Previously on Survivor Hamilton: Old Meets New
As we get closer to reaching out Top 10, Tendua experienced another exciting Tribal Council. With Paul wearing the Immunity necklace and no Hidden Immunity Idols played, the players found themselves in a 6-6 tie between Sharon and Peter, with Sharon sent to the Jury on the re-vote. The third woman in a row sent to Jury – for shame!

With another very close Tribal Council in the books, Tendua would be finding every vote from this point harder than the last. Sharon had received 24 votes over the course of the game, and thus was the easy target for half of Tendua. The other half targeted Peter for the 2nd time in 3 Tribal Councils, but again fell short of sending him to the Jury. Did this mean that they no longer had the votes necessary to vote Peter out? Would the 6 that targeted Sharon continue to work together to go after the other half?

Immunity would be more important than ever with so much on the line. Nobody could be sure who would be the ultimate target on Saturday, but everyone should at least be prepared that it could be them. It was refreshing to see most of the players continuing to work hard on each of these votes. Obviously real life takes priority, and these players can’t spend every day strategizing (well most of them can’t) but a lot of effort is going in and I really appreciate it.

I can’t wait to see who wins the Immunity necklace, and safety at Tribal Council, so I think we should just get to it..

For today’s challenge I was originally going to list a number of quotes related to Donald Trump’s crimes and ask to count specific letters, and then I decided to use some more uplifting quotes. And who’s more uplifting than Mr. Rogers?

1. “All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we’re giving or receiving help, each one of us has something valuable to bring to this world. That’s one of the things that connects us as neighbors–in our own way, each one of us is a giver and a receiver.” – How many ‘a’s are in quote #1?
2. “Real strength has to do with helping others”– How many ‘e’s are in quote #2?
3. “Love is like infinity: You can’t have more or less infinity, and you can’t compare two things to see if they’re ‘equally infinite.’ Infinity just is, and that’s the way I think love is, too.”– How many ‘i’s are in quote #3?
4. “In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.”– How many ‘o’s are in quote #4?
5. “As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has- or ever will have- something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.”– How many ‘u’s are in quote #5?

Add up the requested totals from each quote and send me the overall sum.

So the expectation that I had was that each player would use a different technique to figure it out. I personally pasted each quote individually into Word, then CTRL+F’d a, then e, then i, then o, then u. Apparently I needed to explain that both upper and lower case numbers should count? If I had written AEIOU would the players have only counted the upper case letters? Because many players read what I wrote above and only counted the lower case ones. Seriously, I guess I should have written “please count both upper and lower case letters, right?” Hold everyone’s hands while I’m at it? Maybe just tell everyone what the answer is to save myself the trouble?

Anyways, MY answer was 61 (14+4+20+12+11) and 2 of our 11 players got it right, while many players seemingly only counted the lower case vowels – which I guess I should have foreseen? As you can tell, I’m writing this as the answers come in, and the Tendua group chat is poppin’ with questions about upper and lower case. The above frustration is likely a projection onto the players for missing a potential different interpretation yet again…

Anyways, in reverse order, this is how it played out.

Peter was the last to answer (c’mon dude!) with 61.

David C. was 2nd last to answer (makes sense!) with 54.

Jordan was slower than normal with an answer of 55.

Chris answered 51, then 61, which disqualified him, but he knew that.

April answered 57.

Between April and Graham’s identical answers was Paul, with 60.

Graham, like April answered 57.

James also answered 57.

Jon, the 3rd to answer, buzzed in with 61. My man!

Bryan used spreadsheet formulas to quickly answer 51.

The first to answer was Kyle, with 57.

So as far as I’m concerned, the answer was 61, which means that for the 2nd time this season, the winner of individual Immunity is… Jon!

Good win. I assume Jon did something similar to me to figure out the answer, and I’m glad that at least someone got it right, AND was fast. In my mind Jon earned this 2nd Immunity and safety from Tribal Council just when he may need it after Sharon called him out last night.

Our next Tribal Council will take place at 8:15pm on Saturday, where as a group you will decide who will (and who will not) make the Top 10.

Happy strategizing!

MH

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