DID THE MOLE RELAX? - HINTS & THEORIES - WIE IS DE MOL? 2024 - SEASON 24 - ENGLISH 

Glad you're back, Julia! I need your help, because this season is just trying to confuse me! For the first challenge, Fons really bungled it up, but in like the most obvious way possible. Anytime they make it that obvious I automatically disqualify them as a mole choice. I have a theory that if the mole was running they delivered an envelop out of order. It would be easy to grab the wrong envelop at the start and have no one notice since everyone's running or placing signs or reading codes aloud. The other option of course is that the mole saw how bad things were going and just decided they could sit back and let everyone else (mainly Fons) mess it up. No sense in sticking your neck out if others are doing the work for you. Part of me wonders if Anna has to be the mole, because only the mole could really understand what the hell was going on in the first task... Challenge 2 was hilarious; classic WIDM. Both the first and second episodes have had a cause/effect portion in a challenge and I find that highly interesting. Rosario, Jeroen, Fons, and Justin were all in the cause group episode one (raising their painting caused the numbers to appear), while Anna, Kees, and Tooske were in the effect group. For the second episode, Jeroen, Kees, Rian, and Tooske were in the cause group (get out of seats to stop the podcast), while Justin, Anna, Rosario, and Fons were in the effect group. I wonder if the mole would place themself in the cause group in both challenges (Jeroen), because it seems, well, kind of lame. Like how does that look in the reunion episode? Jeroen: 'Here's where I was bad at painting, and kept my painting down so the other group couldn't get the codes. And here's where I went and got drinks and played in the pool so the other group couldn't answer questions.' Like, is it real sabotage? And Anna being in the effect group both times is also interesting. I don't know if it necessarily tells us anything, but it is the pivotal group to be in to prevent money from being earned. Good place for a mole, but too obvious to the group? Hmm. Setting that aside, trying to determine who earned what in the second task is a bit of a challenge. Fons, Anna, Rosario, and Justin all get 4 questions each (each worth $250, wrong answers earn $0). Jip gets 3 questions passed to her (each worth $250, wrong answers -250). I would think as a mole, to minimize the pot you would want to pass as many questions as possible (especially hard to answer questions) so you lose money. Fons I'm pretty sure gets 2 questions definitely right (the football team and the Olympics year), one question he SAYS he knows but we can't confirm, and passes 0 to Jip. Anna gets at least 2 questions correct I think (chocolate and the number of inhabitants of Tenochtitlan). Hernan Cortes is right but we don't technically know if she spelled it right or is the mole and is lying. She says she gets the 4th right as well but again can't confirm, but she doesn't pass any on to Jip. So so far, Fons is 2-3/4 and Anna 2-4/4. Rosario passes on 1 question, definitely gets 1 right (Shape of Water), 1 wrong (Mexico City), and 1 uncertain. Justin passes on 2, including the WORST question (how are you supposed to spell that volcano correctly?), gets 1 right (0), and IDK the other 1. So Rosario and Justin can account for 2 correct answers (1 each). Jip is the part that is the most confusing. She says she definitely gets 2 right, but A) we don't see her answer for the volcano/Popo, and B) I don't think the answer for the graffiti-group is right? Marcas? I could be wrong, but I couldn't find that when I googled. They end up earning $1250, so maybe we can work backwards. Contributions prior to Jip going is at least 6 right, $1500 total, based on what is shown. So we automatically know Jip at least missed 2 questions, if not all 3. My guess is she thought she got something right but spelled it wrong or something. Assuming she got 1 right, then everything is accounted for (1500-250 = 1250). If she got all 3 wrong, then someone got another question right, but we don't know who. At the end of the day, Fons and Anna definitely got at least 2 right each, and Rosario and Justin 1 each. The interesting tidbit is later, when they've all met up. Anna says she got all 4 right (wrong), Fons says he got 3 right (possibly true), Rosario says he got 3 right (bald-faced lie), and Justin says he got 2 right (possibly true). Justin probably played it the most mole-ly, passing on 2 questions and only getting 1 right. Rosario is shown to be a definitive liar (only got 1, maybe 2 right) and passed on a question. Long story short, the most suspicious in the rock climbers group should be Rosario and Justin. They only got 1-2 questions right each and passed questions onto Jip. Funny thing is I hadn't really suspected either of them, so this may make me rethink thing a bit. I'm still really uncertain. I'll keep Tooske and Anna hovering near the top and have Rosario climb up the ranks as well. Justin with his treasurer theatrics drops a bit. Jeroen bumps down a bit for not doing much this week. I should bump Tooske down a bit too but I just love the idea of her being the mole, and I just have a higher suspicion of the women this season so I can't help it. Kees is just too contestant-like for me, so I don't see it being him. Rian hasn't done much this week for me either (I don't think the stands was the place to mole in the first challenge). Fons is at the very bottom of my suspect list. Just too obvious.

That's such a good point about Rik's little lecture: how do we get to season 24 and have a group of contestants who aren't learning about each other? Bizarre!

Heyo! Glad you're well. Welcome back! I have thoughts... * The issue I have is that the people who I think are acting most like the Mole - in particular Justin, Rosario and Rian - are the ones I don't think they'd choose as the Mole. Fons is kinda the "mid" candidate to me, who seems like a likely Mole producer pick as well as a likely Mole - but he's had moments that I question whether he could actually be the Mole. They seem very candidate-like. Justin's action definitely looks more like a player making a move rather than a Mole. A lot of candidates this year are saying the women are sneaky, but personally I'm not seeing it. * As for the Mole, I think Fons is still my pick at the moment, but I'm hesitant. I will kick myself so hard if I do what I did in De Mol S6 and pick the Mole correctly pre-season, then immediately switch when watching the actual show. It's not Anna. Anna's the contestant "mouthpiece" for the viewers. That person is almost never the Mole. They're too visible. Anna absolutely could've gotten rid of a couple of a few questions in the Mexican cliff challenge, but then so could Fons. There's absolutely no way Tooske is it - I'm calling that one now. She's probably not lasting much longer either. You don't follow the Mole's perspective in the very first challenge in ep1 the way they followed Tooske's. Of the women, in terms of their actions I'd probably go for Rian, but I'm still left wondering: would they ever pick her as the Mole? Seems like a big risk. I'm hesitant to rule out anybody except Anna and Tooske. It's difficult to imagine it being Kees either. * Other thoughts: I liked the second task a lot - lots of imagination, comedic potential, and Mole sabotage opportunity there. Didn't like the first one - honestly I love it when they go into a really unusual place (like the underground house of mannequins in Season 17). When they go into a huge stadium, it really shows the budget and scope that they're working with. The place looked desolate. Felt like there wasn't much to see but a lot of people yelling at each other. Finally, you have the entire Olympic stadium, and all you're doing is putting up boards in the stands? At least have some spectators there! So this episode was one for two on challenges. * I will also add that the moment Rik said "This is the first opportunity the candidates have to work as a full team" right before the Olympic challenge, I was like "...Well they're f--ked." I also like the high cash prize (so far). I'm just hoping it won't be another case of "fishsticks" where the Mole can put as much money in the pot as they like, giving no clues to their identity for us viewers, but it won't matter because some inane twist or unwinnable challenge takes it all out again. I'd like a season of WIDM where it feels as though there are actual stakes!

I have to back up my theory from last week. In episode 1, Justin wore a pink shirt when Rik used the pink table. Now, in episode 2, Justin is wearing a light blue shirt and they used the light blue table. That would be quite to coincidence. It feels intentional but, like you hinted at Julie, it also feels so obvious that even the players would notice it in the moment. Could it really be so simple that Justin is The Mole?

Glad to see you are feeling better Julie!! 🙂 So…this episode was…something. Lol. I can only imagine Kees’s surprise when he went into the Olympic stadium assignment with the same “just keep yelling stuff” fake mole strategy that he used in episode 1, only to be out-Moled (out-fake-Moled?) by Fons. Rosario and Tooske didn’t really do anything in this assignment other than run, which wouldn’t make sense for a mole. I can’t recall if Jeroen took the microphone at any point, or if it was just Anna, Kees, and Fons. Rian messed up a seat number, but I think she did that to confuse Jip and Justin, just like she messed up with the paintings last week to confuse Babs. Or maybe she did it just to see whether anyone would correct her. It really does seem like the group as a whole didn’t understand this assignment well enough. But even when Anna was giving instructions, I didn’t see any clearly recognizable number in the stands after the first two sets of instructions were given. Although, they hadn’t removed the word “MOL” yet. Actually, that is probably the most suspicious thing that the group in the stands did-not bothering to move all of the boards to the side at the beginning of the assignment. I don’t know. It was kind of a mess. Either Fons is the most obvious mole ever, or the mole didn’t need to do much to sabotage. The second assignment was more fun. Which group would the mole rather be in? Maybe in the climbing group? It was possible for both groups to distract from the information in the podcast (by either standing up, or talking over the podcast), but only the climbers had direct control over the amount of money earned. It was driving me nuts how much they were talking while they were climbing! Just be quiet and focus! One thing is certain-people are lying about how many questions they answered correctly. Jip says that she only received 3 questions that were passed to her from the other candidates. She thinks that she got 2 answers right, 1 answer wrong, so +250. This means that, out of the 13 questions that were answered by the other candidates, only 4 were correct. But according to them, they had 12 correct answers. Basically, everyone was lying except for Jip. I’m also not sure why they divided up the test topics the way they did. Like, why wouldn’t Anna (the science journalist) get the nature and science questions? Why give those to Justin? In the “relaxation” group, Jeroen and Tooske were the first ones to encourage the group to stand up, but they were also the ones who kept saying they should sit back down and wait for instructions. I would also like to know exactly what the rules were for that assignment. I personally got the impression, from the way that things were edited, that the podcast was playing when at least 2 out of 4 people were sitting at the table with the tablet on it. But I could be wrong about that, obviously. And I don’t necessarily think the mole was in this group anyway, so it might not matter. One other random thing from the very beginning of this episode stood out to me. It’s probably nothing, just like my brilliant hidden clue to Jip as Mole from episode 1 turned out to be nothing 🙁. But Kees said that they recognized the Olympic stadium because “a number of people” had chosen the card with the stadium on it with the fortune teller in episode 1. The thing is, only two people saw that card, and it was Jeroen and Rosario. Not Kees. If I was a candidate, that is the type of information that I would want to keep to myself. Similarly, Tooske was the only person who saw the wrestling card. Does the whole group really have this information? As Rik himself told us, this group is not the best at sharing information/ getting to know one another. So did Kees let something slip here? (Tune in next week to see Kees get eliminated). As far as Justin lying about the “missing” money…I don’t really think much of it. Maybe he has no clue who the mole is, so he is trying to get people to suspect him? They didn’t even take the pot away from him though, lol! I’m still kind of undecided as far as suspects go, or maybe I just don’t want to acknowledge my suspicions because I don’t like the way they are leaning. I am not yet willing to rule out the candidates who got an exemption in episode 1, partially because I would prefer the mole to be someone in this group, but also because I made the mistake in a previous season of completely ruling out the mole in episode 1 after the very first assignment, and I don’t want to make that mistake again (it was the Georgia season, in case anyone is wondering; I still have strong feelings about that one. What if the mole’s duo had been the only ones not to get their tickets to Tbilisi? How is that fair?!?). ANYWAY…this season so far has been…OK. I feel like the group chemistry is lacking a bit compared to last year. And the candidates I like keep going home! But I am still looking forward to next week.