Author Topic: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)  (Read 111306 times)

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Offline Prophet

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #300 on: March 28, 2011, 07:22:13 PM »
Ron: I can't disco and paint at the same time. :lol3:
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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #301 on: March 28, 2011, 09:49:38 PM »
Has anything like this ever happened before on previous seasons of TAR?  Have they ever spoiled too much?  I've only been here since last season so I wouldn't know.

I don't know where it came from, but Peach's precious predecessor Puddin, posted the entire boot list in correct order for the All Stars Season (11) before the season began on CBS.


Offline georgiapeach

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #302 on: March 28, 2011, 10:23:24 PM »
And that was a huge coup at the time...but puddin said many times that given the chance, she would never do it again.

It pretty much killed much of the speculation, the suspense, and the sheer FUN of figuring out what would happen next.

SO we never have again.
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Offline apskip

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #303 on: March 30, 2011, 03:43:19 PM »
I think it's worthwhile to take a mathematical look at the tea tasting. Let us start with these assumptions:

1. There were 1500 cups of tea.
2. There were a very limited number of cups that matched the reference sample tasted in Kunming.
3. For every 5 cups sampled, an individual went to the tea master.
4. Some individuals used their sense of taste or smell to "beat the odds" and others did not; for the latter this became a needle-in-a-haystack task.

Let's say there were 8 matching cups among the 1500 ( I tried it with 10 and the results did not reflect the real situation well). That means the odds of an individual tasting each cup without special knowledge would be 0.5333%. If we say that it took 15 seconds to choose and sample a cup and another 15 seconds to get the result verified, then here is the way it would have gone on average assuming no smell or taste assistance:

#1 8 cups available 94 tastings to reach midpoint in average 28 minutes
#2 7 cups available 107 tastings to reach midpoint in average 33 minutes
#3 6 cups available 125 tastings to reach midpoint in average 38 minutes
#4 5 cups available 150 tastings to reach midpoint in average 45 minutes
#5 4 cups available 187.5 tastings to reach midpoint in average 56 minutes
#6 3 cups available 250 tastings to reach midpoint in average 75 minutes
#7 2 cups available 375 tastings to reach midpoint in average 112 minutes (a bit less than the 3+ hours it took Flight Time)
#8 1 cup available  750 tastings to reach midpoint in average 225 minutes (3.75 hours, close to what it took Luke)

Teams using taste or smell to their advantage would have finished more quickly than indicated above, but the last 2 teams were in for a very difficult task.

Offline Slowhatch

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #304 on: March 30, 2011, 06:29:13 PM »
My Mandarin is non-existent but if this is the shop sign then this might be the POI page. That would put Jin Fu Yi Zhan in the middle of the wholesale tea district (seen here).


Offline maf

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #305 on: March 31, 2011, 01:15:48 AM »
I found a minor inconsistency in this episode. At the Road Block we get a shot of Phil holding the cap of the bottle the teams get when they find the tea:


But later when Jet & Cord read their cap we get another close shot of it. But this time the text is slightly different:


The difference is that Phil's cap specify they should deliver their bottle and the other cap does not mention that but says they should take a taxi.

We hear Jet & Cord read it "Got to the Jorashanko area...". So the text they are reading is from Phil's cap. And later in the episode we see teams deliver their bottles to the tea shop.

I wonder if the close up of the cap is something they did at another time and they had to create a new cap for it and got it slightly wrong.

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #306 on: March 31, 2011, 10:19:50 AM »
Good eyes!  :tup: With one camera per team, what the viewer sees are called "exposition hands." It's a continuity error--Jet, for example, is holding the clue with his left hand--but a very minor one. Also fwiw: depending on where the cabbie dropped them off for Thakur Bari, the teams would have been a block away from the tea stall--or right next door.


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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #307 on: March 31, 2011, 12:47:50 PM »
Ah yes, the Exposition Hands, which we always got to see holding the clue envelope during every episode in those early seasons.
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Offline Chateau d If

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #308 on: April 01, 2011, 12:02:21 PM »
I think it's worthwhile to take a mathematical look at the tea tasting. Let us start with these assumptions:

1. There were 1500 cups of tea.
2. There were a very limited number of cups that matched the reference sample tasted in Kunming.
3. For every 5 cups sampled, an individual went to the tea master.
4. Some individuals used their sense of taste or smell to "beat the odds" and others did not; for the latter this became a needle-in-a-haystack task.

Let's say there were 8 matching cups among the 1500 ( I tried it with 10 and the results did not reflect the real situation well). That means the odds of an individual tasting each cup without special knowledge would be 0.5333%. If we say that it took 15 seconds to choose and sample a cup and another 15 seconds to get the result verified, then here is the way it would have gone on average assuming no smell or taste assistance:

#1 8 cups available 94 tastings to reach midpoint in average 28 minutes
#2 7 cups available 107 tastings to reach midpoint in average 33 minutes
#3 6 cups available 125 tastings to reach midpoint in average 38 minutes
#4 5 cups available 150 tastings to reach midpoint in average 45 minutes
#5 4 cups available 187.5 tastings to reach midpoint in average 56 minutes
#6 3 cups available 250 tastings to reach midpoint in average 75 minutes
#7 2 cups available 375 tastings to reach midpoint in average 112 minutes (a bit less than the 3+ hours it took Flight Time)
#8 1 cup available  750 tastings to reach midpoint in average 225 minutes (3.75 hours, close to what it took Luke)

Teams using taste or smell to their advantage would have finished more quickly than indicated above, but the last 2 teams were in for a very difficult task.

That's a nice start.  But just a little too simplistic for the computer age.    :tup:   What you have not taken into account is that the number of cups is diminishing as the tasting goes on.  This has a mathematical consequence that will help to reveal the real arrangement of teacups left out for the teams.

The main parameter at play is the number of "good" cups available to pick from.  It does not have to be 8   :res:

I think 30 seconds is a better estimate of the time needed to select and drink each cup.  Plus there is going to be some time used to run to the far end of the Hall to show the judge.  I also upped the time needed to get checked by the judge:  30 seconds because, as we saw there was a bit of a queue.  That 30 seconds is for 5 tastings as you did.  I found that with 10 good cups out of the 1500 the teams could be expected to complete in the following times:

1st   13 min
2nd   25 min
3rd   40 min
4th   58 min
5th   79 min
6th   106 min
7th   147 min
8th   226 min

Running the same experiment with only 8 good cups produced the following expected completion times:

1st   16 min
2nd   32 min
3rd   74 min
4th   102 min
5th   79 min
6th   142 min
7th   204 min
8th   355 min

And finally, running the same experiment with 8 good cups and your 15 second tasting and judging times gives the following expected completion times:

1st   7 min
2nd   16 min
3rd   26 min
4th   37 min
5th   51 min
6th   71 min
7th   102 min
8th   177 min

You can see that the model is linear with the duration inputs.

So after making these runs I concluded that in order to be consistent with the 3 hours and 3.75 hours for the 7th and 8th teams we needed to have the Roadblock set up with 10 good cups of tea on the tables.

To Luke's credit I suspect one or more of the three good cups he was supposed to have were inadvertently tasted but not taken for judging.    (:;)
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Offline maf

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #309 on: April 01, 2011, 12:34:07 PM »
Regarding the number of cups...

If you did lack a normal life and obsessively watched every frame of the episode you would know that there were 10 good cups out of about 1000. There is a shot showing the inside of the book the judge is holding and we see that it contains a sheet with 10 numbers ranging from 90 to 954. From that I guess there were about 1000 cups.

It would probably be possible to count the cups by running one of their camera pans in slow-motion. But that is a bit too much even for me. :colors


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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #310 on: April 01, 2011, 12:38:23 PM »
And there is another couple of data points you need to take into consideration. The first two cups were found fairly quickly. Ron got his at 10.07 and Jet at 10.10. So they did not follow a random process.

I would guess that the first teams managed to smell their way to the right cups, but the longer teams stayed in the room the less sensitive their smell became due to sensory overload with all the teas and fruit.

Offline Chateau d If

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #311 on: April 01, 2011, 01:29:19 PM »
I think the nosy ones made it worse for the rest  :lol:

Imagine if 7 racers zeroed in on their 7 good cups in the first try.  Then Luke would have to hunt against 3 in 993 odds!   :groan:  Apskip will report that it will take Luke 167 tries to find his tea.

Running the model again with 1000 cups on the tables gives the target 7th and 8th place times when the durations are increased by 50%:  45 sec to taste and 45 sec to get judged (done every 5 cups).

It just makes me more sure that one or more of the good cups went to waste.   :(
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Offline Dånooky

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #312 on: April 01, 2011, 01:32:15 PM »
I think the nosy ones made it worse for the rest  :lol:

Imagine if 7 racers zeroed in on their 7 good cups in the first try.  Then Luke would have to hunt against 3 in 993 odds!   :groan:  Apskip will report that it will take Luke 167 tries to find his tea.

Running the model again with 1000 cups on the tables gives the target 7th and 8th place times when the durations are increased by 50%:  45 sec to taste and 45 sec to get judged (done every 5 cups).

It just makes me more sure that one or more of the good cups went to waste.   :(

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Offline apskip

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #313 on: April 02, 2011, 01:58:03 PM »
What all the analysis above proves is that different assumptions lead to different results. It is fairly obvious that assuming 10 cups ( I actually did a model starting with that before switching to 8 cups because it was not realistic in conjunction with the other assumptions I used) and altering the time to taste per cups and altering the time to get an answer from the tea master affects the results of any model.

On the question of how many cups there were, the fact that the top number shown is 954 proves absolutely nothing. When you have 1500 cups of tea, that number can be in a range from 751 to 1500.

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #314 on: April 02, 2011, 02:43:53 PM »
What all the analysis above proves is that different assumptions lead to different results. It is fairly obvious that assuming 10 cups ( I actually did a model starting with that before switching to 8 cups because it was not realistic in conjunction with the other assumptions I used) and altering the time to taste per cups and altering the time to get an answer from the tea master affects the results of any model.

On the question of how many cups there were, the fact that the top number shown is 954 proves absolutely nothing. When you have 1500 cups of tea, that number can be in a range from 751 to 1500.
I had the impression that the cups were being replaced at the beginning, though.
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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #315 on: April 02, 2011, 08:19:32 PM »
What all the analysis above proves is that different assumptions lead to different results. It is fairly obvious that assuming 10 cups ( I actually did a model starting with that before switching to 8 cups because it was not realistic in conjunction with the other assumptions I used) and altering the time to taste per cups and altering the time to get an answer from the tea master affects the results of any model.

On the question of how many cups there were, the fact that the top number shown is 954 proves absolutely nothing. When you have 1500 cups of tea, that number can be in a range from 751 to 1500.
I had the impression that the cups were being replaced at the beginning, though.

I don't think so.. seriously. :lol:

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #316 on: April 02, 2011, 10:09:32 PM »
Joab, the keyword is impression. I also thought the cups were refilled, making it a much more difficult task.
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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #317 on: April 02, 2011, 10:19:09 PM »
I saw the waiters taking off the cups as they were emptied...but heck, we can all rewatch.
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Offline BayBay

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #318 on: April 03, 2011, 04:26:50 AM »
Has it been noted that the Globes are very close to leaving when M/L arrived? Good editing to create suspense however it means M/L are quite behind

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #319 on: April 03, 2011, 09:52:54 AM »
Joab, the keyword is impression. I also thought the cups were refilled, making it a much more difficult task.

I know.. i'm just commenting that it doesn't look like it because after awhile you can see the cups were no longer on the table by the time only Luke's left to finish the task.


Offline Chateau d If

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #320 on: April 03, 2011, 10:54:08 AM »
This looks like a good question to ask the racers!

Lots of possibilities going on:

1)  Maybe Luke complained that there were no more good teacups on the tables.  In response, production may have been compelled to check the empties to be sure.  Did they find one and then then have to refill it and refill some more to mask the winning cup?

2)  Luke was able, in the end, to bring a tray full of teacups to sit before the judge.  He drank one, tipped the cup so the judge could see the number, waited for the determination, and repeated with the next cup.  This was a far more efficient routine.  Why was this not done earlier?

There was a similar situation in TAR6 where Hayden and Rebecca were trying to match their keys to specific padlocks out of thousands.  It was so hopeless that production, twice, narrowed the field to guide them to the correct locks (learned on an RFF podcast, thanks Rob!).

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #321 on: April 03, 2011, 11:08:43 AM »
I think that key and lock task in TAR6 was probably the hardest task in TAR history. TAR6 may be the hardest season as well considering that it also included the first haybale task (which was harder than the Switchback version, imo).
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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #322 on: April 03, 2011, 12:08:56 PM »
I think that key and lock task in TAR6 was probably the hardest task in TAR history. TAR6 may be the hardest season as well considering that it also included the first haybale task (which was harder than the Switchback version, imo).

On a pure numbers standpoint, the Switchback was harder.

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #323 on: April 03, 2011, 12:11:23 PM »
I think that key and lock task in TAR6 was probably the hardest task in TAR history. TAR6 may be the hardest season as well considering that it also included the first haybale task (which was harder than the Switchback version, imo).

On a pure numbers standpoint, the Switchback was harder.

True, but another factor that must be counted when considering the two tasks is that the teams had a definite time limit in searching for the correct lock because of the gondola. When the gondola finally did leave the location, it stranded one team and forced them to quit the task.
However, the hay bales task was physically strenuous. It truly is a tossup between the two. :tup:
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Offline Slowhatch

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Re: TAR 18 Ep 6 "I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade" (Kolkata, India)
« Reply #324 on: April 03, 2011, 11:18:22 PM »
K/J's lucky break:
This puzzled me for a bit. Thakur Bari has absolutely nothing to do with tea: it's a family estate turned into a museum--inside a college campus. There was no way a helpful stranger could connect the dots and steer K/J in the right direction, so I looked around and found him in a cap with R/C when they were hiring a cab. My guess is that he's the taxi manager (or whatever title is appropriate for directing a cab rank) and he just sent them off to the same place as the others (regardless of the tea). At least, I hope that's the explanation.   :(