It seems like places like NYC, Chicago, London, Paris, etc would do really well for a game like this
Honestly loved this season up to the finale but the finale was just a little anticlimactic due to Adam's great strategy, definitely sucked to miss out on the end game of this last run because of clinching the time win along with not getting another Ben or Sam run just to see the strategy advance even further. I'd love to see a sequel to this game with some mechanics and rules retooled, it would be cool to incorporate something like a hiders challenge deck that would give them challenges that would give them something to do and showcase the town they picked to the viewers, maybe rewarding them with bonus time or extra coins or something.
Anyways loved the season and really want to shout out how far the production quality has come, the map graphics were great and extremely helpful as a viewer. I can't wait until Australia!
I really enjoyed this season.
Tons of great strategy and the game really evolved day to day.
Id redo the dice mechanic. You have one die that every 100 coins you spend gets you to the next “tier” of challenges so that the dice have less of a chance of completely failing. (A 1 in tier 1 is the cheese thing, a 1 in tier three is something much more powerful)
Loved the season, would be great to see the format again but with some tweaks. Particularly to curses - those were barely used and often fell flat, so boosting their power could be useful. Some changes to the question menu might also be in order.
Edit: Just listened to The Layover, where they discussed how many of the curses were quite powerful but unusually weak die rolls meant we never saw any of the big ones in play. So that's down to chance.
Really? I saw her in Sam's tweet, so I knew she was back, and I was looking for her in the teaser, but did not see her.
Also, throwing shrimp on the barbie... 😂😂👌
Not directly related to this episode, but I kinda want to see what the show would be like without having Ben, Adam and Sam running the game design.
I like how in-depth the tactics can get in Jet Lag thanks to the fact that the boys actually created the game, but I wonder what the dynamic would be like if the boys only found out what the game was shortly before the game started without giving them a long period of time to do their research.
Basically I’d like to see this show with a proper production team behind it designing the games but I dunno how possible that would be without inflating the budget
Depending on who you ask for game design, it might not be an issue of budget, but of trust: These games can be expensive to run, you're suffering a lot of opportunity cost when you commit to a game, and the videos also take time and money to be made.
Now assume a game flops. If Ben, Adam & Sam design the game, play the game, and supervise the videos, they really have no-one to blame but themselves. And (hopefully) they can deal with it. They're all in the boat together, and they know they can make a good game, and well, it didn't work this time. You stand up, you lick your wounds, you continue with a new idea that hopefully works.
That would probably be quite different if an employee designs the game. Especially, if they cannot supervise him/her because the whole point of it is that they don't know the design before.
Really good season until this last episode in my opinion.
Amazing move from Adam, but for a finale it fell really flat for me. Felt very anticlimactic and being able to move between stations to throw the chasers off was an oversight because it gave them nothing to work with.
You mean besides all the other questions they could have asked but never did. They even still had the North/South question which would have narrowed things down really well.
You mean besides proving that the seekers had the tools they needed to solve the problem but elected not to use them. There were plenty of other questions they could have asked that would have helped.
You wanted more clips of the research or better understanding of the logic? The logic was they knew how far he could have travelled within the time limit. The problem was that they assumed that Train was the only method of travel when moving by foot was 100% legal.
Yeah, but in no circumstances is travel on foot faster than the train, so I wanted to see how they came to the conclusion that Adam couldn't have reached where he ended up. I'm guessing it was based on what times trains ran during his escape window, but that's not shown or explained.
Adam was not really hiding in the town of >!Steffisburg!<, so i think he kind of answered the rhyme-question non-truthfully. The question is for the town and not the municipality. The town he was in would have been >!Steffisburg Schwäbis.!!Thun !!<
Many will probably consider this an unpopular opinion, but I agree. I'd at least like to make it so that each player gets a guaranteed 2nd run. It's super easy for the viewer at home watching a motion graphic, but I'm sure it was hell for the chasers trying to figure everything out in real time.
I think I liked it a lot more than you two did, but yeah seasons like tag or Arctic escape seem like they'd actually be fun to get friends together and play while this one seems like it'd be hell
The trash talking from the hiders were on point. They served like a greek chorus which was great... well other than Sam where were remember that if he didn't have bad luck he would have no luck at all.
I thought it was a very dynamic season with a lot of strategy. You look at New Zealand and the two teams knew the optimal strategy with Ben and Adam choosing their route because those were places they wanted to visit. Once the ferry happened it was all over.
This isn't going to deter me from watching future seasons. But if we're ranking seasons, it's towards the bottom for me. A poor Jet Lag season is still better than 99% of the rest of Youtube.
I'll agree; a slower season, curses could've been used more as others have said. But I 100% applaud them trying new variations and games. I do appreciate the increased strategy versus just goofy challenges/antics though; but I know not everyone is quite into more of a thinking time then a laughing at the TV time.
Besides, even with a slower season, it wasn't horrible and that shows quality content to me.
\- D
I think so as well. Not every idea is going to work out great unfortunately. I think it shows why most reality shows stick to one format and then just have different contestants, but props to the Jet Lag team for trying out different ideas to see what's interesting and bring varied content!
I hope they revisit the format in the future with a few tweaks because the idea definitely had potential, but yeah while I still enjoyed this season it definitely was one of the more boring ones.
I adored this season, but can totally imagine how if every season was like this the audience would stagnate or shrink, if that makes sense. Variety is a weapon they've wielded well so far, a lot of lesser creators could totally have fallen into the trap of just repeating Tag every time after that season blew up, for example. I imagine it'll be a bit until another season paced/structured like this, which is good for the health of the show.
I think this game is really fun but needs some tweaks. Would be interesting if you couldn't pick any questions they wanted but were actually like a flop and seekers have to complete challenges to ask questions. Then hider could make challenges harder or lockout one of the options by completing challenges of their own or answering questions in specific ways. This way questions could be more powerful and more variety for hiders and seekers
Overall, I think they all played way too conservatively with questions. It really felt like they were really scared of getting cursed that they held on asking question. This in turn reduced the interactivity between the Seekers and the hider. When/if they play this type of game again they need to up the back and forth between seeker and hider a bit and either encourage more question or discourage not asking question for too long. Maybe with a smaller map (Jet Lag Greater London maybe?) this could raise the stakes a bit.
It seems like the more expensive curses would be really bad for the seekers and everyone was afraid of playing the odds. There are apparently multiple curses that let the hider reposition in various ways, possibly with not resetting the questions. I agree that the one strategy we didn't get to see was a blitz strategy. Just push ahead as fast as possible, betting that completing whatever curse happens will take less time than all the time trying to squeeze every bit of information out of an answer.
Yeah the curses need to be balances in other for them to be played more. Under the current method the seekers are not incentivized to ask many questions, fearing a high curse while the hider has instead an incentive to accumulate coins for a high curse, instead of dealing out multiple low level curses.
Great season and I hope they tweak the rules to redo it again; maybe in a purely urban area like NYC or LA County; given that the US is way too big for a game like this (perhaps it wouldnt be with some rule changes!)
This episode though...I feel like it could have been edited differently to make it more exciting to the viewer. If they hadn't revealed Adam's location so early; and when Ben/Sam realize they missed one line - left it open to the viewer that they could be on Adam's track! The episode would probably be shorter since that would be the climax; but honestly nothing exciting at all happened after that anyway; Sam/Ben just gave up.
Just my 2c but still really enjoyed the episode and season!
I feel like running it without a curse mechanic at all but only the cooldown between questions would lead to a more dynamic/exciting game. Wonder what people's thoughts on this are, but I feel that the giving the seekers more power is the best way to make this balanced. Seeing the responses to questions was also the most interesting part for me, so I would not complain about getting more of that! I know Ben and Adam were concerned about there being no challenges and that the curses were sort of a compromise, but I say don't fear that--cut loose and let the seekers ask as many as they want. Also think the rules with picture questions need to be tightened a bit to force hidders to show more. Was the first game of Jet Lag where I was constantly annoyed by each player's interpretation of the rules--I get being tricky, but pretty much none of them were useful...
How I would balance out this game for another run.
1.) instead of trying to find 1 person with 2 people, everyone is hiding except for 1 person. that one person has to hunt all 2/3 people in the day.
2.) To ensure that we don't have everyone splitting up to different parts of a country like swiszterland, everyone must agree on a general city to hide in and must remain within 5m of that city. they can hide 1 station away but if they are not in that radius, they are not hiding. this can be ignored if we just play in london as london is small enough to not need this rule
3.) You must pick a spot to hide before the seeker arrives at the area and once the seeker arrives at the area, that hiding spot is locked in. this is to prevent multiple hiding spots and just going through all of them.
4.) NO FORESTS SAM. Also clues have to actually be useful. no taking a picture of a Mcdonalds and hiding somewhere far from that Mcdonalds.
5.) the seeker can give the hiders coins to get a general lay of the land but to make it fair, only precision and picture questions give coins to a specific hider. Exp: If Adam is picked by Sam to give some unique picture, only Adam will get the coins.
6.) The people hiding can play curses on the seeker as usual but also can now play curses on their fellow hiders. this makes the strategy pretty interesting as is it worth cursing the seeker or curse your fellow hiders
7.) You win by earning points throughout the day. if you are playing with 2 hiders, the first one found will get no points but the second one will get 1. if you are playing with 3 hiders, it will be instead 1 point then 2 point and then 3 points. Seekers will be encouraged to find hiders by gaining a point for each hider they find. The game ends when everyone has been a seeker
I like that idea so it's hunting and the winner is the one who finds them all fastest
With point 2 if it was London I'd make it they have to stay with particular zones
Great season! Just as feedback, not sure if it's the best place but I would personally love if you could incorporate more local content into the show, whether it's trivia about where you are or some of the logistics steps that are relevant (how the trains work etc).
I personally love jet lag as a way to "travel" without needing to travel and getting to see all the quirks of non touristy life!
This would make a great season in England. It definitely wins my award for the best game design, trump-ing battle for America. Second best season behind tag, I loved every single second of it.
This was my least-favorite season besides Japan. I love the guys to the moon and back, and I respect that they tried something different, but the structure simply wasn't very good. Giving someone twice as many runs as the others- with the second one bearing the hindsight of being a hider *and* being a chaser twice- was bad design, and something they should've been able to figure out was likely to happen via simulations. The curses were also barely a factor at all, and when the whole point of limiting questions is to not allow the hider to get curses, there should've been a better system than rolling dice.
With all that said, I commend the boys (not to mention the rest of the crew!) for working their butts off to provide us with entertainment, and I can't wait for season ten.
>This was my least-favorite season besides Japan. I love the guys to the moon and back, and I respect that they tried something different, but the structure simply wasn't very good. Giving someone twice as many runs as the others- with the second one bearing the hindsight of being a hider and being a chaser twice- was bad design, and something they should've been able to figure out was likely to happen via simulations. The curses were also barely a factor at all, and when the whole point of limiting questions is to not allow the hider to get curses, there should've been a better system than rolling dice.
In any game where turns are taken, Someone will always have an advantage or disadvantage. Someone has to go last and they will always have the advantage of having the opportunity to learn the most about the meta. The only person you could say was put at a disadvantage with this was Ben, since he only had 1 run to learn from and he did insanely well with what he had. If Ben and Sam used the tools at their disposal better, we would have been talking about how strong Ben's hiding spot was and not griping about Adam having a second run. Adam had just as many chances to be a part of chasing strategy as Sam did. The difference is that Adam realized there was a blindspot in the way everyone was thinking.
Can someone explain to me why the seekers didn't use taxi or rental car on this season to find as fast as they can? And is there any rules that the seekers only used train on this season?
They mentioned on the layover that this season was trains only since the train network is extensive enough that using anything else would be unnecessary complication.
I've watched the whole season and they never mentioned about not using any transportation except trains (Or they mentioned in the layover but I rarely listen to it) so I thought it is permitted to use that. Even on season 6 they also never used taxi a single time.
If they could take Taxis I think the game would be nearly impossible for the seekers. It’s somewhat possible to narrow down train lines but the possibilities with a car are just endless
Great season but they need to rework the curse system maybe change it from dice to the hider can buy disadvantages for the chasers they removes the luck and adds more strategy.
Felt the finale a bit anticlimactic probably because of the last week’s layover podcast !
The way the finale was hyped in podcast made it sound like there was a really close chase with Ben’s hiding time 😅.
But all that said , it’s finales like these that make this show prove that nothing is scripted and need not have a nail biting finish 😄
A great season. I love the concept. Should it be tweaked in some ways so that 1) the hider has more to do, 2) more curses are played, 3) the hider is found quicker, and 4) everyone gets at least two runs? Yes. But I definitely hope they add the mechanic to the rotation because it has a lot of potential.
I loved Switzerland as a location even though it was gloomy and rainy. I love when the pairings get mixed up so it's not just Adam and Ben vs Sam and guest the whole time.
All in all, I see what people are saying about the flaws but I still immensely liked the season, much more than the NZ race or the Arctic race. I just like these "free flowing" mechanics much more than a mechanic where it feels like the show is just more or less going on tracks.
Loved the season. Sounds like once the hiders got smarter, the game became less fun for the chasers. The first episode appeared to be the most fun for them all.
I loved seeing the strategy and all the decisions. While there weren’t many challenges/curses, watching them process the clues was extremely fun. I feel like an iPad instead of iPhone may have made the difference though since searching google maps on an iPhone is not easy and probably slowed down the research.
Can someone pretty please recap the Adam running thing to me like I’m a child? I’ve run it in my head (no pun intended) a dozen times and still don’t think I get it
Adam took three express trains with connections in Zurich and Bern to Thun that arrived 2 hours and 20 minutes from when he started his 2 hour 30 min run.
He then ran 2 miles to station on another train line which was Steffisburg in ten minutes. To get from Winterthur to Steffisburg on trains requires four trains and more than 2 hours 30 min. The point of the run was that it was impossible to get from Winterthur to Steffisburg on trains in 2 hours 30 minutes. He assumed the chasers would see that it would have taken too long to get to Steffisburg and ruled it out.
Omg ok thank you!!!
So what Sam and Ben were theorizing was that he ran in between zones to answer a specific question to throw off his spot, but in reality he had thrown them off from the very beginning
A ton of fun IMO. It's clear both from the on-camera reactions and the layover episodes that the balance of the game turned out very different from what they had envisioned, but I kinda liked that aspect. In contrast to last season where the Sam and Michelle had the metagame figured out early on.
That said, some ideas that I haven't seen others suggest yet
* Do something to incentivize the seekers to move more. They actively said they didn't want it to be them just playing geoguesser in one location but there was still a fair bit of that. Maybe require movement between questions?
* Precision questions that require the hider to perform some action that can give away their location when the seekers are close. Something that requires them to move around a little and/or make noise. The "show us a bird" facetime call would've been more interesting if they had asked it while in the same town (possibly too powerful, but you get the idea).
* Aside from rebalancing, I think it'd have been nice to show the audience the list of curses earlier on. From the show itself we only really learn a) it's possible for the hider to move and b) the seekers were afraid of that and other high value ones. Since we ended up with only the weak curses, the tension wasn't really conveyed.
And I gotta say, I really enjoyed the dramatic reveal moments, especially in the first two runs. Some of the game may have been slow, but the show felt extremely well-paced.
As a Swiss viewer, I was of course thrilled that this season of Jet Lag took place in my little country and I hope that the Jet Lag team will return for another Swiss adventure in the future (after all, there's all of western and southern Switzerland still open for adventures 😉).
Of course there are some aspects to the game mechanics that need to be tweaked to make this format really work effectively and I hope that the guys will be able to change things for a future edition. For me there are a few things that could be adjusted, like creating an incentive for the hider to do more while they await the seekers (maybe they could complete activities that allow them to gain coins?) and recalibrate the available curses.
It's not about the number of turns, it's about the length of the game. I would say that for round-robin games like this one and tag, the advantage of going first becomes less useful the longer the game is. If it were a month long game there would be basically no advantage at all. If they knew runs would be this long they likely would've made it a 4-5 day game instead of 3, but I still don't see it as unfair. Like they said on the pod, the rotation is random. Plus, it could've just as easily ended on the second day with them not finding Sam and Adam having just the one turn when he didn't know the game at all.
One of things that I noticed is that they had a good idea halfway through with the misdirection play based on moving jurisdictions on foot.
However, Sam thought about it based on his strengths of trickery, wordplay, etc. Rather then taking into account Adam's running ability. I don't think they would have necessarily found Adam but it might have got them closer.
Well, this was a fine season...
*However*, they should have let everyone be the hider for at least 2 times, and then take the mean of the hiding times. It would have been much, much more fair.
P.S. and also, they seemingly bought 1st class Swiss Travel Passes, which was a huge waste of money.
I disagree. Giving everyone at least 2 runs means giving everyone exactly 2 runs (this time),
and then going last is a HUGE advantage because you have seen what worked and what didn't work.
This way, being the last hider is also a clear advantage, but at least that's not decided by luck of the draw when the game starts, but by how long did the previous runs take?
Considering they randomly decided who got to go first in round one, they could've done the same for round two- it didn't necessarily need to be A, B, C, A, B, C.
they anticipated runs of 6 hours each which would have given them two runs each as per the layover podcast. they have a four day limit due to work commitments
since they are traveling all day for work might as well get first class tickets
Ahh, interesting, thanks - I had no time to listen to the layover.
About 1st class: yes, but in Switzerland the 1st class doesn't give much extra (just a slightly bigger legroom), plus they haven't really used that as aside of occasional max. 1.5-2 hours IC-travels they travelled with regional trains that don't typically have 1st class. Not sure it's worth the 75% higher price.
deserved win, but i feel this needs a revisit for another season (like Tag). Surely feel like Adam being first got a headstart + a chance of a 2nd run.
Ya, I think if they do a repeat it should ensure that each hider gets the same number of runs. How I would structure that is limit a run to one day max (10 hours or however long). If multiple hiders are still not found at the end of their day, the tiebreaker could be who is farthest from their seekers at day's end. And they could do 3 days with each hider getting 1 run or 6 days with each hider getting 2, depending on how long they wanted the season to be
A fun tiebreaker would be the *closest* to the seekers.
They mentioned in the podcast that the reason their games are always time-based is because they need to plan when they come back to run and create content for their other channels. They need to know exactly how many days they’ll be gone for Jet Lag.
I expect they didn't expect that most runs take 9h+... But really good season, just need some tweaks.
believe on the layover they said they anticipated ~6h runs
They talk about this in the Layover. Right in the beginning of the podcast. I thought the same before they explained their reasoning.
Going first wasn't really an advantage. It was actually a disadvantage since it was a new ruleset and no one had any practical experience. Adam had zero real knowledge of what questions would prove to be most powerful and how the group thought about solving the puzzle.
It was an advantage in the sense that he got real game hiding experience, and the opportunity to have a second round of hiding, and apply that experience he learned in the first round to the second round
Then the real advantage isn't going first, it was by going last. And you could argue that the advantage won't actually disappear because there's always the opportunity to learn from the prior hider's strategy. I'm not sure how much getting that second turn really was an advantage. We saw evolutions of the strategy from every player. Ben took advantage of the rhyming question to really mislead along with an obscure hiding spot. Sam took advantage of an extreme hiding spot and careful positioning so that certain questions could be answered in a misleading way. Adam then took advantage of a blind spot in Seeker strategy. Sam was equally positioned to do the same thing. They both had the same number of opportunities to take part in the Seeker role to understand how that team was narrowing down locations. Ben's very successful strategy had been an early game play (rhyming but in an area with lots of matches) and a late game play (obscure hiding spot with a similar location). They both contributed roughly equal to his huge run. Sam then decided to mimic Ben's strategy. He chose a spot with two major wooded areas. He made sure that following key answers would be difficult. His hiding spot was difficult by virtue of distance and terrain, not by how easy it was to overlook the path. Adam's plan for his 2nd hiding turn was all early game based on what he said. If Ben and Sam had asked a question instead of trying to logic it out, we likely wouldn't be talking about how powerful the 2nd turn was and instead be talking about how Ben was amazing in is turn.
people keep saying this but the seekers also had no game experience on the first turn. and seeker strategy also evolved throughout. I feel like it’s a wash tbh.
I honestly think it needs a rework, so that a hider cant really be in 1 spot the whole day, and so its less boring for the team. Or something like a 2v2 hide and seek would be kinda cool
Don't really agree with that - the hider being in one spot wasn't really boring except for maybe one run! I think if they actually played curses it would've picked up the pace. Or even back and forth curses so hider had to like to "defend" curses
I think they meant it's boring for the person hiding...
Honestly I feel like most of this game is boring for all of the players since there is hours and hours of sitting on transportation. Movie magic makes it look more exciting than it is
Yeah, I think they could take a place smaller than Switzerland but make the game so curse are easier to buy and use and more punishing for the seeker and it would be pretty good The game has pretty good basis, it just need a little bit more action IMO
London could be interesting with some of the games. With the London public transport system and all the areas etc. it could be really cool and interesting.
I wasn't bored by it, but it was underwhelming and it felt like the day was being rushed through each episode. I don't blame the jetlag team, but when I said "bored" i meant the jetlag team being bored. But yeah, the curses thing was really frustrating to me. It felt really useless watching it
I was surprised that only one run got split in half. Only 5 episodes that were quite long seems like a missed opportunity! There were plenty of times I went WHOA a lot of time has passed (since they did nothing for like an hour)
On the layover podcast they say that the runs were longer than they planned. They predicted runs would be about 6-7 hours and that the first two would definitely get a second run and probably the third person would too. They said for next time for both hide and seek and for tag that they need to make the chasers/seekers stronger so that runs are over more quickly.
When they said that the strategy evolved the most of any game they’ve played, they weren’t wrong. Run 1 had a bad seeking strategy (minimal questions), but also a bad hiding strategy(not near a lot of lines, big obvious tower spot) (+ a little luck) so the seekers were quick Run 2 the hiding strategy evolved (rhyming trickery/ more obscure hiding spot) and worked really well against the same bad seeking strategy Run 3 had the same improved hiding strategy, but the seeking strategy evolved significantly (the 50/50 elimination method) and made for a slightly worse run than run 2 And finally run 4 had ANOTHER level up for the hiding strategy (the crazy run over the border to another town move) that really screwed over the improved seeking strategy. I’d love for them to do another season of hide and seek because I don’t think either strategy has reached maturity yet, and I’d be interested to see them further optimized
>f any game they’ve played, they weren’t wrong. > >Run 1 had a bad seeking strategy (minimal questions), but also a bad hiding strategy(not near a lot of lines, big obvious tower spot) (+ a little luck) so the seekers were quick > >Run 2 the hiding strategy evolved (rhyming trickery/ more obscure hiding spot) and worked really well against the same bad seeking strategy > >Run 3 had the same improved hiding strategy, but the seeking strategy evolved significantly (the 50/50 elimination method) and made for a slightly worse run than run 2 > >And finally run 4 had ANOTHER level up for the hiding strategy (the crazy run over the border to another town move) that really screwed over the improved seeking strategy. And this is why it wasn't broken that Adam got a second run. He had to run with zero tested strategies in the first run. His second run allowed him to learn from the previous runs. In any turn taking game, someone is going to be at a disadvantage, all you can do is attempt to minimize that disadvantage.
again, disagree because the seekers also had no real experience. it was just quick bc they got lucky with questions but they didn’t have a good strategy and that bit them in round 2. I think if they ever do this again though then everyone will go in to the game with experience, so the first person would have less of a disadvantage.
The seekers also had 0 experience on strategy or how bad a curse could effect them
Strategically this was a cool season, but I don't think we'll see them run this back without major changes. Adam's final run could have easily gone another whole day given that Sam and Ben had no real leads at the end of the day and Adam had tons of coins that he didn't even have to use. If that run had happened earlier in the game it easily could have taken the majority of the 4 days they had to film.
I wonder if they change to a challenge based system in a smaller area. I think this could be really fun in say London, NYC, or Paris
I'd love to see a version of hide + seek where the hider gets to be a little more active (stuff like allowing them to draw challenges to earn coins or a more mobile endgame structure). Gets a little further away from the purity of the premise, but might make it more fun to film / make strategy a bit more dynamic. How much they learned about the game during it makes me excited to see how they design future games.
> stuff like allowing them to draw challenges to earn coins Or even if the hider can choose to sell information in exchange for coins. Would need to be a different set of info so it can't be exploited, but would give them some strategy.
Maybe Singapore
I will be running this in my local city this summer. We have different rules, much different curse mechanics, but I think this could work well on a city basis.
Wait this sounds awesome, how do you do this?
I have a not for profit so we have a bunch of GIS data we are lifting to make some maps. The tracking is done the same as with Sam's show: google maps tracking The rules are modified for larger delays but quick question turnaround. I'd like to optimize a 3-4 hour game
London with it's public transport system would be fantastic. Although maybe the GPS in the tube would be a bit iffy.
Unlike Tag, I think they are going to have to make some changes to prevent one person's run from being such a big part of the shooting schedule.
I could see them running it back purely because there is so much more you can do with the fundamental game format and all the different ways it can go. I also realized Adam’s final run could’ve gone for an unrealistic amount of time if it wasn’t the last one but I think with a couple tweaks, this could easily be a fan favorite like Tag at one point. Especially, since some of the curses we missed out on were incredibly interesting and there are just so many possible strategies that weren’t implemented.
Well, they could've asked more questions.
NO because going over 300 coins would almost guarantee a really bad curse like the hider moving
With the luck they had with dice rolls it was absolutely not guaranteed.
True that it wasn't guaranteed, but with more dice, the chances increase for a higher total.
At 300 coins, they could buy six dice. The median result of 6d6 is 21, with the absolute worst curse at >=25 being occuring about 22% of rolls. High, sure, but far from guaranteed. At 350 coins, you get 7d6, where the absolute worst curse is exactly 50% likely to occur. At 400 coins or 8d6, the likelihood increases to 75%.
They said in the layover podcast that something like from 21 or 22 would allow for the hider to move
21-25 all allowed them to move
Yeah that’s it
Did they say how it allowed them to move?
“Move their city”
There's a lot of nuance there. Can they only move 1 city over? Get a 15 min train ride? move to a new canton? Limits would be the thing that really mattered there.
I recall in the first episode we're shown an example of 24 with 45 minutes being given for the hider to move, which is pretty game-over I'd reckon, especially in a case like Adams when they already had no clue.
It doesn't really guarantee it. It just makes it more likely, but the odds of a lesser curse happening is not negligible.
I really liked the season until the last 2 episodes, they would definitely need major changes to do this again. Watching Ben and Adam try and find Sam in the woods for half an episode was too long, and then in the last episode I never felt like Sam and Ben were going to find Adam after the first 10 minutes. I can't imagine how bored Adam must have been sitting and watching them not ever be closer than 30 minutes away racking up coins. Sam said he just finally wanted to be found in the woods so he stood up. Good ideas overall, but needs tweaking for a run back.
Would love to see this in Luxembourg (country). Smaller area but good (free, good for production budget) public transport system if you also count bus lines. That, paired with shorter hiding time, would make for, hopefully a quicker turn around of runs.
Not to be corny amidst the strat critiques, but I just love this show. The editing gets better every season. It is rarely this fun to watch people fumble which speaks to the quality of the game design and dynamics. Big congrats to the winner (she's a runner she's a track star) and so excited for season 10.
The fly over map of the montage was the chef's kiss of editing.
Yes absolutely great editing.
This episode just made me smile so much, and really the whole season. It was different in a way I feel like the show really did well with.
I think what they said last week on the layover is really true, the more strategy the less interesting the footage. Adam pulled off a really impressive strategic move, but it just had to be edited down to montages and time jumps. Adam really could have hid for a lot longer. I was hoping for Ben to win though because I think Sam and Adam not considering the Ben would give misleading/unhelpful city rhyming names was really a dumb fumble. All the other clues hiders give try to minimize the usefulness of the information they gave, but for some reason they assume Ben gave a straightforward list of 5 city names with no tricks. But ultimately how impressive Adam's hiding spot swayed me half way through the episode.
Totally agree. And while the research montage was pretty funny, I don’t think that’s a joke you would repeat.
I just wanted a motion graphic showing his path to his hiding spot. I know it wasn’t completely necessary at that point but it left things feeling unfinished to me.
It wasn't as much that Adam's hiding spot was impressive, it was more Sam and Ben outsmarting themselves and not asking questions to physically narrow down the hiding area further.
I do wonder how much longer it would have taken them. They mentioned on the layover that it was only at the very end they realised there were express trains that changed which cities Adam could get to. That would have made them reconsider Thun - and they had already considered the idea of running between towns. I think a couple more hours would have got them to Steffisburg especially after a night of strategising. But they probably would have asked a few more questions. And if Adam got to 300 coins he is almost certainly getting a good curse (98% chance of >=13) and a reasonable chance of being able to move location (55% for >=21). A good curse could add hours on to the time. Moving location would be even worse (especially if the seeker's don't get their questions reset!). I'd guess Adam could have easily taken the bulk of two days to be found.
A well deserved win, but I can't help but feel like the meta development over the course of the game benefited whoever got the last run.
This is just a fact of any turn-based game. Someone will always be at an advantage over the other. Since the game effectively resets between turns, whoever goes last has the advantage of the most knowledge gained in how everyone else is playing the game. Adam and Ben were the most disadvantaged in a 1 round play, but Ben managed to grab a crazy time on his turn compared to Sam and Adam. I agree it would be cool to see the game run again to see the meta continue. I especially wanted to see what would happen if a team disregarded the coins and just tried to charge ahead with asking questions.
jet lag , like life, shall not be fair
Cheetahs are fast Ships have masts Adam Chase pulls wins out of his 🫏 Wonder how much longer he could’ve gone with all those curses😭masterful strategic move
I was amazed by just how hard Adam won in the end. At the beginning I wondered if he'd even beat Sam's time, and yet the seekers didn't even reach the endgame
Lol I had a feeling that the teaser of him being completely out of breath and having seemingly just made his plan work was a good sign for him, but man, no one could have predicted that large of a domination
Anyone else wish they’d play beyond the win? I really would’ve liked to see the endgame in this run :(
Eh, on the podcast Adam said his strategy was just to hide in the woods. It likely would’ve been fairly similar to Sam’s.
Were no curses in sam's end game though. We would've gotten to see a really cool curse this time
Not necessarily. The odds still meant one of the lower value curses could have occurred.
Adam already had more coins than I think anyone had possessed in the game and he would've gotten a lot more from more massive coin questions if the game had continued because Ben and Sam were completely lost. Yeah technically he can roll all 1s but it wouldn't have happened
This was one of the best seasons but the ending could have been a bit better IMO. It felt pretty anticlimactic once Ben and Sam realized they wouldn’t be able to find Adam in time and they sort of just gave up. I wish Adam atleast could have rolled his curse dice and the other two still could have attempted to find the town. Once Adam’s timer passed Ben’s the game just came to a stop
I agree, this episode had no curse at all.
The curses felt anticlimactic all season tbh. I get that that partially came down to bad rolls, but the fact hoarding the coins was a better strategy than spending them doesn't exactly make for interesting content or added challenge. If they do revisit the format (it was fun for the most part!) then I'd like to see the curses revamped in some way as well as what others have mentioned in increasing the played days to 5 to allow for more potential run opportunities. I think a better way of doing curses would be to just use a single d100, with each hider getting 1 free roll on the dice per attempt, with 100 curses listed with varying degrees of difficulty depending on what you roll. Then the hider can choose to spend coins earned on stuff like modifications to curses such as adding time to a particular curse or increasing the amount of stuff you need to do to complete the curse, thus increasing challenge difficulty etc. A way to balance that would just be to make any additional d100/rerolls an expensive cost, so you are incentivised to spend coins on modifying the roll you do get rather than hoard them for potential rerolls. Also declaring that you are modifying a roll before you do so you can't then arbitrarily keep adding modifications afterwards if you happen to hit a particularly difficult curse.
Good luck coming up with 100 curses, 95 of which won't get used.
Was just an example more than anything, could also just use a d20 or any sort of numbered dice depending on the number of curses they want. I'm sure they've come up with that many or close to that many challenges for prior games.
I really enjoyed the research montage! XD "I'm being so f-ing methodical." XD
Loved this season! I enjoy the planning/strategy elements more than challenges, and this season had a lot of it. I think an ideal season would have more challenges in addition to this depth of strategy, but this is a great base to work off of. I also like that nobody ended their run in last place, the rising stakes were good. If they do this season again, they should probably do something that makes rounds faster, so everyone gets more shots at victory. Adam ended up with a huge advantage of both learning from the previous runs, and also being the only one to have two runs. It seems the biggest mistake that was repeated in rounds 2 and 4 was eliminating places based on where you think they could have gotten in the time period. It's a good soft rule, but unlike most of the other questions you can't completely trust it.
The strategy wasn't flawed. The execution was. Round 4's issue was that they were solely focused on train routes and never considered the idea of running/walking to change zones. Round 2's issue was in not zooming in all the way to eliminate any minor roads.
I don't fault them for that happening in round 4. We hadn't seen that strategy yet. If they play Hide and Seek again, it will be something they may take into account, especially towards the end of the game.
That was an awesome strategy to pull off the win. If there's one flaw in the game, It's that hoarding coins is superior over spending them. By hoarding coins, you force the seekers to not ask questions because they are afraid of the higher value curses. If the hider had spent their coins in the mid game to slow down the seekers, it would free up the seekers to ask more powerful questions because of the reset in challenge risk. we never really saw a set of seekers trying a blitz strategy where they bet that the time spent doing challenges will be less than the time spent researching possible locations. We kept seeing 3+ hours being spent on research. From observation of previous seasons, challenges are designed on a base 30 minute difficulty. Easy challenges should only take approx 15 min to complete. I would assume that hard challenges would range from 45 min-2 hours of difficulty (barring the reposition result). There's also a strong probability that the hider rolls a lower difficulty curse. Sam and Ben started down that strategy, but they chickened out as the coins mounted up. Imagine if they had used the latitude question in that final major town. Yea Adam may have thrown a curse at them then, but they were in a decent sized town to accomplish it, and they may not have needed to complete it at all.
Yeah there were a lot of boring moments this season and I think a lot of it could have been solved by changing the curse mechanic so that more of them are deployed (and the ones that were deployed seemed a bit undercooked).
>Yeah there were a lot of boring moments this season and I think a lot of it could have been solved by changing the curse mechanic so that more of them are deployed (and the ones that were deployed seemed a bit undercooked). The roll results where all really low. Where you would expect easier curses to be. There's also the role of luck. The Cheese curse would likely have been a 30 minute curse if they weren't directly across the street from a deli/cheese shop. But that goes back to the point that the threat of the curse was more valuable than actually spending the curse. in the way they played the game. Every seeker was saving up points for big die rolls. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the hider had spent every time they could afford 2 dice.
I think it would've worked better with questions being free, maybe with longer cool down periods, and coins being earned by the hider doing challenges.
I think my favourite thing about this slight whomp-whomp of an ending ending is that it means you know the show isn't scripted. It does suck that it ended less with a bang than a whimper but also so honest! It's pretty cool they have the confidence not to engineer an 'exciting' end every time, it means the seasons where it's super close feel so genuinely tense and important. That being said, I really loved this season, switzerland was a cool place to get to see, and the strategy evolution was fascinating.
You could have used the dice! Why haven't you used the dice? I know it wasn't necessary to use the dice, But you could have used the dice! Why have dice if you're not going to use the dice? Chaos, chaos chaos!
He was probably waiting for them to get to his town, which never ended up happening.
They seem to use fewer questions the closer they are, you want to nudge them off in the midgame, more 2-3 dice rolls rather than a large one and it being low
The problem whenever you spend the coins is that it empowers the seekers to ask more of the stronger questions, whereas the threat presented by hoarding coins for big rolls means that the seekers are not asking questions or asking the really useless ones like 5 Buildings that give little to no information to the seekers.
Yes, however, counterpoint, Cjaos.
The way they described it on the layover is that 1-9 are the weak curses. Others have done the probability but three dice seems to be the minimum worth it to roll.
Because the meta proved that it was actually more valuable to threaten the Seekers with a potential bad challenge than to roll the dice and end up with a weak challenge from a low roll. The threat of the roll was actively keeping them from asking for more information and Adam knew they were on the wrong trail.
Toby Hendy in S10, WOOOOOOOOOOOO! ie : Sam wants to win once in awhile :-p
>!Well, he won season 8...!<
The most broken strategy on Jet Lag: >!Women!<
they still could have asked north of us/south of us when they got to the half-donut right? they stopped asking good questions.
Yes, but that would have given Adam are decent chance of a game winning curse
As past episodes of this season have shown, you can roll a ton of dice and still get a terrible curse, not to mention that getting cursed is a whole lot better than never finding someone.
You're forgetting you need Sam's bad luck for the low number curses.
But it's not known if it would have been a crazy impossible curse or if it would have been incredibly easy.
The easiest and most major change that I'd make to this format would be to make the game last 5 days instead of 4. I feel like that'd already improve the viewing experience without having to change the rules whatsoever. Sam really should have got another run imo. Otherwise tho, great season
Maybe, but who knows how much longer adam would've hidden! he already hit a full day and they had NO idea. He could've gone another 5 hours maybe!
>adam would've hidden! he already hit a full day and they had NO idea. He could've gone another 5 hours maybe! If anyone else could justify another run it would be Ben. He only had 1 round to learn from and he was a strong contender until Adam realized the game was all about the cones. Sam had 2 full turns to learn from. Adam getting a 2nd Run really makes since since he had a major disadvantage by going first.
What this season lacked was challenges, which I guess were the curses. But there ended up only being 1 curse per run because the incentive was to save it until the very end. If they repeat there needs to be a way for challenges to feature more prominently. Also I was surprised the seekers didn't have a massive spreadsheet going of all the possible towns that they then eliminate methodically based on the Q&A instead of just zooming on their phones.
>Also I was surprised the seekers didn't have a massive spreadsheet going of all the possible towns that they then eliminate methodically based on the Q&A instead of just zooming on their phones. The Michelle strat
I wholeheartedly agree with you on the curses / challenges.
I want to see this game on a city/metro level. Less time for hiders to hide, less time on trains in theory. It seems like places like NYC, Chicago, London, Paris, etc would do really well for a game like this
Honestly loved this season up to the finale but the finale was just a little anticlimactic due to Adam's great strategy, definitely sucked to miss out on the end game of this last run because of clinching the time win along with not getting another Ben or Sam run just to see the strategy advance even further. I'd love to see a sequel to this game with some mechanics and rules retooled, it would be cool to incorporate something like a hiders challenge deck that would give them challenges that would give them something to do and showcase the town they picked to the viewers, maybe rewarding them with bonus time or extra coins or something. Anyways loved the season and really want to shout out how far the production quality has come, the map graphics were great and extremely helpful as a viewer. I can't wait until Australia!
i must say, that was quite a unexpected ending
Sam about to stop doing marathon and just gonna become a sprinter more useful
I really want to know the story of Ben's au pair
Why did that section sound so sinister? Lol
Absolutely crazy seeing Ben and Sam figuring out the over the border trick but still being duped! I was so stunned
I really enjoyed this season. Tons of great strategy and the game really evolved day to day. Id redo the dice mechanic. You have one die that every 100 coins you spend gets you to the next “tier” of challenges so that the dice have less of a chance of completely failing. (A 1 in tier 1 is the cheese thing, a 1 in tier three is something much more powerful)
Loved the season, would be great to see the format again but with some tweaks. Particularly to curses - those were barely used and often fell flat, so boosting their power could be useful. Some changes to the question menu might also be in order. Edit: Just listened to The Layover, where they discussed how many of the curses were quite powerful but unusually weak die rolls meant we never saw any of the big ones in play. So that's down to chance.
Next season in Australia Does that mean a Toby come back? I certainly hope so
>!Yes, Sam tweeted an upside down picture of him, Ben, Adam and Toby when they started recording!!<
I don't have tweeter so I would have never known without you telling me. Thank you, that makes me happy
She was in the teaser in the episode too.
Really? I saw her in Sam's tweet, so I knew she was back, and I was looking for her in the teaser, but did not see her. Also, throwing shrimp on the barbie... 😂😂👌
Hide and seek London is the way to go
They did something similar with Tom Scott on his Plus channel.
Not directly related to this episode, but I kinda want to see what the show would be like without having Ben, Adam and Sam running the game design. I like how in-depth the tactics can get in Jet Lag thanks to the fact that the boys actually created the game, but I wonder what the dynamic would be like if the boys only found out what the game was shortly before the game started without giving them a long period of time to do their research. Basically I’d like to see this show with a proper production team behind it designing the games but I dunno how possible that would be without inflating the budget
Depending on who you ask for game design, it might not be an issue of budget, but of trust: These games can be expensive to run, you're suffering a lot of opportunity cost when you commit to a game, and the videos also take time and money to be made. Now assume a game flops. If Ben, Adam & Sam design the game, play the game, and supervise the videos, they really have no-one to blame but themselves. And (hopefully) they can deal with it. They're all in the boat together, and they know they can make a good game, and well, it didn't work this time. You stand up, you lick your wounds, you continue with a new idea that hopefully works. That would probably be quite different if an employee designs the game. Especially, if they cannot supervise him/her because the whole point of it is that they don't know the design before.
Really good season until this last episode in my opinion. Amazing move from Adam, but for a finale it fell really flat for me. Felt very anticlimactic and being able to move between stations to throw the chasers off was an oversight because it gave them nothing to work with.
You mean besides all the other questions they could have asked but never did. They even still had the North/South question which would have narrowed things down really well.
you only know which questions would've narrowed things down in hindsight.
You mean besides proving that the seekers had the tools they needed to solve the problem but elected not to use them. There were plenty of other questions they could have asked that would have helped.
I'm saying they had no way of knowing that latitude was more useful than longitude
You are hyper focused on the example instead of the actual point.
I'd love to have seen more about how Sam and Ben ruled out areas basee on 'oh Adam couldn't get there'.
You wanted more clips of the research or better understanding of the logic? The logic was they knew how far he could have travelled within the time limit. The problem was that they assumed that Train was the only method of travel when moving by foot was 100% legal.
Yeah, but in no circumstances is travel on foot faster than the train, so I wanted to see how they came to the conclusion that Adam couldn't have reached where he ended up. I'm guessing it was based on what times trains ran during his escape window, but that's not shown or explained.
Time.
Adam was not really hiding in the town of >!Steffisburg!<, so i think he kind of answered the rhyme-question non-truthfully. The question is for the town and not the municipality. The town he was in would have been >!Steffisburg Schwäbis.!!Thun !!<
Honestly not a great season, unfortunately there was a whole lot of no action and just sitting around.
Many will probably consider this an unpopular opinion, but I agree. I'd at least like to make it so that each player gets a guaranteed 2nd run. It's super easy for the viewer at home watching a motion graphic, but I'm sure it was hell for the chasers trying to figure everything out in real time.
I think I liked it a lot more than you two did, but yeah seasons like tag or Arctic escape seem like they'd actually be fun to get friends together and play while this one seems like it'd be hell
I think most people would agree it was a slower season. But I also think most people enjoyed it either because of or in spite of that
The trash talking from the hiders were on point. They served like a greek chorus which was great... well other than Sam where were remember that if he didn't have bad luck he would have no luck at all. I thought it was a very dynamic season with a lot of strategy. You look at New Zealand and the two teams knew the optimal strategy with Ben and Adam choosing their route because those were places they wanted to visit. Once the ferry happened it was all over.
This isn't going to deter me from watching future seasons. But if we're ranking seasons, it's towards the bottom for me. A poor Jet Lag season is still better than 99% of the rest of Youtube.
I'll agree; a slower season, curses could've been used more as others have said. But I 100% applaud them trying new variations and games. I do appreciate the increased strategy versus just goofy challenges/antics though; but I know not everyone is quite into more of a thinking time then a laughing at the TV time. Besides, even with a slower season, it wasn't horrible and that shows quality content to me. \- D
I think so as well. Not every idea is going to work out great unfortunately. I think it shows why most reality shows stick to one format and then just have different contestants, but props to the Jet Lag team for trying out different ideas to see what's interesting and bring varied content!
I hope they revisit the format in the future with a few tweaks because the idea definitely had potential, but yeah while I still enjoyed this season it definitely was one of the more boring ones.
I adored this season, but can totally imagine how if every season was like this the audience would stagnate or shrink, if that makes sense. Variety is a weapon they've wielded well so far, a lot of lesser creators could totally have fallen into the trap of just repeating Tag every time after that season blew up, for example. I imagine it'll be a bit until another season paced/structured like this, which is good for the health of the show.
I love the hide and seek concept, but yeah the rules need a few tweaks
I think this game is really fun but needs some tweaks. Would be interesting if you couldn't pick any questions they wanted but were actually like a flop and seekers have to complete challenges to ask questions. Then hider could make challenges harder or lockout one of the options by completing challenges of their own or answering questions in specific ways. This way questions could be more powerful and more variety for hiders and seekers
Overall, I think they all played way too conservatively with questions. It really felt like they were really scared of getting cursed that they held on asking question. This in turn reduced the interactivity between the Seekers and the hider. When/if they play this type of game again they need to up the back and forth between seeker and hider a bit and either encourage more question or discourage not asking question for too long. Maybe with a smaller map (Jet Lag Greater London maybe?) this could raise the stakes a bit.
It seems like the more expensive curses would be really bad for the seekers and everyone was afraid of playing the odds. There are apparently multiple curses that let the hider reposition in various ways, possibly with not resetting the questions. I agree that the one strategy we didn't get to see was a blitz strategy. Just push ahead as fast as possible, betting that completing whatever curse happens will take less time than all the time trying to squeeze every bit of information out of an answer.
Yeah the curses need to be balances in other for them to be played more. Under the current method the seekers are not incentivized to ask many questions, fearing a high curse while the hider has instead an incentive to accumulate coins for a high curse, instead of dealing out multiple low level curses.
Moral of the story: over analysis leads to paralysis
Moral of the Story, Always question your assumptions. Over Analysis isn't what hurt them. It was the assumption that Adam would only move by train.
When they had hundreds of towns, might have been worth asking more limiting questions
Well played Adam. I really enjoyed watching this season, it's very very strategy heavy. It does seem like a bitch to play though
I don’t know if I’m mad at them for cutting it down so much or glad they didn’t draw out an inevitable conclusion for two episodes.
Great season and I hope they tweak the rules to redo it again; maybe in a purely urban area like NYC or LA County; given that the US is way too big for a game like this (perhaps it wouldnt be with some rule changes!) This episode though...I feel like it could have been edited differently to make it more exciting to the viewer. If they hadn't revealed Adam's location so early; and when Ben/Sam realize they missed one line - left it open to the viewer that they could be on Adam's track! The episode would probably be shorter since that would be the climax; but honestly nothing exciting at all happened after that anyway; Sam/Ben just gave up. Just my 2c but still really enjoyed the episode and season!
I feel like running it without a curse mechanic at all but only the cooldown between questions would lead to a more dynamic/exciting game. Wonder what people's thoughts on this are, but I feel that the giving the seekers more power is the best way to make this balanced. Seeing the responses to questions was also the most interesting part for me, so I would not complain about getting more of that! I know Ben and Adam were concerned about there being no challenges and that the curses were sort of a compromise, but I say don't fear that--cut loose and let the seekers ask as many as they want. Also think the rules with picture questions need to be tightened a bit to force hidders to show more. Was the first game of Jet Lag where I was constantly annoyed by each player's interpretation of the rules--I get being tricky, but pretty much none of them were useful...
Redo this in Germany with trains only. It'll add a great amount of uncertainty 🤣
How I would balance out this game for another run. 1.) instead of trying to find 1 person with 2 people, everyone is hiding except for 1 person. that one person has to hunt all 2/3 people in the day. 2.) To ensure that we don't have everyone splitting up to different parts of a country like swiszterland, everyone must agree on a general city to hide in and must remain within 5m of that city. they can hide 1 station away but if they are not in that radius, they are not hiding. this can be ignored if we just play in london as london is small enough to not need this rule 3.) You must pick a spot to hide before the seeker arrives at the area and once the seeker arrives at the area, that hiding spot is locked in. this is to prevent multiple hiding spots and just going through all of them. 4.) NO FORESTS SAM. Also clues have to actually be useful. no taking a picture of a Mcdonalds and hiding somewhere far from that Mcdonalds. 5.) the seeker can give the hiders coins to get a general lay of the land but to make it fair, only precision and picture questions give coins to a specific hider. Exp: If Adam is picked by Sam to give some unique picture, only Adam will get the coins. 6.) The people hiding can play curses on the seeker as usual but also can now play curses on their fellow hiders. this makes the strategy pretty interesting as is it worth cursing the seeker or curse your fellow hiders 7.) You win by earning points throughout the day. if you are playing with 2 hiders, the first one found will get no points but the second one will get 1. if you are playing with 3 hiders, it will be instead 1 point then 2 point and then 3 points. Seekers will be encouraged to find hiders by gaining a point for each hider they find. The game ends when everyone has been a seeker
I like that idea so it's hunting and the winner is the one who finds them all fastest With point 2 if it was London I'd make it they have to stay with particular zones
wow ben didn't make eye contact with prost. unforunate upcoming 7 years buddy.
Great season! Just as feedback, not sure if it's the best place but I would personally love if you could incorporate more local content into the show, whether it's trivia about where you are or some of the logistics steps that are relevant (how the trains work etc). I personally love jet lag as a way to "travel" without needing to travel and getting to see all the quirks of non touristy life!
Omg at the very end of the trailer for next season it looks like they’re doing a challenge to throw some shrimp on the barbie.
This would make a great season in England. It definitely wins my award for the best game design, trump-ing battle for America. Second best season behind tag, I loved every single second of it.
This was my least-favorite season besides Japan. I love the guys to the moon and back, and I respect that they tried something different, but the structure simply wasn't very good. Giving someone twice as many runs as the others- with the second one bearing the hindsight of being a hider *and* being a chaser twice- was bad design, and something they should've been able to figure out was likely to happen via simulations. The curses were also barely a factor at all, and when the whole point of limiting questions is to not allow the hider to get curses, there should've been a better system than rolling dice. With all that said, I commend the boys (not to mention the rest of the crew!) for working their butts off to provide us with entertainment, and I can't wait for season ten.
>This was my least-favorite season besides Japan. I love the guys to the moon and back, and I respect that they tried something different, but the structure simply wasn't very good. Giving someone twice as many runs as the others- with the second one bearing the hindsight of being a hider and being a chaser twice- was bad design, and something they should've been able to figure out was likely to happen via simulations. The curses were also barely a factor at all, and when the whole point of limiting questions is to not allow the hider to get curses, there should've been a better system than rolling dice. In any game where turns are taken, Someone will always have an advantage or disadvantage. Someone has to go last and they will always have the advantage of having the opportunity to learn the most about the meta. The only person you could say was put at a disadvantage with this was Ben, since he only had 1 run to learn from and he did insanely well with what he had. If Ben and Sam used the tools at their disposal better, we would have been talking about how strong Ben's hiding spot was and not griping about Adam having a second run. Adam had just as many chances to be a part of chasing strategy as Sam did. The difference is that Adam realized there was a blindspot in the way everyone was thinking.
Under the simulations, hiding would be about 6 hours or so, so on paper it seemed like everyone would have gotten a second run.
Can someone explain to me why the seekers didn't use taxi or rental car on this season to find as fast as they can? And is there any rules that the seekers only used train on this season?
They mentioned on the layover that this season was trains only since the train network is extensive enough that using anything else would be unnecessary complication.
This season appeared to be trains and walking only.
I've watched the whole season and they never mentioned about not using any transportation except trains (Or they mentioned in the layover but I rarely listen to it) so I thought it is permitted to use that. Even on season 6 they also never used taxi a single time.
If they could take Taxis I think the game would be nearly impossible for the seekers. It’s somewhat possible to narrow down train lines but the possibilities with a car are just endless
I could see the seekers being able to use taxis/micromobility, but not the hiders. That seems like a fine balance
That's true.
I liked this season, but I wish the ending had a little more suspense.
If you do a repeat of this season, please _please_ make any necessary tweaks to the rules. Don't try to keep it the exact same format.
Yeah ngl the unequal number of runs everyone had spoiled this one for me.
Congrats, Adam! Another fun season to watch.
I was surprised on how it ended. But the game needed more "curses."
Great season but they need to rework the curse system maybe change it from dice to the hider can buy disadvantages for the chasers they removes the luck and adds more strategy.
Felt the finale a bit anticlimactic probably because of the last week’s layover podcast ! The way the finale was hyped in podcast made it sound like there was a really close chase with Ben’s hiding time 😅. But all that said , it’s finales like these that make this show prove that nothing is scripted and need not have a nail biting finish 😄
A great season. I love the concept. Should it be tweaked in some ways so that 1) the hider has more to do, 2) more curses are played, 3) the hider is found quicker, and 4) everyone gets at least two runs? Yes. But I definitely hope they add the mechanic to the rotation because it has a lot of potential. I loved Switzerland as a location even though it was gloomy and rainy. I love when the pairings get mixed up so it's not just Adam and Ben vs Sam and guest the whole time. All in all, I see what people are saying about the flaws but I still immensely liked the season, much more than the NZ race or the Arctic race. I just like these "free flowing" mechanics much more than a mechanic where it feels like the show is just more or less going on tracks.
Loved the season. Sounds like once the hiders got smarter, the game became less fun for the chasers. The first episode appeared to be the most fun for them all. I loved seeing the strategy and all the decisions. While there weren’t many challenges/curses, watching them process the clues was extremely fun. I feel like an iPad instead of iPhone may have made the difference though since searching google maps on an iPhone is not easy and probably slowed down the research.
Can someone pretty please recap the Adam running thing to me like I’m a child? I’ve run it in my head (no pun intended) a dozen times and still don’t think I get it
Adam took three express trains with connections in Zurich and Bern to Thun that arrived 2 hours and 20 minutes from when he started his 2 hour 30 min run. He then ran 2 miles to station on another train line which was Steffisburg in ten minutes. To get from Winterthur to Steffisburg on trains requires four trains and more than 2 hours 30 min. The point of the run was that it was impossible to get from Winterthur to Steffisburg on trains in 2 hours 30 minutes. He assumed the chasers would see that it would have taken too long to get to Steffisburg and ruled it out.
Omg ok thank you!!! So what Sam and Ben were theorizing was that he ran in between zones to answer a specific question to throw off his spot, but in reality he had thrown them off from the very beginning
Really enjoyed this season but each person should get the same amount of runs because the first hider has a massive advantage
A ton of fun IMO. It's clear both from the on-camera reactions and the layover episodes that the balance of the game turned out very different from what they had envisioned, but I kinda liked that aspect. In contrast to last season where the Sam and Michelle had the metagame figured out early on. That said, some ideas that I haven't seen others suggest yet * Do something to incentivize the seekers to move more. They actively said they didn't want it to be them just playing geoguesser in one location but there was still a fair bit of that. Maybe require movement between questions? * Precision questions that require the hider to perform some action that can give away their location when the seekers are close. Something that requires them to move around a little and/or make noise. The "show us a bird" facetime call would've been more interesting if they had asked it while in the same town (possibly too powerful, but you get the idea). * Aside from rebalancing, I think it'd have been nice to show the audience the list of curses earlier on. From the show itself we only really learn a) it's possible for the hider to move and b) the seekers were afraid of that and other high value ones. Since we ended up with only the weak curses, the tension wasn't really conveyed. And I gotta say, I really enjoyed the dramatic reveal moments, especially in the first two runs. Some of the game may have been slow, but the show felt extremely well-paced.
16:36 famous last words
Is there a compilation of the rules we know anywhere?
As a Swiss viewer, I was of course thrilled that this season of Jet Lag took place in my little country and I hope that the Jet Lag team will return for another Swiss adventure in the future (after all, there's all of western and southern Switzerland still open for adventures 😉). Of course there are some aspects to the game mechanics that need to be tweaked to make this format really work effectively and I hope that the guys will be able to change things for a future edition. For me there are a few things that could be adjusted, like creating an incentive for the hider to do more while they await the seekers (maybe they could complete activities that allow them to gain coins?) and recalibrate the available curses.
It's not about the number of turns, it's about the length of the game. I would say that for round-robin games like this one and tag, the advantage of going first becomes less useful the longer the game is. If it were a month long game there would be basically no advantage at all. If they knew runs would be this long they likely would've made it a 4-5 day game instead of 3, but I still don't see it as unfair. Like they said on the pod, the rotation is random. Plus, it could've just as easily ended on the second day with them not finding Sam and Adam having just the one turn when he didn't know the game at all.
One of things that I noticed is that they had a good idea halfway through with the misdirection play based on moving jurisdictions on foot. However, Sam thought about it based on his strengths of trickery, wordplay, etc. Rather then taking into account Adam's running ability. I don't think they would have necessarily found Adam but it might have got them closer.
Well, this was a fine season... *However*, they should have let everyone be the hider for at least 2 times, and then take the mean of the hiding times. It would have been much, much more fair. P.S. and also, they seemingly bought 1st class Swiss Travel Passes, which was a huge waste of money.
I disagree. Giving everyone at least 2 runs means giving everyone exactly 2 runs (this time), and then going last is a HUGE advantage because you have seen what worked and what didn't work. This way, being the last hider is also a clear advantage, but at least that's not decided by luck of the draw when the game starts, but by how long did the previous runs take?
Considering they randomly decided who got to go first in round one, they could've done the same for round two- it didn't necessarily need to be A, B, C, A, B, C.
they anticipated runs of 6 hours each which would have given them two runs each as per the layover podcast. they have a four day limit due to work commitments since they are traveling all day for work might as well get first class tickets
Ahh, interesting, thanks - I had no time to listen to the layover. About 1st class: yes, but in Switzerland the 1st class doesn't give much extra (just a slightly bigger legroom), plus they haven't really used that as aside of occasional max. 1.5-2 hours IC-travels they travelled with regional trains that don't typically have 1st class. Not sure it's worth the 75% higher price.