Previously on Survivor Hamilton: Old Meets New
At one of the most honest AND awkward Tribal Councils of the season, Ulloo laid it all out there after 4 players dominated Monday’s Immunity Challenge, and 1 player “didn’t” – despite having a pretty good reason. The result of Tribal Council was that Sasha went home, when many players had expected A) Ruth to go home and B) a Hidden Immunity Idol to be played. Since neither of those things happened, we sense the drama on Ulloo is not over with.

When Dave was voted out on the weekend he talked about how much he enjoyed his time on Kobara. This is a team for prioritizes conversation, positivity, jokes, memes, and GIFs. They work well together on challenges, and the don’t give anyone too hard a time if they lose. These are the reasons why they’ve been so strong in challenges so far, aside from the fact that Kobara does also contain a lot of experience. But when they do lose, that’s when the wheels have come off, alliances are tested, and paranoia arises.

Average Rank since the Tribe Swap:
Chelsea: 7.7
Kyle, Sharon: 8.8
Cowin: 8.9
Graham: 9.2
Jordan: 10.9

As you can see, the 6 players on Kobara have been remarkably consistent over the 7 Immunity Challenges, without an obvious weak link. Sharon had drastically turned it around since her time on Nevala by virtue of experience and guidance from the OG Kobara players. Chelsea had continued her strong performances all season, while Cowin and Graham maintained their overall Top 5 ranking despite a little slippage since the swap. Kyle and Jordan had maintained a level of consistency all season, with their 7 week average closely matching their 14 week one.

One thing was for sure. The players on Kobara knew ANYTHING could happen if they lost today’s Immunity Challenge, and they would do whatever it takes to maintain their dominance. After all, with the exception of Sharon, the rest of Kobara had only participated in 3-4 Tribal Councils all season long, a feat worth continuing.

Nevala was down to 5 players after the elimination of Dave over the weekend, and with all 5 remaining castaways part of the same alliance, Nevala DEFINITELY did not want to go back to Tribal Council. On Monday’s challenge, Nevala was very slow out of the gate and were only saved by David C.’s last-place response. With seemingly no players being assigned specific roles to efficiently solve the question, a leader in these challenges would need to emerge or else Nevala could continue to struggle.

Average Rank since the Tribe Swap:
Jon: 7.0
James: 10.2
Amanda: 11.9
Peter: 12.4
Chris: 14.7

With only 16 players left in the game, Chris’ average could absolutely not continue, and he’d need to be very careful with his next few answers or else his own alliance could turn on him. Jon has long been the top performer from original Nevala, gradually improving his Immunity Challenge performances over the season. After Bryan, it was actually Jon who’d performed best overall since the Tribe Swap. So perhaps it was time for him to take the leadership role on a Nevala team that he alone had been a part of since the very beginning of the game.

Overall, Nevala was measurably worse in Immunity Challenges since the Tribe Swap than Kobara and Ulloo, and that would need to change asap. While Amanda had remained very consistent all season long, James had been gradually improving (not at the rate of Jon but still), while Peter had once again let real-life responsibilities begin to chip away a little at his attention to Survivor Hamilton. In the next few challenges before the merge all of Nevala would need to improve, or else all of Nevala could not be confident they would even make the merge.

And then there’s Ulloo, where things couldn’t be clearer. For the second vote in a row, the 4 player majority of Bryan, David C., Paul and April split the votes on Ruth and Sasha in hopes of both eliminating one of them, and flushing out a Hidden Immunity Idol. While the first goal was finally accomplished with Sasha (Ulloo’s 2nd strongest challenge performer behind Bryan) being voted out, the idol was still not played. This meant that one of the following 3 scenarios had occurred:

1. Sasha went home with an idol
2. Sasha gave Ruth the idol and the majority guessed (and voted) wrong
3. Neither Ruth or Sasha had an idol in the first place

Because nobody could be sure which of those was true, the whole team, and David C. in particular given his last 2 performances, would need to be on their game tonight. Another loss or two and the majority of 4 would need to start looking inward, which of course they didn’t want, no matter how badly they thought they needed to vote Ruth out.

For her part, Ruth had fully expected to receive the majority of votes last night at Tribal Council. She had been through so many battles on Nevala and Ulloo, and was just about ready to pack it in – despite such a strong game so far. All she could control now was her own challenge performance, and hope that the rest of the tribe would match her intensity now that her closest ally Sasha was out. I believe in Ulloo and I hope that they do too, because since the Tribe Swap these players have a stronger average than even Kobara!

For today’s Immunity Challenge Kobara has one extra player, so they would need to sit someone out. They decided (since was finally back at work!) to allow Sharon to sit out for her second time of the season. That means that each team will be competing with 5 players.

With that out of the way, we can get right to the challenge question, no QUESTIONS! We decided that each team would need to answer TWO questions on this challenge, with 3 players answering Question #1, and 2 answering Question #2 for each team. The goal is to see how well they not only solve the questions, but coordinate as a tribe to ensure that they follow the instructions. Here are the questions:

Question #1 (3 Players from each team must answer): 
A certain five-digit zip code has no repeated digits. The third digit is double the last digit. The fourth digit is two less than the third digit. The second digit is two more than the third digit. The first digit is the sum of the last two.
What is this five-digit zip code number?

Question #2 (2 Players from each team must answer):
“The competitor on top was slim and trim.” 
Find the national capital hidden in the above sentence.

With two questions to solve, one simple math, and one simply using eyes and a basic understanding of geography (and knowing what Canada’s capital city is NOT) – the teams would need to coordinate their answers on top of solving for the answers. Some players had proven adept at following rules, while others still had to learn that the hard way. But when the first answers came in, color me surprised!

Question #1 Answer: 78643
Question #2 Answer: Lima

I could see all 3 teams working diligently to assign their players to the two questions, while beginning to solve Question #1. Amazingly, the first answer came from Jon, who continued his post Tribe Swap dominance, followed by his Nevala mates Amanda and Chris. This was exactly the start that Nevala needed, and all they needed to do now was take their time and be careful with Question #2.

Kobara: 0
Nevala: 3
Ulloo: 0

So would Nevala answer the 2nd question first, or would the other teams start submitting their answers? We wouldn’t need to wait long, because Nevala was on a roll. They were so fast today that they didn’t even pay attention to my instructions to “take the time to ensure you had the correct answer”, because they fell for question’s trap. Without taking the time to SOLVE THEIR QUESTION THEMSELVES, both Peter and James sent in “Toronto” – despite the fact that every young Canadian is taught so early in school that Toronto is Ontario’s capital, not our National capital. That meant both of their answers would not count, and Nevala was unfortunately capped at 3 points.

With no answers yet from Kobara or Ulloo, it was still anybody’s game.

So which team would be next? Fresh off Tribal Council last night, Ulloo had come to play. Ruth answered Question #1 correctly, followed by Bryan and Paul, scoring a total of 3 points for Ulloo. But Kobara was right on their tail. Graham, Chelsea and Cowin also responded correctly for Kobara 2 minutes later, with the snakes joining the owls on the board.

Kobara: 3
Nevala: 3
Ulloo: 3

If Kobara and Ulloo made the same mistake as Nevala, we’d actually see a Nevala victory today since they would be the first tribe to 3 points. In that case, speed would trump accuracy. But it was not that case. April and David C. and their teammates correctly identified “Lima” in the sentence, then confirmed that Lima was in fact a national capital, and then sent me the answers. Yay!

Ulloo wins Immunity! What a relief it must be for Ulloo after just having Tribal Council last night. They earned the weekend off, and I congratulate them!

Kobara: 3
Nevala: 3
Ulloo: 5 – Immunity #1

But back to business, we were still waiting to see if Kyle and Jordan would answer correctly for Kobara. If not, then we’d see Nevala join Ulloo with Immunity for the weekend. If they were correct, then Kobara would be our second winning team.

Then, inexplicably, Kyle answered “Ottawa”. Yes Kyle, we know that Ottawa is Canada’s capital, but that was not the question. Likely making the same mistake as Peter and James, Kyle used what he saw from the group chat to submit his answer, which is the WRONG thing to do in an Immunity Challenge. I, and Kobara, expect a lot more from Kyle with such high stakes, and now it would be up to Jordan to get it right and win Immunity for Kobara.

Jordan had been waiting all season for his first moment of glory, but would it come today?

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The answer is yes! Jordan correctly answered “Lima”, and Kobara let out a sigh of relief heard all the way in Oshawa. That means…

Kobara wins Immunity, sending Nevala to Tribal Council for their 2nd Saturday in a row. Sucks to be the mongooses eh!?!?

Final Score:
Kobara: 4 – Immunity #2
Nevala: 3
Ulloo: 5 – Immunity #1

So back to back Saturdays with me is both a blessing and a curse. For one thing we get to socialize with eachother and discuss this game that we all love so much (right!?!? tell me I’m good), but for another thing somebody would need to be voted out. Maybe it’s true that Nevala is cursed – Jon will need to be the judge of that when all is said and done – but for now these players that had formed a voting block of 5 would now need to cannibalize one of their own. There’s a lot of history in this tribe, so maybe everything was not so cut and dry…

We will find out on Saturday.

For shame…

MH

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