Andy DehnartThe Mole 3 player Nicole was “the fastest quiz taker in The Mole’s history,” the show’s executive producer Clay Newbill said. That helped her stay in the game, as the finale revealed, especially at the final-four level when she beat Paul by four seconds.
The fastest she ever completed the 10-question quiz was 37 seconds, and overall “she averaged in the 30s” while Mark averaged “in the high 40, low 50 seconds,” according to Reality TV World. Thus, it took longer for host Jon Kelley to read us the questions than it did to actually answer all of the questions for some players.
Nicole says she was able to do that because of her experience as “a test taker — having taken many, many, many standardized exams — when it’s too specific you have to be wary.” She said that “after I had seen three or four quizzes, I kind of knew how the questions were going to be. So I would write quiz questions down and then write the answer I wanted to give. So I would memorize the questions and answers I wanted to give, therefore I could be as fast as possible because I already knew the answer I wanted to give. Nine times out of 10, I would come up with the quiz questions.”
After that, she said, “I read really, really fast. Like I said, I could anticipate the questions. So when they would give the questions, I already knew what the answers were going to be in my head. There it goes. On top of that, I’m quick with my hands — good hands lead to coordination, it always helps.”
Meanwhile, Nicole, who is also known as being the player who threatened to kill another player, broke one of the show’s rules, and incredibly, it wasn’t one about threatening to kill another player. Also incredibly, there apparently wasn’t a consequence for her rule-breaking.
Nicole went on the Internet on a hotel lobby computer, and executive producer Clay Newbill told Reality TV World, “She wasn’t supposed to do that so she broke a rule. When word of that got to me I had a discussion with all the players and basically gave them a little talking to and reminded them of the rules. It put everybody off into a bit of a bad mood.”
Winner Mark Lambert referenced that event, said that the morning of the Traveler mission, “There had been a very off-putting event that morning that put everybody off. It carried over and was still being dealt with right at the beginning of that mission. So everybody was going into that mission at first with just a bad mind set.”