That's a fair point. I have some trouble spelling too. (Learning some French when fairly young seemed to mess up my English spelling somehow.)

And if someone didn't remember how to spell canoe, they might well guess wrong and think it was "canue" or something.

Yes, it's all very well pointing out that the housemates are a bunch of drooling idiots but whoever came up with the task didn't exactly cover themselves in intellectual glory.

The final spelling task made no sense at all - they could pass it merely by standing still for 15 minutes doing nothing.

In fact, Nick actually did do nothing. He wasn't required to lift a finger throughout the entire thing.

It's not like the production team have had months to properly think through their brilliant ideas or anything...

About ten per cent of the UK population has dyslexia, that is only a fraction of those who struggle with English. About 5 per cent dyscalculia, though the figure for more general mathematical difficulty is at least 25 per cent. There are also shortages of teachers in these topics. perhaps the two things are not entirely unrelated....

That said, it is not difficult to imagine HMs being chosen precisely because they struggled with preselection assessments in these areas, either genuinely (or to use forum parlance, they are "thick")' or deliberately ( or in forum speak, they "act thick").

After all, tasks that HMs find, or appear to find, too easy would hardly create any controversy - apart from "It's Easy Steet in there, they should make it harder for the HMs"....

Instead we get the annual attempts to explain away their performance in such tasks by offering up generalisations and anecdotes.

UK is 17tn in World in Maths

I'd expect Cristian and Sarah to be the most intelligent having a biomed and law degree..

it made me laugh,maybe they couldn't handle the stress?

Say what? Link?

So? That doesn't excuse the unbelievable thickness of this motley lot.

Studying for a degree, or saying you are, is not the same as actually passing the final exams and getting one.
I doubt if all these law students in the house will ever become lawyers, and as for Cristian's degree course..........