Only Connect Viewers Spotted A Tiny Harry Potter Detail That Turned A Fiendish Question Into A Debate

A seemingly brilliant Only Connect connection left viewers debating whether the BBC quiz had made a tiny but significant mistake.

During the first semi-final of Series 19, the Thrifters faced the Suncatchers in a match that eventually went to a tie-break. But before the contest reached its dramatic conclusion, one particularly elaborate Harry Potter-themed question caught the attention of viewers at home.

The intended answer was actors from the Wizarding World who appeared in In Bruges, Martin McDonagh’s 2008 dark comedy.

There was just one problem.

One of those actors was Colin Farrell, who appears in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as Percival Graves. The film eventually reveals that Graves is actually Gellert Grindelwald in disguise. Some viewers therefore argued that calling Farrell the actor who played Grindelwald was technically incorrect.

Others thought the wording could be justified.

That small distinction turned an already difficult Only Connect puzzle into a debate that continued even after the answer had been revealed.

The Harry Potter Clues That Had Everyone Stumped

The question appeared during round one of the first Series 19 semi-final, which aired on January 8, 2024. The Thrifters were playing the Suncatchers when they were given four clues:

“Grindelwald is the younger of the two main characters.”

“Fleur Delacour dates Grindelwald.”

“Mad-Eye Moody is the older of the main characters.”

“Lord Voldemort is the boss of Grindelwald and Mad-Eye Moody.”

The clues seemed to describe a bizarre set of relationships inside the Harry Potter universe.

That was the point.

Rather than identifying a connection between Grindelwald, Fleur Delacour, Mad-Eye Moody and Lord Voldemort themselves, the teams needed to think about the actors who played those characters.

Neither team managed to reach the connection.

When Victoria Coren Mitchell revealed the answer, the apparently nonsensical clues suddenly fell into place:

Wizarding World actors in In Bruges.

The puzzle was built around four performers who appear in both the Wizarding World films and Martin McDonagh’s 2008 movie.

The connection is real. The argument was over one particular name.

How In Bruges Solved The Puzzle

The first three links are relatively straightforward once the actors are identified.

Ralph Fiennes, who played Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter films, plays Harry Waters, the ruthless crime boss in In Bruges.

Brendan Gleeson, familiar to Potter fans as Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, plays Ken.

Clémence Poésy, who portrayed Fleur Delacour, plays Chloë.

Then comes Colin Farrell.

Farrell plays Ray, the younger of the two central hitmen, opposite Gleeson’s Ken. Chloë, played by Poésy, becomes romantically involved with Ray, while Fiennes’s Harry is the boss who sends Ray and Ken to Bruges.

Those relationships explain every part of the Only Connect clue.

The four Wizarding World characters were essentially acting as substitutes for the four actors’ names. Once the clues were translated back into performers, the connection pointed directly to In Bruges. The film’s cast confirms Farrell as Ray, Gleeson as Ken, Fiennes as Harry and Poésy as Chloë.

It is exactly the sort of lateral leap the programme is designed to reward.

But the Colin Farrell clue left some viewers unconvinced.

The Colin Farrell Problem

The issue comes from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, released in 2016.

Colin Farrell plays Percival Graves, the powerful Director of Magical Security at MACUSA.

For much of the film, the audience knows the character as Graves. Near the end, however, it is revealed that Graves is actually Gellert Grindelwald, who has been using a magical disguise.

The distinction matters because Farrell’s on-screen role is credited as Percival Graves.

When the disguise is removed, Grindelwald is portrayed by Johnny Depp. Mads Mikkelsen later took over the role of Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.

That led some Only Connect viewers to object to the clue’s wording.

Their argument was simple: Farrell played Percival Graves, not Grindelwald. So describing Farrell as someone who played Grindelwald could be seen as technically inaccurate.

The criticism gained particular attention because Only Connect routinely asks contestants to distinguish between very precise facts, identities and relationships. A tiny discrepancy in a clue can be enough to change an answer.

And here, the discrepancy involved the identity of a character who was deliberately disguised.

Why The Clue Can Still Be Defended

There is another way to look at it.

The twist in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them establishes that the person Farrell portrays as Graves is Grindelwald in disguise. In story terms, the character occupying Graves’s identity throughout much of the film is ultimately revealed to be Grindelwald.

That gives the Only Connect clue a defensible interpretation.

The disagreement therefore isn’t really about whether the four actors appeared in In Bruges. They did. The question is whether Colin Farrell can reasonably be described as having played Grindelwald when his credited character is Percival Graves, whose true identity is revealed to be Grindelwald.

It depends on how literally the clue is read.

Under the strict reading, Farrell played Graves.

Under the narrative reading, Farrell portrayed Grindelwald while Grindelwald was disguised as Graves.

That distinction was enough to split viewers.

A Question Some Viewers Thought Was Brilliant

Not everyone watching at home saw the disputed wording as a problem.

Some viewers instead focused on how cleverly the question had been constructed. One fan described it as a potential favourite Only Connect question, particularly because of the unlikely crossover between the Wizarding World and In Bruges.

The structure is certainly intricate.

The clues begin with familiar Harry Potter characters, but their relationships do not make much sense when taken at face value.

Once the characters are converted into actors, the picture changes completely.

Grindelwald represents Colin Farrell, who is the younger of the two principal characters in In Bruges.

Fleur Delacour represents Clémence Poésy, whose Chloë dates Farrell’s Ray.

Mad-Eye Moody represents Brendan Gleeson, who plays Ken, the older of the two main characters.

And Lord Voldemort represents Ralph Fiennes, whose Harry is the boss of both men.

The four clues therefore form a chain leading to the same film.

The official cast information for In Bruges lists Farrell as Ray, Gleeson as Ken, Fiennes as Harry and Poésy as Chloë.

The puzzle’s difficulty comes from making viewers take several mental steps before reaching the answer. First they have to recognize the Wizarding World references, then realize that the characters themselves are not the answer, and finally identify the actors and the film they share.

That is a particularly Only Connect way of constructing a question.

The Debate Wasn’t The Only Drama In The Semi-Final

The disputed clue came in a semi-final that was already remarkably close.

The first semi-final of Series 19 featured the Thrifters and Suncatchers and was broadcast on January 8, 2024.

By the end of the Missing Vowels round, the teams were level at 20-20, forcing the match into a tie-break. Contemporary coverage of the episode confirms that the score was tied and that the Thrifters won the deciding question.

Under the show’s tie-break format, only the team captains could answer.

With a place in the grand final at stake, the Thrifters successfully negotiated the final question and advanced.

The Suncatchers did not disappear from the competition altogether. They went on to the third-place play-off, while the Thrifters continued towards the Series 19 final.

The episode’s position in the series is also confirmed by episode listings: it was the first semi-final, following the quarter-finals and preceding the second semi-final, third-place play-off and final.

Why One Tiny Detail Caused Such A Big Argument

Disagreements over quiz questions are hardly unusual, but Only Connect makes these disputes especially entertaining because the programme is built around precision.

Its questions often present apparently unrelated information and ask contestants to identify the exact relationship between them. A clue can look completely meaningless until one small detail unlocks the pattern.

That makes viewers particularly alert to technicalities.

In this case, the intended connection was clear once the answer was given. Four Wizarding World characters corresponded to actors who appeared together in In Bruges. The cast links themselves are straightforward: Colin Farrell as Ray, Brendan Gleeson as Ken, Clémence Poésy as Chloë and Ralph Fiennes as Harry.

The complication was Farrell’s Wizarding World character.

He is credited as Percival Graves in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, while the film’s ending reveals Graves to be Grindelwald in disguise. That means both sides of the argument were focusing on different aspects of the same plot twist.

For critics of the clue, the character’s credited identity was what mattered.

For those defending it, the eventual revelation of Graves’s true identity made the description reasonable.

Neither interpretation changes the underlying In Bruges connection. It simply changes how precisely one believes the Colin Farrell clue should be phrased.

And that is what made the moment so fitting for Only Connect.

The teams had to work out an extraordinarily obscure connection. Then, after the answer was revealed, viewers at home found themselves debating an even smaller connection: whether Colin Farrell played Grindelwald, or whether he played the man Grindelwald was pretending to be.

For a programme built around the tiniest links between seemingly unrelated things, it was an unusually appropriate controversy.