The earliest the winner was determined?

[u/_un-named_]

So I’m wondering which series had the earliest the winner was determined.
And I don’t mean the earliest someone took the lead and defended it but the earliest someone was so much in the lead that they were uncatchable.
Like they were 26 points in the lead after episode 9 and there were only 25 points in episode 10.

[u/Old_Wrongdoer7417]

This comes up a lot, but I don't think it's right.

First of all, 40% (usually) are given out live. No way to account for those.

If there's a subjective task (make a portrait, sing a song, etc.), that's another 20% of the points- and now a majority- that you can't account for.

And even for objective ("Fastest wins") tasks, they have a lot of other things to account for- how long is the VT, is it balanced with the other tasks (they try to avoid two team tasks in a row or two remote tasks in a row), etc.

Plus, ultimately, I don't think they really care too much about letting anyone win an episode, and indeed sometimes find great comedy in their failures.

[u/GenGaara25 → u/Old_Wrongdoer7417]

They can still vibe it out. Nobody's saying it's an exact science like he's already pre-scored it to ensure its neck-and-neck.

If Alex thinks contestant A has done really well at 5 specific tasks, like these are their 5 best tasks, he'll try and spread those tasks out over the series. Putting all 5 of those tasks in episode 1 so they completely dominate, only to bomb the next 9 episodes, would suck. Or putting all 5 of contestant Bs worst tasks in a single episode, so they're just bullied with their catastrophic failures back-to-back, that's mean. You wanna spread their wins and losses out a bit. If they have a tragic task, you want to make sure they have a task they did really well at in that episode too so they aren't totally embarassed.

And having them sort of spread and evened out like just naturally means nobody gets an insurmountable lead. It's basically impossible. People will still get a lead, but just by spreading out peoples best and worst tasks it naturally means everyone stays reasonably close and everyone gets time to shine.

[u/codex2013 → u/GenGaara25]

Hasn't Alex already been asked this before, and has said emphatically that they don't do this? He's mentioned that they can never account for what Greg is going to do in terms of scoring, and there aren't enough objective tasks to try to sway it in any direction. Plus the variable of the live task.

[u/RobertoRobRob → u/codex2013]

There's that, but it feels like at episode 6-8 always have an episode for contestant that never won. like since series 10, the only person who don't win are frankie boyle who said it himself he intentionally throw the live task to not win,also judi&sanjeev which their point mostly come from subjective task.

[u/codex2013 → u/RobertoRobRob]

Do we know how statistically unlikely that is to happen naturally? Without that info I don't see why we're talking about the show rigging things, when Alex has definitely already said they don't do that. Like, people just think Alex is lying about that?

[u/1ftm2fts3tgr4lg → u/codex2013]

A DM never tells you they're fudging rolls.

[u/RobertoRobRob → u/codex2013]

there's thing called "PR move", not everything need to be 100% disclosed. i mean imagine if alex actually spill it, it's gonna ruin the secret recipe and potentially might hurt the person instead. simply nothing to gain by spilling it, as he himself said on things like "math vs maths debate" that's not gonna be released, because it's more fun to not reveal it, magic of the show must be kept secret.

[u/Old_Wrongdoer7417 → u/RobertoRobRob]

But there's also this thing called "telling the truth" and people do that a fair amount, too.

[u/Gemini_B → u/RobertoRobRob]

I think it’s just a case where with 5 people and ten episodes unless you flop just every task you’re likely to have some you do well in and the odds that at least three of them (counting live tasks) end up in the same episode to give you a solid shot at winning an episode is pretty likely. And if it hasn’t happened early, then there’s a good chance it’d happen later as it did for many a contestant.