Hannah Fry breaks her own Celebrity Traitors rule as she still faces banishment
The pressure of Hannah Fry's recruitment in The Celebrity Traitors appears to be getting to her, as the mathematician fell foul of her own 'burn vote' theory during the most recent roundtable.
As James Acaster and Maya Jama outlined in their recruitment letter, Fry is arguably the most intelligent player in the game. An award-winning professor, the University of Cambridge's first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics and host of The Rest Is Science, it's no secret that the 42-year-old is the best in the game when it comes to the numbers.
Fry had even developed an entire spreadsheet on how to catch a Traitor. However, it doesn't appear to have accounted for one scenario – Fry herself being recruited as a Traitor.
Advert
And it's here that Fry has begun to fall foul of the same tells which she outlined as methods in which suss out a Traitor.
The 'burn vote' theory
In a recent video uploaded to her YouTube channel, titled 'How would Alan Turing have played the Traitors?', Fry coined the term 'burn vote', which is where a player uses their roundtable vote to banish a player who isn't under suspicion.
"I've noticed this tendency of Traitors to throw a vote essentially when they're in the first three, four episodes when they're feeling really anxious," Fry explained to Stand-up Maths host Matt Parker.
They will just pick somebody, anybody, just pick because they don't want to go with the majority. They don't want to start their own thing. They don't really know what to do," she continued.
"So, they throw a burn vote... So, if you look in the first three or four episodes at who has voted for somebody that nobody else has voted for, you will often find a traitor "
Fry went on to explain later in the video that the odds of a Traitor panicking and submitting a burn vote proved to be 'pretty strong' statistically, with 23.5 percent of all votes cast by Traitors across every episode of the UK series, both celebrity and non-celebrity, turning out to be burn votes.
The theory is also proved correct during the first couple of episodes, as Acaster randomly voted for Michael Sheen during the second roundable.
However, Fry herself made this error while under fire during Friday's roundtable, deflecting from suspicion against her by declaring that she would be voting for Jerry Hall.
However, Fry's slip-up is unlikely to have been picked up, as the professor noted that the Faithful 'are such an absolute mess that you can't spot that signal'.
Hannah Fry and James Acaster face 'reluctant' Traitor complaints
Despite being recruited into the Traitors ranks, both Acaster and Fry have both made it pretty clear that they woud rather have been on team Faithful – and it's something which is beginning to grate on viewers.
"It is a little disappointing to have 2/3 traitors not even WANT to be a traitor..it’s so strange," complained one viewer on Reddit. "sually turret chats are so fun and conniving…it’s such a bummer to see the lack of enthusiasm."
"It’s unfortunate that James and Hannah were recruited when they really didn’t want the role," agreed a second, while a third added: "I wish we had a season of super detective James Acaster vs Big Dog Traitor Leader Richard E. Grant instead."
The reluctance of James and Hannah to scheme and enthusiastically murder their fellow contestants was also picked up by de facto Head Traitor Maya, who attempted to rally the pair at the end of last Friday's episode.
"I can’t be the only one out here killing people," she told the pair. "Where is Richard when I need him? Rich, the spirit of Rich... I need you guys to snap into that mentality... murder mode."
Topics: The Traitors, Entertainment, TV
Brenna Cooper