IS ROSARIO THE MOLE? - SUMMARY OF ALL HINTS - ENGLISH - WIDM 2024 - WIE IS DE MOL? SEASON 24 

Perhaps not surprisingly, I've written a novel about Rosario's (alleged) actions as Mole. 🙂 Here goes nothing... - Episode 1 - Braids his hair, puts on a hat and makeup, shakes everyone’s hand, but otherwise lays low to seem like a regular candidate while building trust. He’s ok with adding money to the pot at this point because he knows there will be opportunities to take money away later. Forms a bond with Fons and convinces Fons that a good strategy would be for him to mess up stuff to look like the Mole to others. In part 1 of that plan, Rosario calls out Fons in the van for lying about his exemption vote. Meanwhile, Anna is in key positions all episode, so the editors plant some red herrings pointing to her as the Mole. Players start suspecting Fons, fans start suspecting Anna, but nobody is suspecting Rosario (including me, who picked him as least likely Mole suspect after Episode 1). - Episode 2 - Rosario’s first opportunity to strike comes at the Molympics. Notice how he delivers the first envelope to Anna even though he wasn’t the last leg of the relay race. Hmm. My theory is that he switched the contents of that first envelope while others weren’t paying attention. And from that point on, the team has no chance at success. All the blame goes to Fons and Anna reading out the codes, which I believe were out of order the whole time. Rosario just needed to sit back and watch the chaos unfold around him. In the mountain climb, he continues to build trust by going first in the rope swing, and he deflects suspicion to Jip by letting her take the key helmet. Then he only gets one right, passes a hard question to Jip (which she gets wrong), and then lies to the group saying he got 3 correct. - Episode 3 - Our first of several music-related challenges. A good fit for a Mole musician, perhaps? And yet Rosario contributes very little. Hmm. Then, the street challenge, the first of several puzzle-themed challenges. Should be great for a self-proclaimed puzzle expert like Rosario. And yet he doesn’t even try to solve the puzzle at the end. Hmm. And for good measure, he sends Anna and Tooske away from the cocktail bar as time is running out so they can’t help solve the puzzle (and smirks at the camera while doing so). Then at the wrestling event, his first overt sabotage when he clearly breaks the rules by having multiple wrestlers in each photo and then tries to convince Kees that he is being smart by pointing to the right one. I think Kees will be kicking himself at the reveal for having dismissed this as an innocent action. - Episode 4 - Rosario is in a key position when he is the first one to answer the phone in the bike relay. He sets a precedent here by waiting a long time for jokers, which the others follow at the next stations. He wastes a ton of time, which was the main goal here, so that each correct answer is worth the smallest amount. The team gets 7 out of 9 correct answers, but Rosario only chimed in on 2 correct answers - and both of the incorrect answers. Then we have another puzzle game on the boats and we find out how much Rosario loves games and claims to be good at them. The others trust him when he completes the maze quickly and then fixes their mistakes on the puzzles - but unfortunately some of his answers aren’t right either (counting triangles, for example). The group can’t believe how they ended up with negative money. Maybe they put too much trust in the Mole! - Episode 5 - For the counting flags challenge, I’m going to blame this failure on the fact that the rules were unclear. The fun begins with the pinata challenge. We learn later that the Mole is communicating with Dennis throughout. And we don’t see Rosario at all between the moment the challenge starts until Jeroen famously yells “ROSARIO!” Was he secretly talking to Dennis during this time? Rewatch it - it's pretty striking how much screen time elapses without him being shown. After that, it’s all about wasting time. Rosario can’t seem to figure out his clue for some reason, and basically wonders around aimlessly the whole time trying to find the pinata that says Mol-ik, which is the first real Rosario clue from the season. Then, in the envelope game, Rosario conveniently finds minus 3000 in the box that is his favorite color, purple, and doesn’t seem too upset about it (although I still am - grrr). - Episode 6 - Rosario makes a pretty lame excuse for wanting to be the pennymeister by saying that he’ll get that one question right on the quiz. In the Mayan numbers challenge titled “Nothing is Something”, I think the symbol for the 0 resembles the bread on Rosario’s tarot card from Episode 1, which could be another clue (although I admit this one might be a stretch). Then we have an odd scene that is shown in mirror image when Rosario is discussing a bond with Babs. At first, I thought Babs was onto Rosario, but I think he somehow persuaded her that he is not the Mole (and I think the editors used this scene to also convince some viewers that he is not the Mole). Next, in the dancing challenge, Rosario’s hearing aid is a natural excuse if he was somehow unable to hear the messages properly. And finally, in the analog quiz, Rosario apparently picks himself as the answer to one of the questions shown. - Episode 7 - Another musical challenge for our musician, so Rosario is immediately trusted by the group. I think his strategy was to succeed on his first task and then sabotage the second task. I believe he intentionally played the piano incorrectly. Then at the picnic, he convinced the others to remember extraneous information to confuse them. Interestingly, he corrects the others to get the first couple people in the right place, but he doesn’t correct Rian when she thinks Charlie is Carlos. For the bidding challenge, integrity is rewarded, but a Mole has no integrity, so he looks at the quiz questions and removes 500 from the pot. This action also increases the chances that the player with the high bid will choose correctly. As an added bonus, the blame is placed on Kees and Fons, and he never has to reveal whether or not he looked at the envelope. - Episode 8 - So we reach episode #8, the pot is incredibly low, and nobody seems to be onto Rosario. In fact, they pick him as most trusted. Fools! I start yelling at my TV. LOL. Even Rik is surprised. Rosario point-blank tells Rik he can’t be trusted. And I think it is no coincidence that Rosario is called last, so he has more control over the final rankings. For example, if he was tied with someone else as most trusted, he could vote that person least trusted, so he would rise to the top of the list. Also, if he’s truly a player in a bond with Fons, why isn’t Fons his most trusted? You can see him celebrate when he is selected as most trusted, knowing that his job just got really easy. But if he shoots everyone, his cover may be blown, especially when Rian calls him out on it. So he lets Rian through, adds 2000 to the pot (which overall is still very low), shoots everyone else, takes a joker, and STILL nobody suspects him. In the canoes, Rosario turns into a cocky Mole who just starts doing ridiculous stuff in plain view. “Look at me, people, I’m the Mole!” He can’t row properly, he can’t pick up the words properly, and he nearly tips the boat over. I also think he is probably responsible for the missing Mol card, either dropped back into the water or hidden somewhere. Behind the scenes, the producers scramble to figure out the rules if nobody picks the correct Mole in the finale (this was meant to be a joke ... or is it?). - Episode 9 - My theory is that the high money amount is in the pouch on the purple pole. Rosario wants to get that pouch and then fail the game. He has two ways to possibly get it. First, he lines up across from the purple pouch and can naturally take the one in front of him (which Fons conveniently suggests, anyway). I also think Rosario was prepared to request the purple one because it is his favorite color, if needed. Low and behold, it’s another puzzle game (remind me again which of our players loves puzzles?), this time head-to-head with the Mole. Rosario’s explanation about why Anna should do the second one doesn’t make any sense (unless you are in the Anna tunnel). I think he wanted to do the last one himself so that he could use up all 20 minutes and perhaps the others would forget the gnome body part names by the time he finished. Then, in the key game, it’s well documented that this game was easy to Mole from any position. But I also think Rosario had a convenient excuse to be in the easiest position at the key table since he couldn’t listen to the underwater speakers. During the quizzes, Rosario doesn’t really name names, but rather says that he is sure of his choice and has been on a single person for a while … himself. 😊 If this is all wrong and Rosario was just a player this whole time, I may cry. LOL.

Omg I made it into the video!!!! That just made my day! ❤ As I’m sure everyone knows, Rosario is my mole. I have to work tonight, so I don’t have time to write one of my usual thesis-length posts. But MoleTracker has already done a great job of making the case for Mole Rosario. So I will just add a couple of comments. Firstly, I just have to mention the scarecrow clue again. Dennis’s “Is Ego de Mol?” quote was such an iconic hidden hint. I didn’t even properly watch the 2008 season of WIDM (I watched it years after it first aired, and I didn’t have subtitles, so I didn’t even understand what was happening most of the time), but I still know about that hint, and how awesome it was when it was revealed. The fact that Dennis returns to Mexico for an assignment, and Rosario spends half of that assignment running around aimlessly, trying to get the other candidates to help him come up with the word “MOL-IK” feels way too important to ignore. I mean, come on. How could that be a coincidence?! The next thing I want to mention is a possible clue from the first episode. This is something that I noticed when I was rewatching the scenes from the Dia del Topo party to try to find the Anna hints that everyone was talking about, lol! Remember the guy in the red and black suit and top hat, and how it seemed like he was possibly helping the mole look at necklaces? Well…I think this is actually the person that Rosario gets his topito from? Maybe? We only see a kind of overhead, zoomed out view of this interaction, but it looks like it could be the same person. That alone is suspicious. But it gets better: we actually see a close up shot of that man earlier in the episode, and his necklace has a sombrero on it. NOT a loaf of bread. So maybe the whole thing was just staged? The next thing that is still SUPER suspicious to me is Rosario’s piano playing during the music task with Kees. At one point, they show a close up of the tablet, with the song that he is supposed to be playing. And I swear that the song on the tablet is The Wheels on the Bus. That’s what it looks like to me, anyway. But the song that we hear Rosario playing is NOT The Wheels on the Bus. So, I’m not sure if the editors were manipulating the audio to make him seem suspicious, or if he was just playing a totally different song (maybe even inventing a tune on the fly). Anyway, Rosario starts laughing as Kees struggles to sing along to a children’s song that may or may not exist. Next up: the -3000 euros on the purple table. This is probably the single thing that has bothered me the most about Rosario as a potential mole. As others have pointed out, if the producers really did just place the negative money on the purple table for him, that seems really unfair. I would hope that they wouldn’t make it so easy for him to take money out of the pot. One thing that I think is worth mentioning is that there were actually 2 purple tables in this assignment. So maybe the producers put the 2 jokers that he had opted to go for on one of the purple tables, and the minus money on the other? And left it up to a 50/50 chance? (This would be slightly less unfair. I guess.) Or maybe the whole thing was a coincidence? I hope? Because if not…yeah, not cool. Lastly, and on a somewhat related note, the color purple appeared all over the place this season, often in important places. The tarot cards from episode 1 were either green, yellow, or purple. Those colors were chosen intentionally, and I don’t think it was to celebrate Mardi Gras. The green and the yellow kind of make sense (green= green screen, yellow= gold/money to be earned). But purple? Then, the returning player was locked inside a purple box. Then, the -3000 euros was on the purple table. Then, the money in episode 9 was on the purple table. That’s an awful lot of Rosario’s color! (Side note: is that why they chose to use all of the pastel-colored tables and chairs? So that the purple wouldn’t stand out too much?) Also, speaking of colors, thank you Julie for pointing out the “pink river” hint! I actually noticed that scene. I thought,”Hmm, that water looks rather red. That’s kind of weird.” And then never thought about it again. Because, you know, red rivers are totally normal. Lol! So, in conclusion, Rosario is my pick. Which means it’s probably Fons. 🙂

My mole is Anna, but I think Rosario is still probable. Rosario’s most obvious sabotage being the -3000 euros from picking the wrong envelope, but it is interesting to me that as a musician and self-proclaimed puzzle solver he was not super helpful in any of the music-related/puzzle ones. The biggest thing against him being the mole in my opinion is the fact that he was chosen as the most trusted by the remaining contestants. Either this means he was very good at being undetected by anyone (which I think is unlikely) or that he isn’t the mole. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it’s Fons though since I have not suspected him at all. However, both Rosario and Fons looked at the final questions, which as a mole you 100% want to do to force the auction to occur, which means even more money lost.

Let me preface this by saying I am stuck in my Anna tunnel. My dream mole Kees was sadly eliminated. I went back and watched Rosario in episode 1 task 1. I actually watched in slow motion to catch everything. When he went to search for the "bread" necklace he was not searching but started dancing with people. Then he is shown going through a human tunnel (line of people with their arms up making a tunnel). Immediately upon exiting this tunnel he places his hands on the shoulder of a man in a top hat who has his topito. How coincidental that his topito was right there when he came out of his Mole tunnel and he placed his Mole hands on the person's shoulders. He is never seen searching for the necklace like the other candidates. Also the countdown clock for this task is ten lightbulbs. Rosario has won 2 Edison awards named after Thomas Edison the inventor of the lightbulb. Silly I know but just something that I thought when watching the episode again. I am hoping Fons is the Mole and we have all been fooled this year. Thanks Julie!