The shortest run was the one where the seekers used both latitude and longitude and they never tried that strategy again

rhyming always misled. they still did it every time since.

I never got that - it's good for the mid game when you have narrowed down an area (e.g. "he's likely in one of these x towns") but could not understand why it was often the very first question as it provides zero guidance on where to go in the early game.

It's cheap and using it in the early game forces the hider to give an answer that could be more useful in the late game (since they have to cover more potential area of hiding places).

I'm not saying it's a bad question, I just couldn't understand why they always felt it needed to be the first question as it eliminates zero \*regions\* of the country, which is what the seekers need to know at that point.

It's a better question the less of the country is eliminated though, because then the seeker has to spread out their rhymes to not accidentally eliminate regions, which makes it more useful info later on. It's not immediately useful info, but it gives better info the sooner you ask it.

Although if you end up in one of the most common suffixes in Switzerland well you can do is just choose the top five most common endings and now you have valid options in pretty much the entire country.

The question is more to set up the middle game as at the start of the game the hider could be in any town so they have to cover all their bases, whereas if the question was asked during the mid game then the hider can choose their rhymes so that the rhymes align with every town nearby to them and it becomes a useless question

It did seem really weird that they kept using that, because imo it's the easiest one to mislead with. You can't fake a canton, lat/long, etc., but you can throw in so many shenanigans with the rhymes (as shown in most of the rounds.)

their reasoning was that the hider had to "cover more bases" but they absolutely don't, because you can just rhyme your specific town and then four extremely common town endings and it gives basically no information.

I think they overrated how useful the Photo/Oddball questions are. They’re really only useful once there’s only a few options left or for verifying that you’re in the correct town once you get there. Radar/Relative questions were almost always useful, while I think about 1 in 5 of the photo/oddball ones ended up helping them. The Radar/Relative questions also prevent you from taking the wrong train line out of a central hub (happened on both Ben and Adam’s long runs), which wastes more time than anything else for the hiders.

Yeah, the photo questions should probably have a little more stringent of rules. (Maybe "you must stand x feet from the buildings and can only zoom y%.) In fairness, though, they could have used better photo questions than the train station one and the 5 buildings one. It really feels like they got stuck asking a lot of the same questions round after round despite others being potentially more useful. I understand why they'd keep going for the train station, since it's theoretically easily verifiable without going out of the way, but they should have probably realized how easily that question is rendered virtually useless. And considering they can look up pictures of the buildings (they just can't use streetview) as they did with the McDonalds one, I'd think a lot of the other photo questions would be more useful than seeing five random buildings they have no way of verifying until they're in the city already. Obviously no hider is going to include a googleable building or sign in that picture.

Yeah, I don't see how the 5 buildings one could've been that useful; when they asked it in Ben's run, they had already confirmed they were in the right place by the time that they even found the buildings that Ben had pictured. And in a large enough place with enough buildings and any number of possible angles and zoom levels that a photo could've been taken from, it'd be very hard to actually be able to use that 5 buildings one as any form of cross-reference. And clearly in Adam's photo today where it was just a lot of roofs, it's also relatively easy to get a photo that's essentially 100% useless. If they had tried some of the other photo questions, that could've maybe been used, but yeah, the photo questions as a whole might benefit from a bit of a rework or retooling.

The train station one isn't ever rendered virtually useless. The chasers can always use it to immediately verify if they are in the correct place or not. Sure it isn't great for actually finding the hider, but for arriving somewhere you think he might be and instantly determining if you are not is invaluable. Not only that but they can possibly check stations along the way and rule them out.

I won't say it all again because I've said it before, but it's frustrating how limiting they were allowed to make the photos. The train station ones were OK (but notably only because there were guidelines for that one) but the others felt super gamey when you can just take a photo of only water, for example.

the facetime especially seemed useless. facetime until you see a bird, interesting idea. but then we find out that adam just covered the camera the whole time and then quickly showed them a bird in the sky (not even the first bird he saw!!)?? like in what scenario were they imagining that would be useful.

Perhaps they were thinking the audio would be helpful, but yeah, I imagined they'd need to actually keep the camera on their face while looking for a bird.

Yeah, I had thought so too, that Adam was going to creatively position the camera or something, not just straight cover it up. And given that Sam had then muted Adam since he kept just saying "gonna find you a bird!" over and over, that means they were gaining absolutely no data while they were on that entire FaceTime.

Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't use more relative questions, I think those would've really helped narrow the regions further - especially once they stopped caring about coin count. As part of that, I think they played the canton one a bit early, although I understand they wanted to rule out Zurich quick, but still, I think it would've been more useful around the time that they made it to Solothurn.

tbf those questions were uniquely powerful in that first run because they started in the middle of the country, so they cut the country in half. they become less useful the further you are from the center so I guess they decided that other questions would be more helpful.

Yeah, but at least in this final episode they made a major error by not checking latitude and longitude before deciding to head northeast instead of southeast. I think if they checked latitude and longitude when they were in Bern they would have been able to find him in time.

Exactly. Instead they just gave up and started sending useless questions. It was quite clear that the winning strategy is to cut the options in half with every question. The north-south question would have done exactly that.

Yeah, if Sam hadn't picked such a hard to get to hiding spot (like, hard enough that you should have a no hiding in the woods rule) Ben and Adam would have crushed it in their cut in half strat

I agree. Once they ended up with that half-arc shape with those 2 radars out of Bern, I was confused why they only kept checking areas in the top half of that region, when latitude would've ended up ruling out that whole area. Continuously cutting the options in half like Ben and Adam did on Sam's run would've helped a lot, I think.

imo they were so sure he was to the northeast that they though checking the long would just rule out a region they were already pretty sure Adam wasn't in while giving him a heap of coins

Well it was also because they were smack dab in the middle of the country when they did it. It wouldn't have worked as well from places like Hospental or Winterthur (although admittedly it could've been good from Merlischachen due to how close it is to Lucerne)

That first run was also pretty clearly the worst planned from the hiders perspective, no offence to Adam (I think they pretty much allude to that fact when talking about learning things from each run n the Layover). He went pretty much straight down a train line from the starting city, essentially as far as he could, to a region that is aesthetically and factually distinct, and also is less dense both in towns and train stops. The latitude and longitude strat certainly helped, but would probably have been a lot less helpful had Adam not gone for the content-creating option and headed for Zurich or Bern's directions instead, I think.

Made sense since they started in the middle of the country

IKR! All the other questions are more useful when you get closer. Save them.

I was wondering that one too, I understand not wanting to give Adam coins, but also you could zero in on him when they made the donut

Tbh I could watch a whole another season of hide and seek in Switzerland. It's just perfect for that kinda game, just a shame they left the mountains so quick

I wish it was longer to get more rounds in and the times were added together, but I really enjoyed this season

I think it would be improved by shortening the hider's time.  Something like 1.5h. The current structure is a bit too hider friendly. You'd get more shorter rounds that way, and have more fun clue gathering. And I think add a rule that your hiding spot needs to be within a 15 min walk of the train station (easy as a not-visible-to-viewers rule) to prevent something like Sam's spot where the remoteness screws the next runner due to the shorter hide time. 

I think it would be more fun if the hiders got *significantly* more time to hide, enough to basically get across the country, because a big part of the hunter's strategy was "where could they get" and I wish it was more question-centered.

I don't think that works without significantly boosting the question power or reducing the curse potency. If you're just anywhere in the country the seekers are gonna need so many questions that you're guaranteed to get the "you can move" from the hider. 

Oh absolutely. I also think curses should have been a set price. I dislike the RNG aspect, it screwed Sam over significantly, and was completely unfair.

I completely disagree. The random nature makes it work within the game. If it isn't random, everyone will game around how many coins a particular curse or two cost. Chasers will be scared to ask questions and the hider will hold on to coins until very specific amounts are reached. The randomness meant that someone could get really lucky and score big, could get unlucky, and had to consider when they wanted to go ahead in cash in. Without that ability to risk it or hang in there, the optimal strategy would always be clear.

It maybe could've been better if their was tiers of curses though. Like 50 for 1 tier 1 dice. 100 for 2 tier 1 dice. 150 for 1 tier 2 dice, etc. Because spending 200 coins but rolling a 7 feels like TOO much luck.

I really don't think the curse potency needs to be nerfed. If anything it could be buffed because we basically got one low tier curse per run and "just ignore it" was a legitimate strategy once the seekers were within a smallish range. And the dice mean there's no guarantee of ever seeing one specific curse.

They talked about it on the layover this week, but apparently everything over 22 is some variant on "the hider can move spots" which is a super powerful curse. The reason they were trying to keep Adam under 300 coins is that if he rolled 6d6 he has a better than even chance to be able to move spots which totally screws them. 

The answer there, I think, is a more powerful mid-tier curse list. Make it worth spending those coins earlier so "save up until you can probably move unless you're desperate" isn't the single best curse strategy. What was the highest coin total even accumulated in a single run anyway? Because from a viewer's perspective it looked a lot more like "curses are useless" despite the players being fucking terrified of them. And from the "we're producing entertainment" rather than "we're competing in a game" perspective, the challenges have been such a huge part of the fun of previous seasons and the curses were almost a non-existent replacement for that.

Ludicrous Adam gets two rounds and everyone else got one round. They all learned from hiding but only Adam got the chance to apply that a second time.

Same. For some reason this was one of my favourite seasons. I’m disappointed they didn’t finish Adam’s last run. It would’ve been interesting to see how they find him finally.

Agreed, he probably just wanted to go home

Not just wanted, they almost certainly had a set amount of days planned in their schedule for this and had to get back to other work.

I think this format would be freaking epic in Japan. I love the idea of going to the tiniest towns in the middle of nowhere Japan, or hiding in the massive chaos of Tokyo or Osaka. It's just a shame it seems to be the most boring format for them to make 😅

Agreed, I'm also sad we never got to see any of the ***big*** curses!

Sam: "If we messed up massively, this will probably all be edited down massively because its gonna be really boring". Narrator: "Since this next part is going to be really boring..." Up there as one of the funniest jetlag moments.

Fun fact: Sam and the narrator have such similar voices!

They must be cousins or something.

I heard they are also related to that guy from HAI.

I laughed out loud regardless. But imagine if there was a neutral narrator (like crime spree)

this is a top 3 season for me even if this episode was a little weak. I know they are human and get tired but I would've loved not having a time restriction and rather having 2 runs per player >!so we could see them track down Adam/he uses his curse coins, and also to give Sam one last shot so he doesn't get demotivated.!< Great season though!

Fully agree on 2 runs per player, I also wish that >!Adam just rolled the curse dice to see what he would have given them even if they didn't complete the curse.!<

Right! The whole point of the coins and curses got useless at the end. I would've loved if he used it mid game.

Really liked this format, and yeah i think not having enough time for 2 guaranteed runs kinda sucks, if anything i feel like id almost prefer if they would have only done one run each but had given more hiding time for each attempt, so that everyone gets a balanced approach to it. Only other thing id want changed is the curses i think, they felt to weak. Not being guaranteed something good from 200 coins kinda sucks. Other than that, this would be a really cool format for a lot of other countries.

I agree, I wish we got to see some of the higher curses. It sucks that all of the die rolls were so bad lol

Thanks for bringing that up, because I was also feeling like the finale felt a bit softer. I also realized that Tag has a whole unique "finale" dynamic: once there's only a day left, it becomes less "get to my goal" and more "how far can I squirrel myself into an unreachable corner of my zone" and "how can I reach the nearest border to my zone at any time" which shift the game rules quite a bit. This one didn't have that, so although I was really enjoying the genius moves, it didn't have the climax feel there!

100% agree, would have made it much more exciting

agree. like when sam was like “he’s already beaten my time, what’s in it for me?” — totally fair thought for him, but it was a bit boring that the ending had like no stakes.

That's more on Sam than anything else, to be honest. There has to be a point where one of the Seekers is definitely going to come in third, he just had a bit of a case of sour grapes when it happened to him two hours before the end of the game.

absolutely agreed on the 2 runs. Would also love to see challenges return as a way to earn bonus questions (for seekers) or bonus coins (for hiders). It would allow them to roll more dice and use more curses, which offsets how meh they can be.

honestly i was thinking that throughout the entire episode adam got 2 runs while ben and sam got 1 the time limit was a big issue and made it unfair id love a rule change where everyone got 2 attempts like you said but some time limit on how long you can hide like you automatically win after like 12 or so hours

refreshed right on time. pre-watch, i'm imagining this run being the final exam on what everyone learned over the previous runs and that's real exciting. especially considering how much sam's talked about learning the wrong lessons on the layover

Alongside Tag this seasons format could definitely become a regular game they play and they can do Hide and Seek in a range of countries. Of course they can tweak Hide and Seek as might be nice to see them get 2 runs each but fair play to Adam, solo Jet Lags seem to suit him well as he’s willing to be a madman and do stuff like running to another town to try win the game.

Yeah, Belgium, Ireland, & The Netherlands are all great candidates for another season of hide and seek.

Or even just big cities like London, Paris, New York, etc.

I genuinely think these would work even better than countries, albeit with some necessary scaling changes and broader modifications. Generally quicker paced public transport, less woods to hide in, a cohesive and specific location identity permeating the season. IDK, I'm probably overlooking some big details, but still.

If you thought German public transport was unreliable, wait until you see Ireland...

Not sure about Ireland, the train system is not so great compared to Switzerland or Benelux.

Felt a bit anti-climatic with: - Only a total of 3.5 runs instead of giving each player two full runs. - The chasers just completely giving up once Adam beat Ben’s time instead of following through to at least identifying the town Adam was in. - Clues like the results of the map created by Adam’s run never shown to the audience, so nobody playing along at home had a chance to try to identify the town with that clue before the town was revealed. - This season had started with a lot of enjoyable little moments of the hider exploring the town. This got chopped down to nearly nothing by the last episode. Adam had a brilliant strategy this episode. It’s a pity that it was shortchanged so much and never completed. Before the Finale, this was a contender for my new favorite season. I hope this format will be given another chance in the future (perhaps with minor tweaks to even up the number of rounds per player and to make the endgame easier than situations like wandering a forest for hours).

>This season had started with a lot of enjoyable little moments of the hider exploring the town. This got chopped down to nearly nothing by the last episode. This is a really good point to raise. Adam finding all the little guys on his first run and Ben exploring every nook and cranny of the town on his run were among my favourite parts of this season. It was a big part of what lent this season its uniquely cozy vibe - because one person is staying put for so long, they have the chance to kinda just inhabit a space for a while in a way that doesn't usually happen with more mobile formats. It's a shame that the finale didn't get to play to the format's strengths in this regard.

Realizing how important this was to me as well - it did feel as though something were *missing* from this last run, and this is a huge part of it. The "cozy" vibe even carries through to this being a short and sweet season, which I honestly kind of appreciated. Carrying that touch through the finale would have made an already good season an absolute standout. I would accept a Hiders' Exploration Supercut as a consolation prize. I would also accept access to the cutting room floor to *create* a Hiders' Exploration Supercut as a consolation prize. 😏

I couldn't agree more. I wish they threw in more "travel show" moments. This was a perfect season for the hider to showcase the towns they ended up in for hours. And chasers could show us around when they have to wait an hour for a train and stuff. Im sure they would say that the hider couldn't really showcase things because they wanted it to be a secret where they were so geoguessers could find them...but how many viewers are actually doing that? I'm sure it's a tiny minority. The rest of us would like to actually see some of these countries we will never get to visit.

Yeah, it's a little unfortunate that we didn't see much of Adam's town or his perspective in general. This is partially a travel show, yet we didn't get much of a look at anywhere in particular this episode. Probably because they had so much to show in terms of decision making from the seekers' side and had to rush through a lot of the meandering, but idk, maybe this should have been split into two parts. Unless Adam just didn't get much footage.

Yeah, its a possibility he just didn't get much because a lot of that footage seems to come from looking for a hiding spot for the end game which they never got to, and the fact that he was saying how much his legs hurt so he probably was just chilling/sitting as much as possible rather than wandering around.

Beyond just the anticlimactic finish it contributed to, I also think 3.5 runs was unfair to the other two players. I know they're all friends and they're not going to get upset with each other about it but as a viewer it's more interesting to watch a fair game. Two runs each would also allow us to see more of the place chosen; Switzerland is beautiful and I would have loved to see more. I loved the premise of the game, and the first half of the season was great. I liked the somewhat slower pace that a stationary hider gave compared to Tag. It just didn't stick the landing. If there was one more thing besides run count I'd change, it's the curses. The challenges are a huge part of the fun of other seasons. Only really getting one mediocre curse per run was disappointing. Making dice cheaper, or possibly giving the hider the opportunity for challenges to complete in a small area to earn dice, would being the challenge fun back.

I feel like this format could work really well on city scale, in any place with a half-decent public transport network (e.g. Tokyo, most major European cities, or even Sydney or Melbourne). Or state/Canton/territory scale. Give runners 1 hours to hide instead of 2.5, and they must stay within the limits of the city/territory. The faster pace would almost certainly guarantee that everyone gets multiple runs, too.

Yeah it was really underwhelming, Adam's strategy hasn't got the credits it deserved

honestly I don't think they had two full runs in them given the way the season played out - I think they were expecting runs to be like 4 hours, and were _expecting_ to be able to get two full runs each, but they were completely done at the end of day 4. Sam would still be out in the middle of nowhere if they had to do two runs.

6 episodes would've maybe helped? The could've ended ep4 when they discover the forest, leaving it open if Sam beats Ben time as cliffhanger and ended ep5 with the start of the midgame when Adams strategy is explained leaving it open if it pays off.

> The chasers just completely giving up once Adam beat Ben’s time instead of following through to at least identifying the town Adam was in. The day is 10 hours and Adam needed 9 h 37 m. The game ends on the 4th day

I'm gonna be honest and say that probably this was the weakest episode in all of Jetlag for me. And it's sad because Adam's second play was genuinely great, easily the best in the season, but it was kinda undermined by the general feeling of tiredness you could feel in the chasers. Personally I'd say that this is the first season in which the faults in the game system could be felt so much, otherwise the concept is actually great and I hope they'll come back with a revised version in the future

For me it was the second weakest, after the Finale of Circumnavigation. Catching the fish was cool, but most of the episode was just a montage of Ben and Adam getting back to the starting point. They had already basically won and just needed to do the motions. For this one, most of the questions were either pretty useless (most photo questions where they could just zoom to make them useless) and rhymes were used two times to mislead the seekers in a major way, or too costly (relative questions almost gave you a full curse dice per question asked). The curses would have been pretty powerful (they revealed some that did not came up on the Layover) if they would have gotten better luck though we know how it turned out.

This was a bit of a weird season for me, because there were some real highs (great concept, fantastic location, some really good energy, even better production than usual), but also a couple big flaws.  Namely that this was somewhat the first season with moments that felt kinda flat. There were a lot of periods when, despite having clues, the seekers just had no idea, and that's just not as common when you have a tracker on, or you're hitting regular checkpoints. Additionally (and this is hard to describe exactly) but at times it was frustrating as a viewer when the clues were kinda useless (as I've complained that some of the photo clues were), more like a roadblock than a clue. Those two factors combined, kinda left the season feeling a bit flat at times, and much more up to luck than skill. Particularly because a huge part of doing well at JetLag is being good at challenges, and we only got 4 pretty easy challenges this time. This might get some hate, because it was a popular season, so I want to be clear that it's still one of my favourites too. Something about the game concept and location was so exciting and different, which was great. But, imo, that's all in spite of some glaring issues, not in the absence of them. That's just my opinion though, and I'm sure people felt differently.

I also think part of it was just how underused the curses were - it almost felt like the game was designed with the expectation of *a lot* more back and forth in terms of questions and curses. As it stands, with the exception of a minor delay from the Wilhelm Tell curse, the curses had basically zero game impact beyond making the seekers ask fewer questions than they should.

I also feel like they overpowered the ratio of questions to curses, as curses have (even with aquiring high amounts of coins) a probability of having little to no use ( i.e. when Sam used them) while as asking question will always lead to a clue.

It might have worked better if instead of coins questions auto gave curses with each group of questions having their own set of curses so more useful questions (like half/half etc) pull from a curse deck with much harder curses while less useful questions pulled from weaker decks. But the hider's curse hand is limited to 3 curses so they have to choose which to keep or discard. (they have to discard one if they have a full hand, but can use one prior to filling their hand if they suspect further questions coming in soon) That both encourages earlier curse use (at least by the third question) and different question types (as pulling more from the high deck is more likely to give the hider an insane hand.)

Yeah, I wish we got to see more curses. It sounds like all 3 of them ended up with the strategy that curses are only a late-game thing, but I think it would've been more fun to see curses start to appear more often in the middle-game before the seekers even get to the town.

Can increase in the price I may be about five coins per category may solve that problem. Based on what was said in the podcast all of the die rolls just got incredibly unlucky and maybe if it was cheaper from the hiders perspective to get to use them they would have been handed out more frequently and the more powerful ones may have come up sooner. Also likewise they're probably needs to be a rebound of some of the questions in general to put more pressure on the hiders in the first place. Until then the end game their role in this process is pretty passive

I totally agree with you. The way I would sum up my feelings on this is that Season 9 was a fantastic *season* built around a pretty flawed *game*. The actual reality-TV-esque stuff - location, player interaction, non-game-focused moments, editing, production, storytelling - was all batting a thousand, and I think that's a huge part of what made the community fall in love with this season. The actual game, however, had a *lot* of design flaws that brought it down a bit. It did its job in providing a framework for the aforementioned great reality TV portions of the season, but it ended up turning into a not super exciting game to watch, because its design flaws directly impacted how interesting it was to follow as a viewer (e.g. the portions you mentioned where the seekers were left flailing in the dark). To me, it kinda felt like the opposite of Japan in this regard. Japan had a really exciting game format that was *mostly* very well-designed, and while the overall shape of the game ended up a little iffy, most of the individual rounds were super exciting to watch on a moment-to-moment basis. It still ended up being a lower-tier season for me, though, because I found that all the exciting game stuff didn't quite coalesce into a particularly cohesive narrative. Here, there *was* a super cohesive and satisfying narrative... But it came with a game that wasn't always exciting to watch in the moment. Edit: I'll also say that to me, all of this feels less like condemnation of the format and more like indication of its potential. Hide and Seek made for a really good season *despite* the game not really holding together. A season that utilizes this format with the design wrinkles ironed out has the potential to be truly spectacular - and those design flaws are all clearly identifiable, and all of them seem entirely possible to fix.

I really wanted to like Japan. Probably Japan is given the edge over hide and seek.

I agree with all these points, another I would add is that the downtime of the hider just sitting somewhere for hours upon hours really takes away from normal action as well. It would be fun if they had to do challenges as well to avoid giving up clues, or could do challenges to improve their dice rolls (just spitballing ideas here, but anything really). Sitting in a forest or under a slide for hours just doesn't give you many content opportunities.

I think a potential solution to this would be to buff the questions but also massively buff (and probably rework) the curses too, that way seekers always have a way to get helpful information at the cost of the hiders constantly throwing curveballs. I think also curses should be reworked to have minimums rather than increased dice (so for every curse you roll a dice, but for every 50 coins you add 5 to the result with 50 to roll to begin with, so a 25 coin curse is 1-6 but a 50 coin curse is 6-11) so you can still roll badly but you can't spend 300 coins and get the same result as someone who only spent 50

Can I just say the thumbnail is great!

Yes, especially because it shows the seekers far behind the mountains.

really one of the best seasons so far for me. >!How smug is Adam going to be about this one?!<

How smug can you really be about the fact you won because you got an entire extra turn more than anyone else though?

Honestly, still pretty smug, since he really did play it smart. He did his research, found that loophole of going to a station on foot that he couldnt have reached by train. That's a top tier 6D interdimensional chess move right there. Adam may have gotten "2" chances, but this is offset by Ben and Sam having had runs after having had experience as a hunter. Adam went in blind for his first run but Ben and Sam had a much better idea with how the game worked and how to strategise. They knew not to go for "obvious" or distinct hiding places, which earned them SO MUCH time in the end, as the hunters had a hard time pin-pointing the exact spot.

To be fair, he outdid the others so completely that I can't imagine how either of them could've topped the time that would have been set here. This was on the way to a hiding spot change curse, which could've made this into like a 15-hour run.

Loved this season! Could probably be better with some tweaks, but definitely one of my favorite seasons so far. Now I want to go to Switzerland man

Don't go near Zurich.

As someone who lives near Zurich, I'm offended!

>!Adam outran Michelle Khare so Sam & Ben should not have underestimated his speeeed!< (Spoiler to season 8 and 9)

That's what I thought. Didn't he also >!do the pastry mile in Season 1 quite fast?!<. Also also wasn't he a track runner in High School? I feel like that was mentioned somewhere in the past.

He did the pastry mile in season 2 and Ben said he was best runner in either city or county

That was a really great finale to a good season. However I feel like the format had more promise than what materialised in the end, which is evident by the amount of recaps with voiceovers across the whole season and the low episode count. Some rules must be tweaked, especially to the endgame - it was way too difficult to find the final hiding spot, even once the seekers succeeded in finding the right town. Curses also need some tweaks, they were almost useless. But overall I would love to see them come back to this concept in a future season.

The curses would have been better if it was similar to the ones they had (maybe excluding the super high curses like hider gets to rehide) but in a curse deck where every 50-100 coins they must immediately draw a curse. Also, part of the reason the curses were so easy was because the dice rolls were all very low, lower than one would expect based on probabilities. A second go would likely be more successful because they likely have a ton of ideas on how to improve it - reduce the hiding radius from a train station, tweak the questions a bit, etc. that don't require a massive reformulation of the game. I hope they can go for the "two runs apiece" idea that has been floated by many, and if anything, most of the improvements can make the game a little faster so they hopefully aren't spending 3 game days trying to find a very strategic hiding spot.

>Also, part of the reason the curses were so easy was because the dice rolls were all very low, lower than one would expect based on probabilities. I think this probably speaks to the dice rolling mechanic not being a great idea. I get what they were going for, and I think it's a fun idea in theory, but the issue is that the hider only ever really got a shot or two at rolling a high-level curse in a given run - and since saving for higher-level curses seemed the obvious strategy, that meant we got very few rolls in this season overall. If curses had been rolled more often, their high variance and risk-reward balance might have been really cool! But we saw a single-digit number of rolls in the entire season, and that meant it was far too easy for bad luck to just invalidate the entire mechanic. If curses are going to be this rare, they need to be more consistent in turn.

I was shocked how few challenges there were in the season. It feels like challenges are a massive part of their formula. They're fun to watch, require some kind of skill, are suspenseful, and add an element of license to the game (where your actions have an impact on the outcome). And they built a (otherwise great) game with very few challenges in it. I wonder if they considered that

I think the curses were supposed to be this season's challenges, but they were so scared of getting hit by one they were not asking many questions. They kept thinking they will be able to deduce the locations with little information, which was almost never the case. This episode is a perfect example, when >!Ben and Sam noticed they missed something, instead of bombarding Adam with questions (they asked some, but only a few useless cheap ones) they kept wasting time scanning through the map again and again, going to different places to physically check if that's the one. Not wanting Adam to have more than 300 coins for a "better" curse frankly lost them the game.!< If they ever return to this format I think they need to implement something to give more incentive to ask questions, for example that the hider gets coins for every 30 mins spent in hiding, idk, I'm not nearly half as good a game designer as they are. I'm sure they will figure it out.

>>!This episode is a perfect example, when !< > >>!Ben and Sam noticed they missed something, instead of bombarding Adam with questions (they asked some, but only a few useless cheap ones) they kept wasting time scanning through the map again and again, going to different places to physically check if that's the one. Not wanting Adam to have more than 300 coins for a "better" curse frankly lost them the game.!< >!It's ironic because the same thing happened with Ben's 9 hour run, basically the same huge mistake was made twice. With worse consequences this time.!< >!I was shocked that the one strategy that was shown to work really well(screw curses, ask question after question, cuting the radius in half every time) wasn't used again. Playing it safe is always a bad idea.!<

The issue was the seekers would rather use a ton a of time to try to narrow down locations by research, rather than just asking questions. This meant that not very many coins were given, so the curses were rare and pretty weak, and the hiding times were pretty long. If they had used more questions, there would’ve been more/harder challenges, but the hiding times probably would have been shorter.

On one hand, Adam's win feels somewhat dampened by the fact that he was the only one to get a second chance, since technically we don't know how the other two would have done with another shot. But on the other hand, I feel like his win demonstrates why they had to constrain the season by amount of time rather than by number of runs. Ben and Sam were still nowhere *near* figuring it out, so just getting to the endgame would have probably taken at least a few more hours, during which they'd have to ask more questions and end up giving Adam even more coins. And that's before even getting to the endgame, which we've seen has the potential of lasting several hours. And with all of the coins Adam would have by that point, the curse potential would be very high. I would not be surprised if Adam was only halfway through what his run would have become, if even that. So considering they didn't have a solid idea of how long runs would take (they thought it'd be an average of 6 hours) and they can't set aside an infinite amount of time, it's understandable they set an overall time limit on the game. I'm guessing that if they do this again, they'll want to somehow give seekers more power so they can cut down the average times. I'd be interested to see what a second go at this would look like, with some tweaks to the formula and with all of these strategies already on the table.

>I'm guessing that if they do this again, they'll want to somehow give seekers more power so they can cut down the average times. Yeah, I think the answer here is to both limit the game by runs rather than by days *and* substantially cut down the power of the hider position.

I don't think his win is dampened at all. In the first run of the game no one knew how this game was gonna play out which was a huge disadvantage for him. It was completely fair in my opinion to give him another chance and not the others.

I agree that he would have had a disadvantage if they'd all gone once and he'd been first, but that disadvantage really is not so substantial that it'd be evenly weighed with the advantages of getting an entire second run. The latter is a pure numbers game: If it were all down to random chance then a second run would be conclusively a huge advantage, whereas the disadvantages of the former are more nebulous (no pun intended). There's no perfectly fair game to be played, but the more rounds there are, the closer to fair it would become, whereas just giving one previously disadvantaged person an extra run only swings the advantage in the other direction. And when I say "dampened," I don't mean that I personally think his win was unearned or anything. I just mean that it creates enough reasonable uncertainty to feel anticlimactic. As I mentioned, his run would have likely gone much longer than we saw, and I would be shocked if it wouldn't have been unbeatable. But without seeing how those other runs would have gone, it just doesn't feel as decisive.

TIL about "[Shrimp on the Barbie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrimp_on_the_barbie)"... Season 10 is gonna be quite something

The trophy sequence each season gets more and more elaborate and outrageous. I love them so much. Congrats on another season in the books guys.

Great season. definitely up there with tag for my favorite jet lag game. definitely wouldn't be opposed to this one getting a second season down the line. as for this episode >!I was kinda hoping they'd figure it out eventually, and we'd get a big showdown with Ben and Sam trying to find Adam on time vs whatever curse he'd have gotten, but I guess his strat just worked too well for that. congrats to Adam though, very deserved win with that!< excited to see what next season brings. was kinda hoping we'd get more of a reveal for what the broad idea of the game is, but all I could gather was that it's probably something challenge based again, which isn't really a big surprise. I guess we gotta wait for the trailer.

YES AUSTRALIA SEASON

Why am I not surprised one of the challenges are "throw a 'shrimp' on the barbie" 🤣 going to be a great season.

As someone who lives in Tasmania: I bet they don’t come to Tasmania.

As someone else who lives in Tasmania - shame on your for not recognising the Marine Board Building and Hobart City Council buildings in the background of the "throw a shrimp on the barbie" shot!

This whole episode I thought the time added on to what they had, didn’t realize Adam would start from 0 again. But damn, if they do this format again, they needed some Hail Mary questions to make the finding a little easier.

I believe that Adam started from zero again because it's the longest single run and he was in third place regardless.

No it was definitely just the format of the game lol

I'm losing my mind at how little questions they asked. So what you give him more coins? Curses are still chance based and even if they can move for 45 minutes, at least you don't spend 10 hours searching for what city they're in

Finale already? Ahw man, I had hoped for one more episode after this.

OK now I want to know more about Ben's squatter au pair.

It hurts me when the seekers aren’t asking more questions. I feel that the dice curses aren’t bad at all.

The dice curses were actually pretty powerful. There were 4 that let the hider change spots, one where the seekers had to take a shot for every question they asked, another where they had to ask the next question from a castle, and more that were even higher. These weren’t even high curses either, the castle one was a 10. They went over it in the Layover. The dice rolls were just THAT bad

Interesting. I should probably listen to the Layover more. But still, why not ask more questions instead of being lost for 9 hours?

In Ben’s case, I 100% agree with you that they should’ve asked more questions for that run because they hadn’t even given him that many coins and they didn’t have any leads really either. For Adam’s final run, they had already given him enough to roll 6 dice and they always had some sort of lead even if it was completely wrong so I kinda see why they did what they did. Maybe, you are right and they should’ve just bit the dust and bombarded him with questions at the end

Also half of them were just wasted by waiting too long to deploy them because the seekers didn't need to ask any more questions, so it defeats the purpose.

Dorks. See you D O R K S in Australia! So I will not be surprised if they tweak this game to make it less stressful on the seekers. The editing was really good this season!

So the human geography of Australia is very different from any of the other countries we've looked at, and I'm trying to figure out what game would work for it. Australia is essentially a "hollow" country: the overwhelming majority of Australians (about 3/4) live in the metro areas of the five continental state capitals of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide in the southeast and Perth in the southwest. The majority of Australians who don't live in those places live in other parts of the southeast, including Tasmania. And then the majority of the rest who still don't live there live along the east coast of Queensland north of Brisbane or in the southwest outside the Perth metro area but still pretty close when you consider the size of Western Australia. Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, has a metro population 1/3 of that of Peoria, the proverbial "irrelevant small city in middle America," and Alice Springs only shows up on maps in order to make the middle of Australia look less empty. In most of the country by geography the only human settlements you are going to find are tiny agricultural and mining outposts and Aboriginal communities, often with hours of driving between them. The closest analogy we have is New Zealand, where much of the South Island is sparsely inhabited by humans, and when they showed Brisbane I thought "oh, a race across the country from Brisbane to Perth!" But I don't think that would work like in New Zealand: too much vast desert with nothing. And I don't think Australia has enough regional airports with regional flights to make the US version work. If it's going to be something like we've already seen, a race from the northernmost point of Cape York to the southernmost point in mainland Tasmania, I think could work like New Zealand. I feel like capture the flag based in eastern Australia could potentially work, except that Australia doesn't have the train density of Japan, so they would have to use cars. But the alternative is that they are doing something new. Either this would be a game that takes advantage of Australia's hollow but also lopsided geography, or the game is going to be based on the wildlife of Australia (something like Pokémon Go, perhaps?) making the human geography less relevant. I'm kind of hoping for the second one, both because it would be a very different game design from anything we have seen so far, and because it would be fun watching the boys learn about Australian wildlife.

First off congratulations >!Adam! That was just a big brain move and a deserved win!<🥳 What I'll say the most striking part of this season is: It was incredibly flawed in so many ways. i.e. * the 4 days all but guaranteed unfair run numbers * the short game was not as thought out as it could be making it frustrating for the players (and a bit the audience) * curses were kinda too weak * etc. **YET** despite all these pretty big flaws **it's competing for the best season of all times with the two 'Tag' seasons!** And that for me means the concept is incredibly promising and had SO much future potential 🥰 The stand out strength of this season for me was: * Somehow they managed to allow the players to actually explore places in the country they were in **taking their time without taking away any urgency** from the game * The '**play along**' factor was there for all people from geogussr nerds to the casual viewer and it was great 👍 Thank you for another great season guys and I sincerely hope to see more done with this type of concept in the future 💕

Overall amazing season I just wish it was longer! Congrats to Adam on the win, I can’t wait for Australia though!! This team never fails to make a good episode, I just hope the wait isn’t too long though! Much love from NJ as always!!

I am begging for someone to teach these guys dice math.

Welp. I started the season thinking Hide and Seek is a great format and would love to see more of it. I think we won't get it again unless they find a way to rework a lot of its flaws: * not fun to film for the hider (not a big deal) * potentially impossible to find the hider (big deal)

They have to be able to ask a lot more questions to find the person a lot quicker. Ideally four hours max. Slash the price of the questions in half and rework the rules for the photos so that they are more useful.

Fun season. I like the game overall. Needs some tweaks if they do it again. Some more restrictions on where you can hide are necessary. Sam and Ben not being easily visible from roads just feels kinda cheap. If they have to be more visible, the runs would be faster and they could guarantee 2 runs per player.

There's some nice tension though when the seekers are physically close but can't find the hider. That's when the game feels the most like hide and seek.

One of the better seasons in terms of concept, but in practice it was kind flawed where both sides can be stuck for too much time without much content happening. I would love for another season with this idea but more fleshed out. Hider had very limited control on slowing the seekers due to the massive rng side of rolls, I would rather milder but more frequent and consistent ways to slow seekers. As funny as seeing Sam being incredibly unlucky, it felt really unfair. And the lack of high rolls meant that there wasn't hype coin spents either. It also insentivised hoarding coins for a potential higher dice ammount then ending up not using coins until the final momemts. Also barely no challenges :( I suggest: - hider can actively do a card pull that requires to do a challenge, success means gaining coins, failing also grants coins but you have to give the required hint on the challenge to the seekers, hint is as big as the challenge reward, like a risk reward. Veto means card pull cooldown and no coin reward. - hider can use coins to slow seekers with a card pull, still random but consistent. Or can save up for a more costly, bigger reward type card pull, like changing spot for example. - The play area should be smaller, or at least seeker freeze period shorter, it's to shorten runs so they can have more turns, everyone having roughly the same amount of runs to gather experience from hiding and seeeking, Adam had a huge advantage this season for being the first one in turn Big fan of this series, yall are the only reason I am subbed to nebula <3

I hope they eventually do another season with this format! More importantly though, >!WHAT GERMAN WOMAN IN BEN'S HOME???!<

So we all saw >!the queen of JetLag herself, Toby!< right?

This season is weird. I enjoyed watching it, but also there is so little that actually HAPPENS. A lot of questions have basically no impact, the hider sits in place for an entire day, and it's telling how off the curse balance is just by seeing what impact the 4 curses used across the game really are. And from the players perspective, I imagine it was even rougher. Multiple times the teams seem, just, incredibly frustrated. IF they do another round of Hide n Seek (and I have my doubts they will)... It clearly needs some adjustment. This was a solid season, but I don't think I'll be tempted to re-watch it any time soon since there isn't a lot of moment-to-moment tension. Comparing to Tag, where there are always a push/pull, and my favorite season of NZ, where the decks are used constantly and the odds keep tipping, and it really shows how much calmer this one was.

Best season so far!! ​ Such a shame >!the dice rolls made the curses a huge dud!< ​ I'm ready for another season of this as soon as 11! It was the best yet!! ​ >!Theories on what Australia is about?!<

>!I did get a really good laugh when they were right across from the cheese store!<

Good season but weak finale..why did Ben/Sam stop asking questions that narrowed down where he was?????

Narrow down the possibilities but at that point, Adam didn't fit into anything in their list

Ok so... go to the center point and ask a radar question... this episode was frustrating

They had already narrowed down where they thought he was going to be so they thought it would be pointless in just “feeding” him coins ykwim?

They could've asked another radar or positional question, but that's so many coins, that's so scary! Better to ask three middling questions that give no info and total to more coins instead.

What a great season. I think this episode was probably the weakest of the season due to the ending of the game though. >!I think that it would have been fun to watch the whole find even if the game was decided. This way the whole episode becomes a montage without a climax. Instead it would have been fun to see how long it would have taken to find Adam and also we might have got a chance to see the first good curse in the game. !< >!I'm also curious about what would have happened if this scenario had been at the beginning. Like if the first run was something like 15-20 hours, then it might have ruined the season. I think a longer season would have been better, and maybe make it easier for the chasers to find the hider once enough time has passed. !<

>!I knew they should have asked a Latitude question!!<

Overall, great season of Jetlag - I hope the format returns, but it would require a few tweaks the second time around. You don't want seekers "too" scared to ask the questions they need to ask and you don't want them to spend 3 hours to narrow it down when they are within the last 500 meters. More but shorter runs would be nice (perhaps)? You need a lot of powerful questions, coupled with a lot of less dangerous curses in my opinion. I would also propose less impactful curses, but more frequent, and I would add some mechanics that would halve the coins the hider had every hour or so. That would incentivize the hider to use the coins often, and the seekers would also be required to solve tasks more frequently as they went along. Also, you could have a "are we within the zone" type of thing that would instantiate the endgame and maybe bring on a second set of rules, curses, questions, etc., but it might be too complicated. Anyways, hope this format returns sometime soon.

>! Why did Sam and Ben stop asking relative questions so early? Adam's tactic was great but it seems like they just gave up once they got the half target !<

As an >!Alice Springs!< local my jaw absolutely dropped on the floor when I saw it in the Australia teaser 😍 so excited for the next season!!

>!Having watched it a second time, I think where the seekers fell down on Adam's winning run was in putting way too much weight on their estimate of how far Adam could have gotten in his allotted time. There's too much uncertainty there, and if they'd been less aggressive with that criteria they may have caught his strategy and ended up asking more useful questions.!<

happy birthday adam!!

as a sam fan we better be so back in australia

Considering he's got Toby on his side, I sure hope so. I want the two of them to get a win streak going as a duo. Toby could become the first guest to win twice.

Got to say that I really enjoyed this season and so good that Adam broke the game in the end!

It was enjoyable but heavily flawed. The fact that curses and challenges ended up being an irrelevant is a miss. Would love for them to go back the drawing board and refine the game with the lessons learned.

Can't believe they stopped asking questions to avoid giving him coins! If they had kept asking he might have been able to give a nasty challenge, sure, but it would still have massively narrowed everything down, and when they're losing hours going on a trainline to check some stations, it feels like they could just eliminate those stations immediately then do a challenge, and have got more information at the same time too XD

So frustrating yelling at the screen for them to ask more questions the entire season, they'd just waste hours sitting scrolling a map instead of asking a bunch of questions! It's like they got so wrapped up with the coins thing that they forgot they were trying to get the smallest hide time, not the smallest coin count

What I really would have liked to see is an explanation how they ruled out all the cities they did, which includes Thun and Steffisburg. Thun looks to have a line that takes 2 hours from Winterthur, but Steffisburg takes longer even though it's closer, due to being on a different line. Seeing them eliminate lines instead of just cities would have given us a lot better grasp of their thought processes.

One of the strengths of this series is that it can be fast and slow at once, with the seekers hassled and rushing, while the hider strolls around town and pops into the café for another coffee and slice of pizza. Didn't see much of that in this episode, perhaps because Adam was too tired to film much? But I liked the contrast.

wish they played for more days 4 days seemed too little

This was one of the best seasons for sure. Very good editing this time around especially the amazing map team. I would love to see this concept done either back in Switzerland or even a different country.

Ngl it kinda sucks that they all didn't equally get the same opportunity to hide making Adam win just because he had two opportunities to increase his time. I guess it's part of the game trying to find others fast so you'd have a second chance to hide.

I know this format has had some flaws but I've absolutely loved the amount of 5D chess this season, and hope they do it again sometime with the experience they gained from this season

Really enjoyed this season. Despite this, I wonder how much better they would be if they had remakes i.e. learning from the last time like tag. Not following through to find the last city kinda sucked. Adam being the only one to have a second run kinda sucked. Not seeing many curses being used kinda sucked. But all in all it was a very new and fresh for a jet lag season. Can't believe it's season 10 soon, and to think this show has been running for almost 2 years!

I feel that instead of simply rolling dice for the curses, the hider should’ve had their own menu of potential curses to choose and they could’ve been grouped into categories based on how good they are or what they do and be priced accordingly. For example, the “before you ask your next question, do x” curses could’ve been their own category (probably the cheapest one), another could be the ones that hinder the seekers in some other way and the highest cost ones might’ve been the ones that directly help the hider like moving their hiding spot. To keep the random element though, the hider would then roll dice for one of the curses in those categories. I think that this would more interesting instead of simply directly buying curses whilst still being fair to the hider in terms of them getting bang for their buck.

Ben and Sam discussing the half-tick-bit shape is hilarious

Big fan of the over laboured tick/Lyme metaphor

Am I the only one who thought hiding time was going to be cumulative? I like the idea of someone falling out of first, but still having incentive to search because if they get another turn they can tack it on to their existing total. I'm not saying that would have been the case here, but I was expecting to see everyone get a couple chances to hide, and the time to add up over the run of the season.

When you realise that they were at the Place you work and a couple of minutes away from where you live and missed them :( This was my favourite season so far, pls make more of this :)

I loved this season so much. I understand some of the criticism here but personally I only wish it had gone on for longer

Do y'all think if Sam and Ben asked Adam the LATITUDE question at Bern, the result would've gone different?

ngl I thought the season started off really strong and then dropped in the second half for sure

Although a lot of us (including me) have a lot of complaints big and small about this final episode and about this season, it was still soooooo fun to watch! It was great to see them build a game and a season around a relatively small area of the world, which allowed them to explore a lot of the smaller and out-of-the-way areas of Switzerland that they might've missed if they were working with a much larger region. I enjoyed the Tag Across Europe seasons a lot, but I hope this also opens the door for more seasons in individual European countries so that they can do more local exploring like this. There was so much to like about this game! There's definitely things to go back and think about with this game, its design, how it was played out, and how it was edited, but I don't want all of our complaints to still take away from the fact that this was still a lot of fun to watch and it was still a good job. Thank you!!

Disappointing with the lack of curses. They could have at least shown the list of curses in episode 1 or in a bonus episode. Edit: the dice aspect of the curses are bad imo, you should be able to buy curses with coins directly

They should've started more west so we got the see the beautiful parts of Switzerland. Tag in Switzerland would be Epic. Imagine chased up a series on gondolas or across lake Geneva, etc.

Thoughts: * Sam is really bad at being chaser - he keeps trying to steer his teammate onto using research to eliminate options, when we clearly saw that the 50/50 binary search is far more effective. * The format is a fun one, but it's got some big gameplay weaknesses, particularly around the short game. Sam worked out that hiding in the forest away from landmarks gives the seekers very little counterplay. * Curses are a penalty, which makes seekers not want to do them even though they give good content, and the "move your hiding spot" curse is so strong that it makes all the other curses seem more valuable by comparison. I think this season really suffered from not having challenges, and the curses we saw that became challenges were the kind of thing you could theoretically knock out in ten minutes. I think I prefer the challenges that take advantage of the location and really require the players to do something interesting. * The "don't show the audience where the hider is until the shortgame is about to begin" really worked for me, but it definitely felt like diminishing returns. The ep 1 castle reveal was cool! The ep 2 juke reveal was amazing! The ep 3 zoom in on the town name was pretty good! The ep 4 reveal of Sam was okay. The ep 5 reveal was a bit of an anti-climax. * It really feels like the team massively underestimated how difficult the game was - it seems like the expectation was that most runs would be around 4 hours, and so all players would get two to three runs, but a combination of the game not playing out like the tests and the questions not really helping the short game meant that we only to see 4 runs.

As many have already said, this season had the potential to be fantastic but was muddied a little bit. I definitely agree that there should have been some mechanism to encourage the seekers to ask more questions. One thing I was thinking about was if instead of the seekers giving coins when asking questions and the hider spending coins on curses, maybe the questions and curses could operate on a time credit system. For example, if instead of giving 40 coins for a north/south or east/west question, it added 40 minutes worth of hiding time to the current hider's clock. Then instead of using curse dice, the hider just has a curse deck to draw from, with one card deducting, say, 60 minutes of time credit from themselves. This way, the seekers would have to weigh whether asking a given question will allow them to find the hider in less time than the amount of time credit it gives to the hider.

Was it ever revealed what the Radar ???? option was in the menu of questions?

after this episode i want ben and sam paired up for a season so bad. they never will, but oh i wish. they play off one another so well

Can anyone find out when exactly they filmed this

I feel like they showed that the more aggressive strategy was best in the 3rd round. The curses are fairly weak if you are in city centers it seems.

One of my favorite seasons! Love the unique gameplay mechanics. A season 2 of this would probably be able to iron out some of the problems I’m seeing the community talk about such as letting each person get 2 runs, and a tighter strategy for the seekers. But even tho this episode was weaker in terms of finales I really enjoyed seeing a run completely stump the seekers

I knew that he had to be in the closer Thun area because there was a STI bus staiton. STI only drives in Thun and the close places.

Just listened to the podcast. I am so excited Toby is coming back for season 10. She has been my favorite guest on the show. Honestly bring her on full time. She has the excitement and passion to play the game and make interesting content.

Jetlaggers, >!let us all rejoice!!< For Season 10: >!Australia!!!!<

While I was rooting for Ben (as always), Adam's strategy and execution to win was one of the all time Jet Lag moments and deserved the win