De må gjette svaret på utslagsspørsmålet.

They must guess the answer to the tie-breaker question.

Breakdown of De må gjette svaret på utslagsspørsmålet.

• må: must
• de: they
• på: to
• svaret: the answer

Questions & Answers about De må gjette svaret på utslagsspørsmålet.

What does De mean here, and why is it capitalized?

Here De means formal you, not they.

In Norwegian, lowercase de normally means they, but capitalized De is the old-fashioned or very formal polite form of you. It can refer to one person or more than one person, so context tells you whether it is singular or plural.

So in this sentence, De is a polite way of addressing someone directly.

Is De common in modern Norwegian?

Not very common in everyday speech.

Most modern Norwegian speakers would usually say:

Du må gjette svaret på utslagsspørsmålet.
if speaking to one person informally, or

Dere må gjette svaret på utslagsspørsmålet.
if speaking to more than one person.

Using De today often sounds very formal, distant, old-fashioned, or deliberately polite. You may still see it in older texts, in some formal service language, or in situations where someone wants to sound especially courteous.

Why is there no å before gjette?

Because må is a modal verb, and modal verbs in Norwegian are followed by the bare infinitive, without å.

So you say:

De må gjette

not

De må å gjette

This is the same pattern you get with other modal verbs:

kan gjette = can guess
skal gjette = shall / will guess
vil gjette = want to guess
bør gjette = should guess