'So You Think You Can Dance': Predicting who'll go home is, like, hard!

It has been five days since the Top 20 on this season’s So You Think You Can Dance first strut their stuff, and I gotta say, I’m pretty stoked: Other than couples Asuka & Vitolio, Jonathan & Karla, and Tony & Paris — i.e. last week’s bottom three couples — the rest of the dancers were all effin’ terrific. But I have to admit, I’m also pretty worried, since it’s clear that given the high caliber of dancing this season, figuring out which high-steppers are going home is going to become really hard, really fast, and I’m supposed to be the “expert” on EW.com’s SYTYCD Prediction Challenge. Instead, I’m just 303rd out of 2,196-and-counting players, and although I think that’s in something like the 85th percentile (stat geeks, help me out here with the math), I really ought to be doing better.

In fact, I was doing a bit better — in 268th place, in fact — but, well, I kinda messed up. Beyond predicting who you think is going home, you also answer a series of tie-breaker-y questions, like Who will cry during the results show? My answer: No one, and to my buck-stops-here eye last Thursday, no one indeed cried any on-camera tears, ergo no one is crying, ergo point to ABV. But here’s the thing: Kicked-off dancer Paris (pictured, with host Cat Deeley) was all with the welling up with tears, if not the all with the letting those tears tumble forth for the TV cameras to drink up their sweet, sweet nectar. (Because when it comes to reality TV, we all know tears are second to none.) Since there were tears produced (if not visibly shed), some players on the SYTYCD Prediction Challenge who had predicted that “the kicked-off female dancer” would cry on Thursday’s show rightly called shenanigans. And so, today, we awarded one point to those players too, hence my downgraded standing in the ranks. The lesson in all this? Don’t include any questions that would be easily open to interpretation, like if a dancer is indeed crying, or whether judge Nigel Lythgoe’s hair is a 21st century mullet or a Florence Henderson circa The Brady Bunch bob.

After the jump, you can get a look at which unfortunate dancers are currently leading the pack of gonna-get-sent-home predictions. You should also check out SYTYCD host Cat Deeley’s inaugural PopWatch blog post letting us see the show from her wily eyes. And, of course, if you’ve read this far, you might as well sign up for the SYTYCD Challenge and see what all the heated controversy is about for yourself!