No comments on yesterday's time-wasting tactics?

Well - um - er - I am going to say - um - er - that the answer - um - er - will be given by my team-mate . .." - pause, - etc - ...

It's not a timed contest so how can you waste time? They could take all day to give an answer if they so desired. It wouldn't affect the result in the slightest.

As indigo is a totally made up colour, Southend's 'blue' is as good as any to fill the role.

Oh come on, this is Only Connect, not A Question Of Sport.

To be fair, on one answer she did say that they'd taken too long, so it isn't limitless, even if it is just determined by fair-play. It does raise another point, though...

We've been told before that the missing vowels round is altered to take account of the time available in the show, but that time can be affected by the amount of VCM 'jokes', jibber-jabber and other sing-alongs that take place during it.

As a couple of people here have appeared on the show, how do they measure the length of a show, It obviously isn't a one-take filming, as they have to break to get everyone in and out for the connecting wall....

The butterfly experts won - I'd never heard of any of them; Comma, Duke of Burgundy, Orange Tip and Gatekeeper.

The first two rounds certainly have a time limit on the question, 40 seconds, and buzzing in to answer in the last second and taking ten more seconds to answer is pushing it a little. In the vowel round they will be given incorrect if they take too long to answer after buzzing in.

You couldn't.
The fact that a certain person claims to only strengthens my belief that they're spoofing.

And on that subject I will say no more or I'm sure my posts will be removed

No, they couldn't.

Knowing that Norwich wear yellow and Blackpool wear orange etc would be fairly common knowledge to anyone with even a vague interest in English football and is far less obscure than some of the facts in other questions.

I just thought printing the text in the colour was too obvious a hint.

Yeah, I know. Poetic licence! But that's to prevent teams getting extra time to work it out not for the prevention of time wasting.

I've run a stopwatch over the final round of several episodes in the current series and they've all come in at 1.25 from the last syllable of the first category. There really isn't any reason for the time to vary since it is so short and the other rounds can be edited easily to fit.

Given that they did give the team name in full, ie. Plymouth Argyle, you may have a point.

I'm surprised how many people don't know any songs from one of (and at one stage the) biggest rock bands in the world.
I got that straight away. In fact I could only see 4 U2 songs there. The smartfone was easy though i only got 3 of them. I would have got the 4th on elimination.
I also got 3 of the football teams but I must confess i thought it was something entirely different.

I wonder if anyone would have got it if they'd have done it with countries.

Ireland, Brazil, Netherlands, ...

Common knowledge but not obvious it was related to national football strips unless they'd have different coloured texts maybe?

There were 5 U2 songs on the board. Desire was the red herring

I don't know why. If you sell a million albums in this country and each is listened to in depth by 2 people that's still less than 5% of the population who would have any ability to recall the titles of the tracks!

I think all of those tracks were singles which have all had extensive airplay.

It's easy not to know too much about about certain well known subjects, such as Harry Potter, as all you have to do is not watch the movies or read the books. But with a band whose music has been played on the radio, which the majority of people listen to, over the last 35 years or so, is bordering on ignorance.
I'm not a fan or U2, i only have one of their albums and I've no idea how I ended up with that, but I would recognise most of their singles.

Don't know how i missed that

Not when a bonus is handed over - you're supposed to answer immediately, not waffle for more thinking time..
And I thought it had been confirmed here by those in-the-know that the time allowed for the missing vowels round depends on how long the other rounds took. So of course you'd try to waste time if you knew your opponents were good at missing vowels (as the Verbivores proved to be again).

Indeed, and yet we have one forum member claiming that Beatles album tracks are easier to spot than U2 hit singles!

That was fair enough

Vicky Coren is on The One Show tonight, talking mainly about her radio programme tomorrow.

To some extent it's an age thing.

The Beatles were at the end of when I really listened to music. They were just getting famus. The ones I know most about are Elvis, Bill Haley, Tab Hunter, Pat Boone, Connie Francis, Everley Brothers, ..................


I hear some saying "who?". Turned into my parents about 40 years ago - "They call that music?"

Yes, as I already acknowledged. I can only conclude however that those in the know aren't in the know having actually timed the missing vowels round over several episodes and finding, as I fully expected to, that it is a set period that does not vary. As the producer has ample opportunity to edit the other rounds or just modify Victoria's intro and outro I cannot for the life of me see why anyone would believe that it would be otherwise.

Ignorance? Really?
The Fly - 1991,
Sweetest Thing - 1998
Elevation - 2001
New Year's Day - 1983
Desire - 1988
Yes, I'm sure the radio stations the team would listen to would regularly play tracks of such a vintage, if they even covered this genre of music.. Their style of music is dated nowadays.

I love music and have listened to a variety of it for many decades but to me U2 are just bland. I'd struggle with more than their most well known tracks and I am far from ignorant, especially about music. Suggesting that people from another generation not knowing their material from 33 years ago is ignorance is completely OTT.