Ejercicio Opció B - 3 · Inglés PAU Baleares Ordinaria 2024

OPCIÓ B

Read the passage carefully and answer the questions in English. USE YOUR OWN WORDS AS FAR AS POSSIBLE.

Mysterious masked guards in pink boiler suits, a singing giant doll, and a life-changing sum of money... This can only mean the return of Squid Game

The Netflix hit has come back to our screens, but this time with a reality game show spin-off called Squid Game: The Challenge. Over 450 real players battle it out for a $4.56m (£3.66m) prize, one of the biggest cash prizes in TV history.

The show kicks off with hundreds of contestants in green tracksuits trying to cross a line without being seen. Their mission is to get past a 4.2m doll that is furiously spinning her neck. In Red Light, Green Light, radio-controlled exploding dye takes out the players who have tripped over—instead of a fatal bullet as in the fictional version. "It felt like it was real, it didn't feel like you were in a fictional place", Lorenzo Nobilio told BBC News. He described it as the physically hardest game on the show: "I made it past the line in seven hours, that was a very long time, but it's called Squid Game: The Challenge, it's not an all-inclusive holiday in the Canary Islands".

The show made headlines earlier this year because some of the contestants received medical treatment during filming and complained about the cold conditions during freezing UK weather. The huge prize attracted applications from 81,000 people from around the globe which were finally cut down to 456 apparently normal people—unlike the similar Netflix reality competition show Physical: 100, which gathered a hundred South Korean competitors at peak fitness, including national athletes and bodybuilders. Squid Game: The Challenge players ranged from a mother and son to the oldest contestant at the age of 69. "We were interested in the games as a test of human nature, so we wanted the widest possible variety of people", explained one of the show's executive producers, John Hay.

When the players were not participating in original games from the series like intricately cutting out umbrella-shaped honeycomb wafers with a needle, they were fully immersed in the Squid Game universe—no phones, confined to a prison-style dormitory, sleeping on five-bed-high bunk beds, and surviving on rationed food served by threatening guards. The Big Brother-like living space also provided ample time for alliances to form. In this new edition, players were also given chances to eliminate others, as part of the producers' aim to create drama and reveal players' characters between games.

The drama's creator Hwang Dong-hyuk had previously said the story "was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society". In the original drama, Netflix's most watched series, South Korean contestants with many debts competed in a series of children's games for a huge cash prize won only by the last surviving player. Executive producer Hay points out that this show is flipped so it's driven by opportunity rather than need. "We are giving them the most enormous opportunity and it turns out that's as strong as a motivation and story".

Adapted from BBC News, November 2023

3. Find in the text words or phrases which mean the same as the ones below. In the case of verbs, ONLY infinitive forms will be accepted (1 point):

1)

A thin metal pin, used in sewing, that is pointed at one end and has a hole for thread. (0,25)

2)

To start or initiate something, often an event, activity, or process. (0,25)

3)

The title of a story in a newspaper, or the main points in a piece of news that is broadcast on television or radio. (0,25)

4)

Something, especially money, that is owed to someone else. (0,25)