Contestants for Knightmare Geek Week 2013 episode: Stuart Ashen, Emma Blackery, Phil Lester, Dan Howell

Interview with Geek Week Team (Part 2)

By Alan Boyd

The second part of our two-part interview with the team from the Knightmare Geek Week episode: Stuart Ashen, Daniel Howell, Phil Lester and Emma Blackery.


See the first part of our interview.

This article contains spoilers about the YouTube Geek Week episode. Why not check it out first?

How hard was the Geek Week dungeon?

We discussed with the team how the difficulty of the game compares with how easy it looks on TV.

The team unanimously state that the game is much harder to play than it looks. As Stuart says, "It looks pretty hard, to be honest".

"It's very very difficult to control the dungeoneer," says Dan.

"When there are tiny spaces between life and death, you can't be even slightly rotated. Otherwise you step into a world of pain and death."

Extended Geek Week showing prime causeway
A floor puzzle, shown in the extended episode

The Geek Week episode didn't show any riddles, which were common in previous quests. The team seemed quite thankful for this, and suggested that they may not have done so well if they'd had to answer riddles.

However, it's worth pointing out that the team figured out what to do with the IGNITE spell rather quickly.

A bomb appears in the corridor during the Geek Week episode of Knightmare (2013).
A bomb appears in the corridor

Perhaps then, the team wouldn't have fared as badly as they might think. It's also worth pointing out that they spotted the "FEET" solution fairly quickly in the final room.

"Slice me, Dice me"

Which brings us on to that fateful room. We asked them for their thoughts involving the final puzzle.

Aerial POV shot of 'Slice Me Dice Me' from the Geek Week episode of Knightmare (2013). The challenge was first seen in the Knightmare VR pilot of 2004.
Stuart reaches a challenge with swinging axes

The team say that at first they had no idea what the letters meant. However, they spotted the word "feet" and then applied it to the riddle, which is to say that they worked backwards from seeing the solution.

Of course, there's no right or wrong way to solve a riddle and this way is as good as any other.

Well, okay - there's no denying that. The final jump was a little weak and, having jumped from the middle of the stepping stone, there isn't really any way that Stuart could have made it.

However, from our perspective, the jump looks like it's too big to take a large, careful step across and it's hard to control just how far you jump when blind. The room therefore looks like it's a particularly tricky one.

Definitely one to keep if a future series gets commissioned!

Diagonal aerial shot of 'Slice Me Dice Me' from the Geek Week episode of Knightmare (2013). The challenge was first seen in the Knightmare VR pilot of 2004.
A keeper? The Slice-Me-Dice-Me Challenge

Most satisfactory?

I'm pleased that we managed to squeeze in a spectacular death.

Dan Howell

The dungeoneer is chased by Ariadne in the original Level 3 Clue Room, remastered for the Geek Week episode of Knightmare (2013).
Stuart is chased by Ariadne

So, did the team think that their death was fair, and were they happy with the ending?

The team agree that the death was fair. There's no real denying that axes made them panic and react a little too quickly, which, as Stuart points out, was exactly the point.

Dan was curious as to whether there was a pattern to the axes that should have been worked out. However, this is of course, virtually impossible to determine from the Geek Week filming.

As for the ending they wanted?

And that's real dedication.

Find out more

You can find more from the team at their YouTube channels:

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