Previously on Survivor Hamilton: Old Meets New
Our 14 remaining castaways merged into the Tendua tribe, following which they competed in their first individual Immunity Challenge. After Chris, Elliott, and Jon won Immunity, it was looking like their alliance-mates would be targeted, but once Chris played a hidden idol for Peter, their target Chelsea was sent to the Jury with only 4 of 14 votes.

Producer’s notes: Elliott recently “battled back” from Exile Island, earning a spot in the game. After some consideration, Elliott decided to give up his spot, leaving the game for personal reasons, and that’s ok. It’s happened before in this game and it may happen again; real life takes priority. In this case, so close to the start of the merge and the “battle back” twist, I decided to give his spot to someone else from Exile Island. Elliott’s vote was inconsequential to Wednesday’s outcome, and so if we simply act as if this other player came into Tendua from Exile Island instead of Elliott, we can continue playing.

Please note that the players on Exile Island spent a great deal of time this afternoon campaigning to be voted back in by their peers. This was an extensive exercise that saw 15 ex-players participate in two rounds of voting to determine who should come back and represent Exile Island in the merge. The voting was very split, with each of the 9 hopefuls receiving votes, and ultimately it came down to just 2 players, Graham and Cowin. (there were 28 total votes and Graham/Cowin only had 5 each) After a 6-5 re-re-vote, it was decided that the player returning to the game is… Graham!

It should be noted that a couple Exile Islanders neglected to vote in each round, which definitely had an impact on who made it back into the game. Additionally, when you put a bunch of “family” member on Exile Island, and those same people are given a vote for who should come back, don’t be surprised if a “family” member comes back. Please know that even Ross voted for Graham, but I didn’t even count it because he never really played the game. So Graham’s in the merge for the first time, what can he do with it, and how will it impact the future of Tendua?

Coming off of last night’s vote, Tendua was a very uneasy place to be. Over half the tribe had placed their votes on Peter, only to see Chris’ Hidden Immunity Idol thwart that plan. That fact alone would make it seem that Peter and his alliance were in danger, but we know that things are rarely that simple. Graham coming back into the game, just as Chelsea was leaving may not have too big of an immediate impact, but certainly Jordan would be happy to have his closest ally back, while April would be cautiously optimistic about being on the same tribe with her husband, and the impact that may have on her game.

The previous few votes on Kobara had shown that Chelsea had been working closely with Kyle and Sharon, who undoubtedly lost their closest ally last night. Chris “sunk their battleship” with what seemed like a lucky shot, but hidden idols will do that, and everyone should be careful what they are saying in the hours and minutes leading up to each vote. Everybody would be on their game today, because an Immunity necklace was a necessity when the future of Tendua was up in the air. So shall we find out what happened during the Immunity Challenge?

So Chris and Jon would hand back their Immunity necklaces from Monday’s challenge, and we’d only be giving out one Immunity today…

Thirteen players enter, and only one will leave victorious. For this challenge, we will be having players read a short story then answer three questions about what they’ve read. The design of this challenge is to level the playing field, because they simply need to use their eyes and fingers, with problems to solve, or maths to compute. So here’s the question:

Answer the three questions below and send the answers to me via one WhatsApp message in the format “answer 1, answer 2, answer 3”

1. Which direction does the win usually come from on warm days? 
2. What is it that squeaks and keeps the writer up all night? 
3. How many times does the writer use the word “wind”?

The answers are 1. South, 2. Weather Vane, and 3. Five.

Not everyone got the correct answer, and let’s start with those people. At time of writing this post, Sharon has still not answered. Whether it’s a hangover from Chelsea being voted out, or she’s just styling some lucky lady’s hair, Sharon is nowhere to be found!

Chris answered quickly, but ended up sending multiple messages after hitting “send” much too fast, before he had completely formatted his response. Not a great followup to Monday and last night.

Jordan wrote “South Pugilist Five” which sounds like a bluegrass quintet, but not the right answer.

Jon couldn’t back up Monday’s Immunity win, as he answered the 2nd question with “a pugilist fighting against the bell of a weather vine of church” – not close enough!

Bryan was slow as hell.

James was pretty fast but only counted 4 instances of “wind” in the excerpt.

Ruth was correct but 3 minutes too late.

David C. was correct but 2 minutes too late.

Kyle was correct but 1 minute too late.

Paul wrote “bells of a weather pane” as his answer to the 2nd question, and counted “wind” only 4 times, which disqualified him – a huge shame considering he was first overall to answer.

That leaves us only with Peter, April, and Graham.

So what do we see here? We see that Paul was indeed the first to respond, but unfortunately was incorrect. Then we see 3 correct answers in a row.

Of those, April was 3rd place. Very fast, but not fast enough.

Peter was the 2nd to respond correctly. He followed his answer up with a cocky “winner winner chicken dinner” message, hereby disqualifying him. Good thing he wasn’t first or else this disqualification for not following my rules would have really pissed Peter off.

And then implausibly, just like Elliott on Monday, Graham is able to win individual Immunity with a fast and correct response!

Oh boy, how is this going to go down on Tendua? A majority was able to come together earlier this week to target Peter, who almost won Immunity today, but couldn’t pull it out. Would the majority re-form and go after the same target? Would Graham swapping for Elliott make a huge difference? Exile Island can certainly be proud of their boy for representing today – maybe the brief time off re-energized him!

I simply cannot wait to see what the vote on Saturday will hold, because we know the last one came down to the wire. Tribal Council will be at 6:15pm again, and I’m thinking it’s going to be even more intense than the last one.

Good luck everybody!

MH

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