I would think the more trivial the better as far as a true pedant was concerned!

They do that to make absolutely sure of the points. Also because the people involved tend to be pedantic and so will give pedantic answers. Victoria accepts non-pedantic answers when it's clear the team know the complete answer. If she needs more detail she'll ask for it. Exactness isn't necessary unless it is part of the sequence. In this case the state names were simply an obscured clue that place names were involved and not part of the sequence. The states themselves were not in a sequence.

If the state names had been given in full the answers would have been more obvious. It doesn't really matter, the difficulty was knowing the fourth and last state capital name, not the state itself.

As others have said, the two letter abbreviation is almost never spoken as two letters. NY possibly being an exception as it's such an icon. The only instance of it I can think of was the battleship USS Missouri which had the nickname "The Mighty Mo".

The show is on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtqctxreFM

She actually just asked what would be next in the sequence, so maybe she was correct to accept the answer given. I don't know.
BIB, the sequence is a chronological order.

And yet she repeatedly says she needs to hear exactly what you'd see in the fourth box and often asks the teams to look again and have another go. In fact on this very question she said "for a bonus I need to hear everything perfect and it is that", but it wasn't.



I don't think many people wouldn't have realised which states were shown in the first three boxes, so its hardly more obscure than putting the full names, however going the other way isn't quite so easy as some use first and last letters, others first and second, others still first letter and another from the middle, so some sort of extra knowledge would be required there.

Anyway, looking at it again, I think the reason they used abbreviations was so as not to put the teams off saying the obvious red herring "Washington DC", which wouldn't really have worked alongside full state names, and of course it didn't.

That's always the question, but of course the sequence must be properly understood too.

The state names being a sequence is dubious since it's very obscure without another clue. Compare this to the film title sequence where the numerals were in sequence, regardless of the other element. The film names were in a vague sequence based on letter count. The answer is the linkage of both parts.

If you give the state capital name and state then it would be particularly harsh to disallow the points for saying the state name and not the state abbreviation. It's a particularly hard question as you would need to know all 50 state capitals to know for sure which the fourth one was. Unless you happened to know that only four states had capitals named after presidents of course.

It calls itself a hard quiz. Frequently.

They clearly decide in advance what's acceptable. We don't get to see that information. So we should assume if she accepts it then that's what had been decided.

As I said I thought getting the fourth in sequence was already hard enough in this case.


Being pedantic it's D.C. not DC.

You can't have it both ways. Anyone who knows they were abbreviations would surely know D.C. isn't a state.

And so it is. But there is difficult and tortuously near impossible. It wouldn't be worth watching if no one got the answers because they were too obscure.

You should try Round Britain Quiz for insanely difficult connections.

That's definitely not as hard as it used to be.

I'm not having it both ways. I think that putting the abbreviations would place in the teams' minds the idea that as Washington is followed by two letters it would follow naturally from the other three, regardless of it being a state or otherwise, because it is in the same basic format. And it worked. The full stops are irrelevant, you don't voice them. If they had felt they needed to follow the city name with the full name of a state then that would likely have put them off because there isn't one.

Pity we don't have the question editor on here to tell us.

I haven't heard it for ages so I didn't know it had changed. I didn't even know it was still on.

Only Connect is much more "user friendly". Like University Challenge, it's no fun watching if you can't get some of the answers.

BIB, You don't voice "NE" for Nebraska either. But the full stops belong to the abbreviation of District of Columbia as correctly written. Surely it would be correctly written on Only Connect.

They were thinking of Presidents who might have had state capitals named after them and Washington's name came to mind as the clock ran out. They knew it wasn't right, but it was better than saying "pass". I don't think the abbreviations falsely lead them to D.C. or even DC.

I'm sure you're bright enough to realise that at the point you give the answer you wouldn't have seen those initials at all and that these things can often quite correctly be written without the full stops anyway, such as BBC, RAC, BIB and even DC itself. But you're just being deliberately obtuse.


Maybe it did and maybe it didn't, but it's a plausible reason for OC doing it like that when it seems they didn't need the answer as an abbreviation. As a matter of fact giving an answer you know to be wrong is no better than saying pass, and might even help the opposition, who may well have said Washington DC themselves.

It is general conventional when dealing with place names in USA to write them down using the "town + two letter state code" but when you say them out loud you say the state name. So since the clues are written and the answer was verbal then saying the full name of the state is accepted as you could argue it was yourself reading an imaginary written answer out loud, and in that written answer you've used the two letter code because that's how you would write it down.

On the other hand in OC they specifically say you have to describe what you would see.

....except in this particular instance that's not what she said. That, for me, is where the problem lies.

That mainly (even exclusively) applies to picture clues, particularly where the picture is a cryptic representation of something. i.e. if the clues were rhyming slang for money then "a five pound note" would not be correct but "Lady Godiva" would be. In that case I agree with you, but I don't think that level of rigour applies to the state capitols question.

For some reason she said she would have to "hear it perfect for a bonus", which is odd even for her.

I still think my interpretation of it as a red herring is the simplest explanation.

I'm not, but being called deliberately obtuse in this thread is praise indeed.


Yes, but the egotists who go on Only Connect want to be seen to know as much as possible. They couldn't resist showing they had got the idea of the question at least. The other team still had to know Lincoln, NE.

You thinking it's a plausible explanation does not make it the reason any more than my idea that it added an extra layer of obscurity. No point in arguing endlessly about something that isn't provable. However you surely at least accept that they knew Washington was not correct. If so, how was it the two letter abbreviations that lead them to say it?

I've watched it again, and after somebody spotted it was capitals, or at least cities, named after presidents, the Washington suggestion seemed to be serious, and when he buzzed and answered he looked at the very least hopeful. No, I don't think they knew it was wrong, but unless one of them posts on here we won't know that either.

On the other hand I can't think of any other reason to use the abbreviations, because there really can't be many people who wouldn't know they represented states.

Trying to read quiz contestant's minds is futile. I saw it differently. We could both be wrong.

OK mate, if you watch him answer again and still think he thinks he was giving the wrong answer then there is nothing more to be said. It's not mind reading, its watching his face and listening to his voice. He sounded reasonably confident.

Not always. There have been a few occasions where the team have taken a wild guess and got the correct answer.

I'm sure one of those where where they had a color name written in a different colour.

I refer you to my earlier answer. We can't know unless he posts here.

I've a fairly good idea even if he doesn't, unless he's a very good actor.