Upon encountering a clue room, nearly all dungeoneers would, where possible, pick up their allowed maximum of two clue objects. (The fatal exception was Team 2 of Series 1, who only took one).

Consequently, it was expected that the team would need to use both clue objects (assuming they were the correct choices) to complete the level. However, there were several cases in which a team was able to complete a level using only one clue room item.

The reasons for this were unclear; and because the cases may seem to indicate varying leniency towards contestants, they have fuelled discussion among fans as to how fair Knightmare was.

Examples of collected but unused clue objects include:

Team 6 of Series 1: Level 2: bell

Team 2 of Series 2: Level 1: key (not cup as stated elsewhere)

Team 5 of Series 2: Level 1: silver bar

Team 10 of Series 2: Level 1: quill. Level 3: salt

Team 11 of Series 3: Level 1: bottle

Team 1 of Series 6: Level 1: bolt token

Team 5 of Series 6: Level 1: horn. Level 3: mace

Team 4 of Series 8: Level 1: hourglass

In 2021, the Temporal Discussion podcast (Series 2 Episode 12) included a message sent by Jason Karl (a.k.a. dungeoneer Julian Smith, Team 10 of Series 2) about the unused quill on Level 1 of his quest:

'The way it worked was that if we had made alternative decisions which might have presented us with other challenges, then this would perhaps have been needed. As it is, we avoided that.

A lot of it was kind of organic i.e. the producer decided what should happen next based on what the team did, and therefore sometimes things were apparently irrelevant but might not have been.'

This somewhat speculative comment on clue object usage scenarios has not been substantiated by a member of the Knightmare production crew and does not address specific unused clue objects or quests.

See also: SHIELD [Series 1 spell]

[Earlier version: 2010-05-23 12:33:02]

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