The Secret Diary of Adrian the

Mole, Aged 13 4 series

In the Beginning (back in 1955)...
At first I was very unsure of whether or not I would be taking part in series 4 of
The Mole, as I thought my work patterns (I work weekly alternating shifts finishing 6.30pm one week then 10pm the next week) would make it difficult for
me to sustain an involvement. I told everyone this too, when asked if I would be
playing in the next series, not to throw them off course, but because I genuinely
was unsure of my position and that was the truthful answer. However, when
Zarte actually made the announcement of series 4 and asked whether I wanted
to be involved or not, I found myself immediately saying yes. After all, I should in
theory only miss one in every four tasks. I just needed to hope the more eagleeyed players didnt spot an attendance pattern and link it to my work shifts
more on this later.
Since my first involvement in The Mole in series 2, I had developed an interest in
what it would be like to play the game from the other side of the curtain. But I
didnt apply for the role in series 3 as I felt I wasnt ready yet. This time, though, I
was ready. I didnt think Id be given the role because of my aforementioned work
schedule, but Zarte and Innis trusted me with it anyway and work began. I was
given the name Freddie Brown and started to design a character for him. Zarte
thought a nice, likable, relatable character would be best so my initial occupation
suggestion of lawyer went straight out of the window. In the end we had an
unabrasive chatty type character that wouldnt draw too much attention or cause
too much trouble. Not overtly, anyway

~~~
The Tasks
Task 1: The Progression
I was familiar with the classic mole series opener from my involvement in the
previous two series. We agreed that the obvious ways to sabotage a task like this
would be to either go right at the start and set a score that is too high, or go
right at the end and fail (like Andy/Trent did last series). But this time we agreed
on a different, perhaps more subtle, method. I would state that I would like to go
somewhere in the middle, but would have a go at playing higher up the chain if
needed to. That way, I could overplay slightly if put in the middle, but then
protest that I did say I could have played later, or underplay slightly if I was put
somewhere higher up the chain, claiming that I had requested to be put in the
middle really.

As it happened, I was put fairly late on in the order so I tried to just miss the
target required, which if memory serves me correctly was 129. By this point the
team was on their last life, hence the effort to only narrowly miss the target in
order to prevent the sabotage being overly conspicuous. I ended up on 128
points with just the conundrum to go, thinking I had it in the bag as omelette
conundrums can be very difficult and easy to justify missing. But, unfortunately, I
got an easy one and had to solve it. Thankfully for me though, the team did lose
their last life on the next step. So this task was a success for me in some ways,
although Id have liked to have a more direct hand in its failure.
-

Days won: 0 out of 21

Sabotage: Attempted to underplay slightly but ended up exceeding the
target. The next player failed to reach the target though, causing the task
to fail.

Task 2: Mogheads
I missed this task as I was working the late shift.
-

Days won: 4 out of 18.

Sabotage: None. Mole absent.

Task 3: Its All Greek to Me

I missed this task too as I would be present for the midweek task this week, and
we thought that this task might be not as requiring of a molish sabotage, and
that not being ever-present early on in the series might make it harder to get a
stranglehold on any certain ideas about Freddie.
-

Days won: 7 out of 18

Sabotage: None. Mole absent.

Task 4: Flagged Up
Back in action tonight, Freddie Mole tried to undermine the efforts of this task
first of all by delaying the start of the task, knowing that it would be ending at
10pm sharp rather than after 2 hours. My strategy for this was going to be
asking Mole Host lots of awkward, poorly phrased questions to forestall him, but
on top of that I ended up (inadvertently) turning up late to the task as the bus
home from work was late, and I had internet problems upon getting home.
So after the delaying the start a bit, my plan was to get on a puzzling team and
sow some misinformation there, as it would be much harder to sabotage the task
as a declarer. I did get on a puzzling team, but the rest of them puzzled so well
independently that any efforts I made to stop them were futile. Fiona alone could
have won that task against a team full of moles.
-

Days won: 20 out of 20.

Sabotage: Delay the start of the task (tick), negatively influence the work
of the puzzling team (failed; they were too good)

Task 5: En-Duel-Rance
The plan here was quite simple: play at a slightly below par, unspectacular level,
and occasionally drop points where possible. It became clear from an early stage
that enough people were going to attempt the tasks to pass that part of the task,
so lowering the teams share of the points haul was my only viable method of
attack.
I did this consistently throughout the weekend, voting for and playing in duels
where mistakes seemed makeable (numbers-heavy duels, or difficult variants
and languages, as well as quicker rounds, were the ones I targeted), while still
trying to maintain the balance between sabotage and subtlety. In the end, the
team won half of the days on offer, which wasnt bad for them.
-

Days won: 15 out of 30.

Sabotage: Vote for duels that I thought the team wouldnt do as well in, try
to drop points/blob rounds where possible, try to avoid playing in the
easier, maxable duels when possible.

Task 6: Bet On the Devil You Know

The more astute players may have worked out that Callum Todd couldnt be
playing in tonights task, as he would be on the late shift or would he? This was
the week before COLIN so I was already planning to take the coming Friday and
Monday off work, and I had somewhere to go on Wednesday, so after planning
this in advance with Zarte since before the start of the series, I booked Tuesday
20th January - Monday 26 th off work, allowing me to participate in Tuesdays mole
task when I wouldnt be expected.
To sabotage this task, I chose Fiona as the person I knew best, ready to justify my
decision by saying that I had worked on her team in the Flagged Up task. I then
predicted she would finish very high in the rankings, 2 nd, again ready to justify
this by saying that she had been really impressive in the Flagged Up task (and
she had), so I thought she could do really well in this too. In reality, I didnt think
it was too likely that Fiona would finish that high, and I was right. So my efforts
gained -1 days for the pot. I also tried to sabotage the efforts by attempting to
beat players who others had predicted would finish high up, and lose to those
who it was thought would finish lower down. This worked to some extent, but
there were a lot of circumstances beyond my control.
-

Days won: +3 out of 26.

Sabotage: Make an incorrect prediction (tick), try to turn the tide against
others predictions (partial tick).

Task 7: Rally Around

Here I had to try tone things down a notch as I was becoming too conspicuous.
So the effort here was to try play against Caesar rather than a harder bot, and
thus play for the smallest amount of days possible.

As it happened, many of the team struggled mightily here. My token efforts

probably made me look like one of the better performers on this task, despite my
minimal attempt.
-

Days won: 9 out of 21

Sabotage: Play for the smallest number of days. Encourage mistakes
where possible to do so covertly.

Task 8: Cue Jumping

I was still trying to lie low here so my tactic was to just take on reds and not
colours. That way I wouldnt put myself right in the spotlight by breaking a big
chain, but I would be making the minimum possible help to the team, and an
occasional hard conundrum would be missable.
The team really did struggle here, however, as lots of mistakes were made and
conundrums were quite hard at times. As a result, my small efforts again made
me one of the stronger players on the team again, covering me from suspicion
while still undermining the team effort.
-

Days won: 0 out of 20.

Sabotage: Play for reds, or yellows if pushed to go on colours. Make a
mistake if possible to d so covertly.

Task 9: Goatdarrens
I missed this task because I was working the late shift again.
-

Days won: 4 out of 20.

Sabotage: None. Mole absent.

Task 10: Playing Chicken

Early on here, Kate picked up on a slight oversight in this task that could have
made it a walk in the park for the team. So my first thing to do was to not
propagate this information and just hope that others failed to heed Kates advice
too. Thankfully, the team didnt seem to make full use of this information. It did,
however, allow Kate and I to pass when we went up first. I was then the helper
for Hideki, where my best effort was to try and steer him away from making the
right choice whenever possible. It just worked, as he failed his part, as did Otto
later on. So altogether this task got a decent amount of days for the team, but it
could have been a lot more.
This task was another example where a decent form of sabotage for me was
simply not correcting the team when I realised they were making a big mistake.
Had I been playing this series genuinely, there are many points at which I would
have intervened and tried to fix some of their methods, but as the Mole it made
my job easier when I could simply let them make their own little sabotages :-)

Days won: 12 out of 18

Sabotage: Give poor advice, be unhelpful in organisation and planning.

Task 11: The Labyrinth

This one was interesting. My best form of sabotage here was to help the
interceptor by giving Zarte live updates on where Kate was telling me to go. This
enabled him to have a clearer idea of how to chase me. However, Kate did well
enough to avoid him but, with time ticking, it became apparent that we wouldnt
be able to escape the maze. Thankfully for me, Kate had forgotten that there was
still a small prize available for evading capture without making the great escape,
and decided it would be a laugh? to send me straight into the interceptor,
head-on. I gladly followed her orders, and our prize of time off the endurance
task disappeared in a matter of seconds. Thanks Kate.
-

Time off won: 6 hours out of 15.

Sabotage: Help the interceptor
instructions.

catch

us.

Accept

Kates

suicidal

Task 12: So Long and Tanks For All the Fish

This one was even more interesting. I was around for an hour or so at the very
beginning of the task, trying to undermine the efforts slightly by not offering all
the maxes I could see. Then I went to sleep, thinking I would have lots more
sabotaging to do over the coming weekend. But I awoke the next morning to find
that the task had already been failed. Molin aint easy, except sometimes it
really is.
-

Days won: 0 (10 bonus) out of 30

Sabotage: sleep?

Task 13: Constant Instant Conundrum Inundation

Here I simply tried to hit the lowest scoring band in order to drag the average
down a bit. In the end I got 6 conundrums, despite actually trying to get 7 or 8 as
this would have left the team with the same score while being a bit less
conspicuous.
-

Days won: 4 out of 16

Sabotage: Underplay.

Task 14: Pseudoku

I was otherwise engaged for this task so did not play.
-

Days won: 15 out of 18

Sabotage: None. Mole absent.

Task 15: Slide into Obscurity

This was a difficult task. I had no idea how to gauge the obscurity rating that
Lexplorer would give for words, so it was nearly impossible to know if I was doing
well or not. Zarte told me that my first, cautious, effort was only about 30% so I
needed to score slightly higher, but not so high as to actually pass the task.

Eventually I was struggling so much I just started playing genuinely, as if I was

really trying to win days for the team, and even then I only just managed about
49% on my last, late effort, but this was still below the success requirement.
However, Zarte then lowered the boundaries so my game did earn 1 day for the
team. From a moles point of view, this was a strange task to play in.
-

Days won: 6 out of 21

Sabotage: Erm, play as well as I possibly could.

Task 16: Drawn Together

On this one I was just unhelpful with guessing the drawings. I kept making
incorrect guesses and occasionally answered an easier one to make it look like I
was making an effort, but mostly my contributions were unhelpful. By the time it
got to my turn to draw there was only one thing left to draw and it was an easy
one so there wasnt much I could do there. When it came to declaring words, I
declared what words were available in my games, but tried not to contribute too
much. In the end I probably added little that wouldnt have been got anyway.
-

Days won: 15 out of 18

Sabotage: Unhelpful drawing suggestions, less than best effort on
declaring.

Task 17: Scrabbling Around

I missed this task as I was working the late shift.
-

Days won: 12 out of 18

Sabotage: None. Mole absent.

Task 18: Deeper and Down

I turned up late to this task deliberately in order to reduce the opportunity for
earning days. From then on my plan was to hit the lowest scoring bracket
possible, which I managed to do. It was quite straight forward, just a case of
judging when was a decent opportunity to miss a point without it being too
obviously moleish.
-

Days won: 7 out of 20

Sabotage: Turn up late, score low.

Task 19: Scruples

This was a short, anagramless task to bring the day-earning to a close for the
series. I simply played the task honestly as there was little point attempting any
sabotage here.
-

Days won: 8 out of 12.

Sabotage: None appropriate for this task.

~~~

The Mole Messages

At the end of each task, I would post a message on the post-mortem thread for
that task on the mole forum. I did this at around midnight each time. Normally
the messages would just be a summary of the moles feelings about the task. He
would be pleased if the team did badly or angry if they did well, but regardless of
the result he would always belittle and insult them anyway. Occasionally I had a
slight clue as to the moles identity to work in to my message. These messages
were quite fun to write. Ill not say here what the clues were in case thats going
to be revealed elsewhere. If it isnt, Ill come back and edit this to show what the
clues were.

~~~
In Conclusion
I think the fourth series of The Mole was a really good one. There were some
great characters and great players, and, as I had hoped, being the mole had
been a really interesting experience to see the game from an entirely different
perspective. I must thank Zarte and Innis greatly for entrusting me with the mole
role, and for their everstrong efforts to organise and run The Mole. Working more
closely with them this series has made it even more apparent that they put a
huge amount of work in to put on a show for us all.