The Traitorz #5 - with a cursive Z

[witchycat2]

Continued discussion for series 3 of The Traitors UK.

Exactly! It's massively edited. People forget. Anna might also have clocked it privately, but is choosing to keep it to herself till the right moment. Who knows?

I’ve been rewatching last week’s episodes while I wait for this week (I know… no life). I was wondering if Joe (is he the English teacher?) might clock the cursive z? I suspect they will tell the Faithful about the painting - I seem to remember the producers spelled out to Diane that she had drunk from the poisoned chalice last year. I also think it was hilarious that while Minah set up the sacrificial Dan scenario on a plate for Linda, Linda remained totally oblivious to this golden opportunity to save herself and randomly voted for Fozia due to some kind of animosity. She was so lucky so many of the rest (including Fozia) voted for Dan - if the vote had been closer, she would have walked. She just can’t read the room at all.

I love the way everyone says ‘It’s not personal…’ then says something totally personal 🤣
“I love you, I really do, but I love everyone else more!”
”I love you, I really do but you just don’t feel authentic and trustworthy”.

When they tell some of those poor open books that they seem ‘wrong’ and like they aren’t being truthful 🤣.

As for Linda, she’s not being strategic or calculating, she’s just having a damn good time throwing herself into it moment by moment. She’s not playing the game so much as running round the playground! I’d be her!

I think Linda could have a tv career after this. Minah she’d be a great recruit for the secret services!

"I love you, you're my best friend but... I just think you're bad to the core and are therefore a traitor"

Also, if they're not looking at handwriting for clues then they really are as dim as we think 😂 because it's literally the ONLY hard evidence they've got to go on!

This YouTube video might be interesting to anyone wondering about the obesssion with Dan lying and all the enotion.

To be fair she'd just been accused of being a sheep and only voting with the group so probably didn't want to do that again

Has anyone played mafia and wish they'd introduce a sherif ?

I mentioned this back in thread 1 (although we call it the detective). I thought it might be one of the "updates" this series to keep it fresh and was half expecting one of the train characters to be main one. I think you'd have to introduce it at the start though so maybe it'll come in a later series if at all.

I've not played, what would this entail?

Someone pointed out in a previous thread that Anna mentioned to Charlotte that"strong independent woman" was on the seduction letter.

She did not say anything about how that means its an all-woman group. Either she

• didn't say it because she didn't think about it like that (just like everyone on these threads)
• she didn't get the nuance because she's Irish. (Charlotte didn't get it, because she didn't see the SPAG errors, which somehow were a clue.)
• it wasn't broadcast

@JimHalpertsWife basically each round the sheriff can ask the leader (Claudia) if someone is the traitor and will be told yes or no. It can be very powerful but also makes you a target for murder.

DH noticed the thing about 'strong independent woman' but he commented it that although it indicated female traitors, a smart bloke traitor might have written that as a subtle deflection.

I’m still asking: what is the ‘nuance’ that an Irish person wouldn’t get?

There are two errors in the handwritten part of the traitors’ letter, but I fail to see how these would constitute either a ‘nuance’ or be in any way identifying, unless Anna was in a position to see from other pieces of writing that either Minah or Linda (don’t remember which of them wrote the letter) habitually omitted indefinite articles or confused ‘woman’ and ‘women’.

Irish people are as likely/unlikely to note SPAG errors in written English as any other native speaker.

If it’s the phrase ‘strong, independent women’ that’s seen as significant — why? It’s the kind of standard cliché thrown around in Traitors all the time, especially since Elen in this series started her theory about an all-female set of Traitors. Unless there’s something I’m missing, it’s not identifying either, and certainly not significant in any way that would be somehow ungraspable by an Irish person.

The irony being that neither Minah nor Linda is in any way particularly strong and independent (Minah is just good at looking like background noise, and Linda has been lucky), and they weren’t recruiting Anna because she had either quality.

My take on Anna is that she noticed and repeated the words “strong, independent woman” because she enjoyed the compliment. I also think that is how they were intended by Minah and Linda - as a compliment to increase the chance that she would accept the invitation. Had she inferred that the writer was female, or that all the Traitors were female, she’d likely have picked someone other than Charlotte to confide in.

Insofar as SPAG errors are clues it’s presumably only to the precise identity of the writer, rather than whether the writer is male or female? I can see someone thinking (rightly or wrongly) “oh well, X, Y and Z are highly educated so probably wouldn’t have made that mistake”.

Being Irish is neither here nor there, is it? Everyone in the game is - so far as we know - a native speaker of English, so unless a dialect issue came up (which it hasn’t) there is no language barrier to take account of.

Regarding Linda, my husband & I both noticed this too, she really can’t read the room. It’s funny & surprising how she’s survived this long!

I suppose Linda’s surviving because of the bonkers logic of some of the Faithful:

”Kas would be a good Traitor, therefore he is a Traitor”

”Linda wouldn’t be a good Traitor, therefore she isn’t a Traitor”.

I think if I had had to write names on the picture I'd have misspelt 'Fozia' as 'Fosia' - for misdirection. Imagine the faithfuls trying to guess who might be poor at spelling (some regularly spell names wrong around the RT) and I doubt they'd pick Linda as 'most likely to.

I think that’s certainly part of it. Her scattergun voting strategy is also, I think, working in her favour, because it looks as if there isn’t any ‘direction’ or philosophy behind it. Plus I think there’s some ageism mixed with misogyny at play — I didn’t see one of the Uncloaked episodes where apparently a male banished was absolutely incredulous at the identities of the traitors.

A few posters have said that Anna would not see the spelling mistakes or recognise nuance because she is Irish.

Why would the traitors give a clue to Anna as to their identity (strong independent women)?
It was highly likely that she was going to decline the invitation.
I think as a pp said they wrote this as an attempt to flatter her, not realising it could be a clue.

I really don't know @TetHouse. I'm repeating it in a sarcastic manner as the original poster who wrote it hasn't explained their reasoning!!

I especially loved the suggestions from other posters that what this poster meant by the nuance was Anna wouldn't notice the SPAG errors because she's Irish.

@TetHouse it's not massively significant in itself and as many have said, there's a few possible conclusions that could be drawn from it. But most of their reasoning is insignificant in lieu of anything else - Dan lying about the challenge, Kaz being "too nice" etc. In a game where you're constantly looking for evidence it's just a little weird to not have a bit more scrutiny on an actual piece of evidence direct from the traitors themselves.

That video someone posted is interesting. The part about people assuming dishonesty = traitor when most of their faithfuls are being dishonest.

Meanwhile Linda literally turning her head at the word traitors continues to be mostly overlooked 🤣

Yes, that was what I was trying understand. Were people actually saying that Anna wouldn’t have noticed poor spelling and grammar because she was Irish?

One might as well ask whether whoever of Linda and Minah wrote the traitors’ letter managed to make two errors in three words because they were English, or because they were women.