Series 4 Episode 7

[Canadanne]

Heh, Paul Valentine completely overestimates how tall Nicky's become when he stares and points at her after using the Grow-Me-Quick.

The stuff about Melly's age is quite intriguing. She really is a strange character.

They can't seem to make up their minds about where the Eyeshield sequence with the clumps of grass is supposed to be. In this episode it's identified as Dunkley Wood, even though it was previously the path from the Eyeshield room in Level 1 (which they didn't appear to recognise) - and then in the next episode, the same path is suddenly familiar to Pickle as the Forest of Dun!

It's very odd how this team are briefly guided by the same "reflector" effect that was seen in an earlier quest, but without having picked one up anywhere. I wonder if the production team made a mistake there. It would have made a lot more sense if Melly had given them a reflector in exchange for the rope, instead of holding up their quest for no apparent reason...

Amusingly, Pickle shows absolutely no consistency in his choice of quests. Over the course of the series, his recommendations are:
Cup > Sword
Sword > Shield
Crown > Cup
Sword > Cup
Shield > Crown
Crown > Sword
.....which defies all logic as far as I can see!

[Drassil]

Mellisandre finally appears (almost halfway through the series), stuck in a Thing That Constrains People ... seems like the crew realised Mellisandre hadn't been in it yet so just threw her into this episode.

Mellisandre had a scene with Motley in episode 1, two quests earlier. (According to the Series 4 Episode 1 thread, Billy didn't see that episode until after he'd watched this one.)

"The first word in most dictionaries is Aardvark. True or False?" quoth Doorkis. That's word, not bird. Or 'former CBBC presenter', but the team mess it up anyway. Doorkis redeems himself a bit by somehow making the ceiling fall, seemingly just so he can have a laugh.

Not everybody heard that "word" was the word.

If they'd taken the hourglass from the clue table instead of the rope, I wonder whether they could (or should) have used it to stop the moving ceiling. Other Series 4 teams didn't have to face a clue object choice on Level 2.

[s4t8brett]

Interesting hypothesis, Drassil! They didn't have the supercomputers in the studio for Series 4, so it is likely the graphics was also pre-generated (except for the overlays added by the Amiga) - however, it might have been the case that such sequences could have been superimposed over any other background (in Team 7's quest, for example, the conveyor belt was seen with the background from the Level one Weeping Door), so the falling ceiling might have been planned for another background until the team decided not to take the hourglass.

Alternatively, the falling ceiling might have been there for any team that was too slow or got all the answer wrong at any of the Weeping Doors (and perhaps in Oakley's glen?).

[Morghanna]

Well, this was an interesting episode....
Team 3 made it into level 2, altho they were given a hurry-up by a haunted skull.
They released Mellisandre and then both of them were saved from the goblins by Gundrada.
In the clue room they took the rope and the silver, altho they debated choosing the sand-timer which might have been useful later.
In the next room Melly asked for the rope to help her escape. They kindly agreed, even tho she had no info to offer them. Why Melly didn't just ask for the rope BEFORE they rejected the sand-timer? Bah!

Dealt with the block&tackle room very easily.
Then on into Merlin's room. He asked them a make-or-break question and the advisor Corrina (who seemed very bright) got the answer quickly, but then let herself be talked out of it. She understood the riddle, but clearly thought the answer needed to be something specific rather than just a general answer. I think Treguard should have offered some clarification about this, especially as they had just unselfishly helped Melly for no reward.
Merlin had said they needed his magic to get past the guardian ahead, so they were now in losing-status. Looking back, the team must wish that Merlin had terminated them right there, because what happened in the next chamber was one of the most hilarious moments in Knightmare.

Their confidence had been dented and now they faced Doorkis, whose first question was, "Is aardvark the first word in most dictionaries?" Bizarrely, advisor Emma thought Doorkis said bird, not word. They then argued for ages about whether the question was bird/word and whether an aardvark is a bird. Treguard actually told them several times that the question was "word" and yet they still had to ask him again. After all that, they got the answer wrong anyway, as they mis-spelt aardvark.
It looked like the lowering-roof should have trapped them as they exited.

Into ariadne's lair. They got Nikki out of the 1st part quickly and in the 2nd room advisor Katharine showed quick thinking to start Nikki moving in the right direction before describing the items on the tree stump. Unfortunately, without Merlin's magic, they still didn't have enough time to escape and ariadne trapped them. Nice crunching sound-effects as ariadne captured Nikki.

Team 4 just arrived at the spindizzy as time-out arrived.

[Pooka]

I just watched this episode for the first time in a while and

Their confidence had been dented and now they faced Doorkis, whose first question was, "Is aardvark the first word in most dictionaries?" Bizarrely, advisor Emma thought Doorkis said bird, not word. They then argued for ages about whether the question was bird/word and whether an aardvark is a bird. Treguard actually told them several times that the question was "word" and yet they still had to ask him again. After all that, they got the answer wrong anyway, as they mis-spelt aardvark.

I'm still confused by this scene, although Emma's bird/word confusion is endearingly daft. Corrina/Karina (I'm unsure of the spelling) seemed to be the brightest of the advisors; they should have listened to her a little more!

One thing I'm not satisfied by is the answer indicating that "aardvark" is the first word in most dictionaries - ie. they said false and got a falsehood. In every dictionary I've read, the first word is "A"!

[AriadnesLayer]

A terrible question. Inclusion of the word "most" (a rather subjective term) in a true or false question is bad form too. Unless a young child is expected to have studied every dictionary ever published and know the placement of a certain word in over 50% of them.

[asrl07]

A terrible question. Inclusion of the word "most" (a rather subjective term) in a true or false question is bad form too. Unless a young child is expected to have studied every dictionary ever published and know the placement of a certain word in over 50% of them.

They don't need to go to such extremes, they just need to use initiative and work out that a word which has aa at the start is going to be first in most dictionaries (we can also safely assume we are talking about English dictionaries given we are dealing with English people).

The problem is the first word in an English dictionary is "a", not "aardvark", so technically "false" was the correct answer. The question should have added the condition word with multiple letters.