Previously on Survivor Hamilton: Old Meets New
A new season of Survivor Hamilton kicked off with an electric Immunity Challenge, with the returning players on Kobara narrowly defeating the newbies on Nevala by 3 minutes. Nevala then unanimously voted out Ross, the 21 year old student, by a vote of 14-1 after he had neglected the game’s social aspect in the crucial early days.

Now, as we near our 2nd Tribal Immunity Challenge, both tribes know what it takes to win Immunity – reaction time and team coordination (as well as following the specific instructions!). While Kobara was given a couple of days off, Nevala’s punishment for losing was Tribal Council, where despite voting out one of their own, the tribe came together in agreement on a plan. This level of cooperation will help bring Nevala together, hopefully giving them confidence in the Immunity Challenge(s) ahead, and giving Kobara something to worry about.

Because Kobara has one extra player (bye Ross!) after winning Immunity on Monday, they are given the opportunity to sit someone out of today’s Immunity Challenge. Bryan had been first to figure out the last brain-teaser, so it wasn’t going to be him. Chelsea has improv which could have an impact, but she’s another challenge asset. After not much deliberation at all, they went with the obvious choice, David C., who lives 5 hours ahead (check this place out!) and will now get to sleep this evening without worrying about answering a brain-teaser in bed. If only David C. had this option in Week 2 of Fire & Ice he may have lasted longer!

The 14 remaining players on Nevala would be much better prepared this time around. After spending a few extra, fateful minutes on Monday discussing the proper format to respond to the question with, Nevala knew they were not going to make the same mistake again. Jon was extra confident, as he was first to solve the puzzle in the last challenge. They had eliminated their most likely liability at Tribal Council, they had the belief in themselves, and now it was time to see how they could perform against Kobara with more confidence!

Here is the question we posted for our 2nd Tribal Immunity Challenge:

Only one common English word can be formed by rearranging the letters in the phrase “BY A NOSE”? What is the word?

And here’s what played out in the minutes after the question went up on the site:

I knew that this was a super easy one, but if you can believe it, some of the players complained about the difficulty of Monday’s 1+2=3 Immunity Challenge puzzle. That being said, these all-important challenges are about more than brain power – they are primarily about having your phone with you between 5pm-9pm EST on Mondays and Thursdays. Take this question for instance. Anyone who played Words With Friends knows that you can just write “BYANOSE” into Google to find any Scrabble words you can make. So assuming my hint about vegetarians didn’t give it away, the challenge began with an uptick in Google search results for BYANOSE.

After less than a minute, the answers started pouring in, and a remarkably brief but exciting battle ensued between the Survivor Hamilton veterans at Kobara, and the excitable newcomers on the Nevala Tribe. Probably because he doesn’t spend any time actually helping solve the challenge, Chris responded correctly 1st in his second Immunity Challenge, going 2 for 2. Graham followed in suit with his second 2nd place finish, and then Cowin chimed in next.

Kobara with the early 3-0 lead!

The next correct answer came from Sasha, who in 4th place totally redeemed herself from Monday’s 28th spot. Great job! With Elliott, David M. and Chelsea alternating the next 3 correct answers, it became clear that Nevala was really here to play. Kobara’s lead over Nevala now stood at 5-2, and as I saw the messaging rolling in, I had a feeling that this was going to be really close. With challenges like this, Kobara’s experience advantage is pretty much negated, and either tribe could conceivably win week to week. This was going to come down to who was furthest away from their phone. After Chelsea’s 7th place answer, came Jordan’s then Marishka’s and Ian’s responses.

6-4 Kobara. It’s looking closer see?

But then I received 5 straight Kobara answers from Bryan, James, Kyle, Amanda and Paul. That was over half of the responses required to complete the challenge and Kobara had stormed ahead with just 13 more players remaining. All of that had taken but one minute of time, and Kobara had submitted 11 of the first 15 answers. Things were starting to look shaky for Nevala as I was still waiting to hear from 10 players, while I only needed answers from 3 (three) THREE Kobaras – Silas, Peter and Jonathan.

Thankfully, April correctly answered – SOYBEAN! – yes “soybean” is the answer; I can’t believe that I didn’t mention that earlier. Anyways, April’s correct (and improving on last week’s 26th place answer) was followed by Jon, then Sharon, then DAVE, then ANDRE, then RUTH then JIMBOOOOOO!!! Nevala just went on a 7-0 run, completely and improbably deadlocking the game. Can you believe that?!?

The game now stood 11-11 with 6 players left. Last one to respond loses, and sends their tribe to Saturday’s Tribal Council.

Mercifully for Kobara, Silas was the next to answer.

12-11 Kobara.

Then a beauty of a correct answer rang in from Shareed!

Tied again. 12-12.

Then in the nick of time Peter finally (again, only 2 minutes after I posted) buzzed in.

Kobara in the lead again 13-12. They are only waiting on one player.

Then in a quarantine miracle, Wayne got his answer across the line, and blessedly not last place again like on Monday.

TIED AGAIN. 13-13.

That’s it. I was just waiting for Damien and Jonathan. Damien, who missed the first Nevala tribal meeting, was not ready to feel the heat on him. Jonathan, somewhat of an enigma, with his admittedly sensible nonchalance regarding Survivor Hamilton, was reminded of a handful of late answers last season on Fire & Ice. Who would respond first and provide safety for their tribe?

Well, the answer to that question is…

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Yo he did it! Damien, AKA the silent assassin, swooped in and stole victory from the fangs of defeat, and handed safety AND THE WEEKEND OFF for Nevala!!!

Way to go guys, that was a hard-fought victory, in which you never led until the very end. I was hoping that connecting on Wednesday night for Tribal Council really helped bring you all together. It looks like it did, I hope that this win does too!

As for Jonathan, sorry man!

Hate to single you out, but the 6 minutes it took you to respond to this question is the totally arbitrary reason that you now need to vote out one of your friends. Kobara, the tribe of champions, the snake people, the perpetually stressed out crew – they will need to spend their Saturday evening with me at Tribal Council. I didn’t think that it would happen this early, but Nevala gotter’ done and one of the returning players will be sent home this weekend.

It honestly was super close, with a mere 2 minutes separating Jonathan from Damien. But like I said earlier, the margins in this game, with these challenges, are tighter than Damien’s t-shirts, and from week to week it looks like these battles could go either way. See, kind of like snakes and mongooses eh? Eh?

So, Kobara, please get your votes into me by 8pm on Saturday. If you all agree that you’d rather do it around 6pm instead, let me know in the group chat and we can move it up. We’ll also have a video chat after the votes have been received. Good luck these next couple days. I know that many of you have been laying low, hoping not to put a target on yourself. This is a game that rewards big moves strategically, but conversely, it has shown that winning Immunity Challenges is the key to longevity for a newly forming alliance.

What will you do?

MH

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