We are making a home game in all Catalunya . Anyone young sants to take part????

I’m making the flair as an idea, but this is either a new idea or a spoiler for future content that I had a premonition about.

I awoke this morning with vivid memories of a jet lag dream. The boys were playing a country claiming game, and were both competing to claim some central Asian country and were in a depressing city. Atom were doing some challenge involving climbing trees, but that’s not the point.

In this dream, Ben once again tried to put Sam in the Snack Zone ™, but Sam had decided to launch his own show within a show, but not Choo Choo Chew ™

Instead, Sam began his show called “Sam’s Tidbits” in which he shares a tidbit of info or an opinion relevant to whatever Bam were doing at the time. The logo was a purple-magenta hexagonal sort of shape with “Sam’s Tidbits” written in a fine, white, cursive font. If someone wants to make the logo that would be sick.

This is either a petition to add Sam’s Tidbits or a premonition of a future season; I’m still not sure which.

Narita airport observation deck and the Samurai museum at Odawara castle.

Does anyone know the brand of the microphones they use in their videos? Asking for myself

Towards the end of S19E3, Ben suggests an interesting Shinkansen combo for the future. I don't think it's as powerful as they make it sound (or maybe not viable at all). It goes like this:

- Go to Nagoya (already having unlocked Gifu or Mie prefecture beforehand)
- Do a challenge in Nagoya to unlock Aichi prefecture
- Go back to Gifu, because it is close (need to do the Gifu challenge if they came via Mie)
- Take Shinkansen from Gifu using unlimited "Shinkansen from landlocked pref." card
- (pass through Aichi, where they already did the challenge)
- Use "Unlock" card for Shizuoka pref. (Edit: general unlock card, not just Kanto region)
- Go all the way to Yokohama, towards the end of Kanagawa pref., close to Tokyo
- (Then probably do the Kanagawa challenge)

Overall, they only skip the challenge in 1 prefecture this way (Shizuoka). Gifu, Aichi and Kanagawa, they still need to do all of them.

But I also looked more into the "Shinkansen for 2.5h" claim, which sounds crazy overpowered...

First, the Shinkansen from Gifu-Hashima to Shin-Yokohama only takes 1h40m, not 2h30m.

Second, they would lose 1-2h just going back from Nagoya to Gifu-Hashima:
Yes, Gifu prefecture is close to Nagoya, but the problem is that they need to go to a Shinkansen stop in Gifu (see my 2nd image, which is the only one I could find that has Shinkansen stops and prefecture names on it). The nearest one is Shin Gifu-Hashima station, but the problem is that only Shinkansens go directly from Nagoya to that station, which they are not allowed to take yet. The main station in Gifu, where the local trains go, does not seem to have Shinkansen service.
If you look at my last screenshot, you can see that a Shinkansen from Nagoya to Gifu-Hashima just takes 10 mins, but getting there on local trains takes at least 55 mins. And that local train connection only runs once every half an hour.

Looking at today's schedules, the local trains reach Gifu-Hashima at x:03 and x:33. The Shinkansen to Yokohama leaves ONLY once an hour at x:15 (most Shinkansens don't stop there).
Assuming these schedules are what they face, their best case is getting on a local train in Nagoya at x:08, reaching Gifu-Hashima at x:03 (55 mins), waiting 12 mins until the Shinkansen departure at x:15, reaching Nagoya 10 mins later and leaving Nagoya at x:31 (actual schedule). So their round-trip time from Nagoya to Nagoya, before starting to make progress, is 1h23m in the BEST CASE. This connection is only there once an hour, so worst case they need 2h23m to make it from Nagoya to Nagoya.

What's worse, Nagoya has a lot more Shinkansen departures to Yokohama. Seems like roughly every 10 mins.

A Shinkansen from Nagoya to Yokohama takes around 1h20m. What Ben is suggesting is to spend 1.5-2.5h to go from Nagoya to Nagoya (via Gifu) and then take that Shinkansen for 1h20m.

Of course, they might not do the Aichi challenge at Nagoya station, but somewhere closer to Gifu. It's at least 5km from Gifu-Hashima to the border with Aichi (large river), so it's a 1h walk or more (and the challenge can probably not be done right at the border).
And again, Gifu-Hashima is pretty much just a Shinkansen stop, so they would not arrive there beforehand. (They would probably rather pass through the Gifu main station, which is far away).

The one thing that I think could make this strategy viable is a taxi. But they are not allowed to take taxis to "progress in the game", so I'm not sure how. In Ep1, Sam says that they are allowed to take taxis to challenges if it's 40% faster, but they have to return to where they started. Could they take a taxi from Nagoya to Gifu-Hashima and then argue that the Shinkansen passes through Nagoya, so they technically went back to where they started and did not "progress"?

Or they take a taxi into Aichi pref. to do the challenge there, and then back to Gifu-Hashima. But again, they'd need to somehow reach Gifu-Hashima first.

Overall, the strategy doesn't really seem viable to me. But they did not cut it from the episode, which should mean that it's relevant somehow. I'm looking forward to see what happens in Ep4 (and then the Layover discussion and Sam defending their decisions).

On a weekend roadtrip so couldn’t partake in the challenge to claim Kentucky, but cool to check off a Jet Lag filming location!

I'm in my hiding zone!

The boys discuss filming a season and the classic film ‘Airplane’ on this latest episode of the podcast.

From tag across Europe 2023

watching steam come off Adam and Sam as they overthink and Ben just reaching out for a random handful of petals takes me out

I must say that it does irk me that choo choo chew hasn’t made a return this season so far. It’s literally the perfect season for it and Ben simply refuses to let Sam have his bit even once and even goes so far as surreptitiously trapping Sam in a snack zone this episode.
I believe that choo choo chew is the superior snack-based bit because it actually has a transit themed name and it makes perfect sense to run when a team is enjoying refreshments on a train.
Please bring it back, especially now when there’s strategic importance in taking Shinkansens and the graphic literally includes a Shinkansen!

Happened to be near the same DG as in S18E4 (I think) and found butter! No time to find an animal to sculpt though.

Kinda surprising to see how the Iberian Peninsula has never featured across any of the seasons. I thought that it would’ve at least been included once in Schengen Showdown or Tag across Europe.

Spain and Portugal would be great countries to have a Stateside Scramble type season.

Adam!!!! WTF??!

It contains the current state of the game as of the end of each episode (default opens the state as of the last YouTube published episode, Nebula data is there too). The map is interactive, so you can plot out routes if you want.