Oh no, its a 51 minute episode…
Phew. That’s the layover, not the episode.
Oh no, its a 41 minute episode…
(I’m not mad at the short episode, I’m just a team Ben fan, and he didn’t have the best of luck his last run)
Honestly with how the run had already gone by that point, I just knew that he was going to fail the fog roll. It was just narratively perfect at that point.
didn’t have the best of luck
Really? He gave them extra info (the reflection, the current and the rain) in the cheap photos, just after finding Sam from extra info left in a photo answer. That’s not simply luck. Only the photo pop-up was luck. And maybe the fog dice roll.
Also being overconfident and visiting the museum instead of looking for a hiding place early was another costly error. Good video but failing to get the game basics done first.
He knew about the reflection problem but there was no way to avoid it. And the current is just a feature of…the river. He had to photograph the river.
He may not have noticed the rain, but it’s not really clear that he could have done anything different even if he had.
And to be honest I doubt he could have gained a huge amount extra if he had found a better hiding spot. Maybe an hour or two if he’s really lucky.
He may not have noticed the rain, but it’s not really clear that he could have done anything different even if he had.
They have a time window in which to send the photo back and he was right by the station (revealing to the audience where he was, by showing a name sign). The rain clouds on the radar didn’t look that big, and the UK is very often a changeable “don’t like the weather? Wait five minutes” country, so waiting a few minutes may have made it less obvious.
Maybe there was no hiding spot good enough, but now we’ll probably never know.
Haven’t finished the episode yet but I did yell out “for fucks sake” when they revealed Ben was in England again. There must be at best two more runs this season and we’ve not had a single other UK country
They say in the layover that this is due to the mistake of making countries the top level for “are you in the same …?” questions. This discouraged going outside England, as it would eliminate most stations. If they return, it’d be regions.
I would also point out that Scarborough, Hebden Bridge and MK Central were all a bit inconvenient for the hider leaving England, and starting by St Pancras added 30 minutes onto the fastest route to Wales (from Paddington).
Grumble grumble grumble I hate that the boys are buying into the bs “they’re different countries” nonsense that Brits go in for. The administrative regions of the UK are less like countries than US or Australian states are. At least states have a constitutional right to exist and administer themselves. Scotland and Wales have to rely on the goodwill of Westminster to have any self-governance at all.
Well, Australia and its states had to rely on the goodwill of Westminster to get that constitutional right to exist in the Statutes of Westminster and the Australia Acts!
The “home nations” just exist and always will. All levels below the whole UK rely on the will of Westminster to structure its government, which is a consequence of our revolutions not fixing that and not ideal but usually works.
The administrative regions are much smaller and rather messed-up at the moment but Starmer’s government is regularising them, slowly. The “Yorkshire and the Humber” used in the game ceased to be an administrative region about 15 years ago, but the replacement mayoral regions like West Yorkshire don’t yet cover the whole map.
So I’m not surprised they used nations and that it didn’t work as well as hoped.
Australia gained its right to self-determination through the Constitution, which originates with federation in 1901. The UK retained some legal power which was whittled away over time, including with the Statute of Westminster and the Australia Acts. But as it stands today, Australia absolutely does not rely on the UK for sovereignty. It’s its own country.
Being a federation, the states are sovereign, with their own constitutions, and they choose to give up certain powers to the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth cannot decide to take away their ability to govern independently on the issues that are not explicitly handed to the Commonwealth in the Constitution, nor can it overrule their policies in these areas. Meanwhile, even today in 2026, any law Scotland passes can be overturned at the whim of Westminster.
Or we can look at some other factors. None of these are definitive (there are counter-examples to each of them individually), but all add up heuristically to make the point. The separate regions don’t have their own currency and can’t set their own monetary policy (they “print their own money”, but this doesn’t carry the same meaning as when we talk about the Bank of England, Bank of Australia, or US Federal Reserve “printing money”; with Scotland it’s far more literal—and nobody would deny that they do not set interest rates). They don’t have their own passports, or maintain their own foreign policy. They’re not in the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, or the Olympic Games. They don’t maintain their own defence forces. They share a head of state, not just in the person, but even in the legal entity (in contrast with countries like Canada and Australia, which share the person as head of state, but are legally a separate Crown—a personal union, similar to what Scotland used to have in the 1600s, before the Acts of Union joined them into a single country).
Calling them countries is essentially just playing into a sort of historical nostalgia, or creating a way to provide some feelgood patriotism without encouraging actual separatism. I am all in favour of Scotland getting a second independence referendum (especially after Brexit, since EU membership was a pretty big part of the No campaign last time), and of the other regions getting the same, if they want it. But the reality on the ground right now makes it ridiculous to call them “countries”.
Anyway, the whole administrative structure of the UK really is fascinating. In Australia it’s comparatively simple. You’ve basically got the national level, the states or territories, and then local government areas. We have some variance in what an LGA actually is. Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth all have multiple LGAs within them, similar to what London does (but without the bizarre structure of an overarching mayor—the mayor of Sydney is most equivalent to London’s Lord Mayor Susan Langley, in charge only of the central-most area, and there is no equivalent to Sadiq Khan. Meanwhile, Brisbane’s councils amalgamated in the 1920s, so the City of Brisbane covers something much closer to “all” of Brisbane. The Lord Mayor of Brisbane is more similar to Khan, and Brisbane City Council is more like the London Assembly, with no equivalent to the City of London, or Kensington and Chelsea.
I’ve not read the rules of the home game, but I have wondered how this sort of thing would play out in a smaller-scale game, and whether (and what) guidance they give for defining your regions. My instinctive answer is that if there are three levels required, I’d probably use our federal electorates for the largest scale (Brisbane contains between 10 and 16, depending on how loosely you define the borders), use state electorates for the middle scale (of which there are about 27 in the zone of that 10, and 40 or 41 in the 16). And use suburbs for the smallest scale, which Google tells me includes 190 mainland suburbs within BCC, plus however many are in the satellite cities. But that seems like it makes the inner-most administrative region far too narrow. Feels like a tough balancing act.
The Commonwealth cannot decide to take away their ability to govern independently on the issues that are not explicitly handed to the Commonwealth in the Constitution, nor can it overrule their policies in these areas.
But it can overrule states in other areas, so in practice similar to the UK lording it over Wales or Scotland.
On the other factors, you seem to be confusing countries with nation-states.
I also wonder what guidance the home game gives. Maybe someone here has a copy and can tell us. But the basic problem may be the UK’s messy and inconsistent government structures, missing English Parliament(s) or Assembly/ies and some mayoral regions and some levels of councils in some areas.
But it can overrule states in other areas, so in practice similar to the UK lording it over Wales or Scotland.
Westminster can overrule the very existence of Scotland and Wales as anything other than an idea in people’s heads. Canberra cannot do that. It’s not even remotely similar.
you seem to be confusing countries with nation-states
No. In fact, there’s a better argument that Scotland, Wales, and England are separate nations than there is that they are countries. To quote a couple of helpful Reddit comments:
Nation has more to do with people than territory. It implies a group of people with a unitary identity based on language, ethnicity, or culture. Nations may or may not be sovereign (e.g. the Navajo Nation exists within the United States). A nation-state is a sovereign state that consists primarily of a single nation.
A nation is a unit of cultural organisation, defined by what the nation wants but often shared language, history, values, ethnicity, or a combination thereof (different nations are different).
A country is a nebulous concept often used to mean a nation-state, ie a state created to be the political side of a nation, an organisation in which the state and nation are congruent.
If they gained independence, the nations of Scotland, Wales, and England would then also be separate states, creating nation-states. As it is today, the UK operates under the idea that the “British” are a single unified nation (I’ve heard it called a “country of countries” before, but “nation of nations” would be much less of an obvious furphy), but nobody pretends they are actual states (in either the way France is a sovereign state, or the way Queensland is a federated state).
I also wonder what guidance the home game gives. Maybe someone here has a copy and can tell us.
I managed to find a rather poor-quality scan.
Administrative Divisions
1st Administrative Division
This is the biggest formal category of division. For the US, it would be states. In Switzerland, cantons, in Japan, prefectures.
2nd Administrative Division
[US -> counties, Switzerland -> districts, Japan -> subprefectures]
3rd Administrative Division
One more level down. In the US, Switzerland, and Japan, this would be municipality. Municipality borders can be occasionally difficult to define, so it’s up to the seekers to clarify any ambiguity.
4th Administrative Division
Some places have no fourth administrative division, but many larger cities do. For example, New York City has boroughs. Zurich has districts. Tokyo has special wards.
Unfortunately, the advice in this section is less than helpful. It ignores different sizes of games. This is in the “matching questions” section, so questions like “are you in the same municipality as me?” I guess in the small or medium game you just ignore 1st and 2nd administrative division entirely.
In a London or Sydney–based game, I would probably use the city councils as the 3nd administrative division and suburbs for 4th, but maybe someone with more knowledge could address it better. (I’m not sure about “suburbs” for London. I’m aware that Australia uses the term very differently from what it means in America and Canada, but I’m not sure about the UK.) Here in Brisbane I can’t city councils are probably too large (the City of Brisbane is approximately the same land area as Greater London, and Greater Brisbane, which includes 4 satellite cities, is supposedly 10x that area), so probably that electoral boundaries idea I had yesterday would be the best option.
Side note: they specifically describe Greater London or any “major city” as being their Medium game, with Small being “a single town, small city, or portion of a large city”. If you wanted a small game, I suspect a single London or Sydney council would be too small, so you’d probably choose a handful of councils to play in, or base it around some local feature/cultural area.
There’s also a “Borders” section within the “measuring questions” (“compared to me, are you closer to or further from…?”), which includes 1st and 2nd administrative division borders, as well as international borders. 3rd & 4th administrative division borders are not available for measuring questions. The same description of what these mean is listed here.
Bonus: I also saw answered a question that has bugged me for a while. How to do the Strava map, since Strava itself doesn’t have a way (that I know of) to show the path without the streets.
this can be a little tricky to do; we have a few methods. One is to screenshot this on your phone, then use the drawing tools on your phone’s photo editing app to black out everything but the street. Another is to put a piece of paper over your phone and trace with a pen/pencil/marker.
Not that it’s very relevant. This question is only available in Large games anyway.
Westminster can overrule the very existence of Scotland and Wales as anything other than an idea in people’s heads. Canberra cannot do that. It’s not even remotely similar.
I think Westminster can’t stop Scotland and Wales existing as physical realities any more than Canberra can. Trying to snuff either of them out as political entities would now probably provoke a constitutional crisis. It’s not the 1700s any more.
As it is today, the UK operates under the idea that the “British” are a single unified nation
Yeah, no. Most of the people who pretend that British means any unified thing are in a few right-wing parties.
In a London or Sydney–based game, I would probably use the city councils as the 3nd administrative division and suburbs for 4th, but maybe someone with more knowledge could address it better.
I wouldn’t in London. The only city council is Westminster, so it would leave big gaps in the map. The City of London has a Corporation rather than a city council as such. You’d probably want cities/boroughs (1st-level) that contain parliamentary constituencies (2nd-level) that contain districts/liberties/communities/parishes (3rd-level) that contain wards (4th-level) but even that is imperfect and probably subject to variation in some area or other.
Hmm, perhaps I’ve used the wrong terminology. I know I’ve used the term loosely in the case of Sydney, which has 30 separate Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the metropolitan area, only 12 of which are called “city”.
When I said city council, I meant all 30 in Sydney. And in London I meant all of the equivalent. From Enfield to Croydon, from Hillington to Havering.
My comedic highlight of the episode has to be Adam’s reaction to the football statue in rugby.
Yes, and I know someone who did a similar reaction to the giant one outside the station (barely seen edge of shot as Sam and Adam return after the ½ mile radar).
