Connecting wall

[dr_whom]

Okay, listen. If you're ever on the British game show Only Connect, and you're trying to solve the Connecting Wall, and you see five items that you think all belong to the same category, and you start guessing subsets of four of them, keep track of which of the subsets you've guessed, and don't stop guessing until you've tried all five possibilities. I can't count how many times I've seen a team spot a connection on the board and start guessing subsets of four and then give up on it after trying three or four of the subsets, and then come back later and guess the same ones over again, and never complete the board for that reason. And then Victoria Coren says "You saw the connection, but every time you guessed a group you never tried leaving out 'Magnum'!" or whatever.

I'm just saying.

Comments

[dr_whom]

Sure sure. I'm more thinking of ones where it's really clear which ones belong to a category, and one of them is just a red herring. Like, the board contains Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov, but unbeknownst to you "Spock" is just on there because he's part of a set of four child psychologists or something.

(Also I bet some of these are a lot easier to a British audience. I'm never going to solve the ones where one of the categories is cricket coaches or whatever.)