Previously on Survivor Hamilton: Old Meets New
Our Top 8 week was certainly eventful as we saw a three round tournament with many close calls result in a victory for Graham. Following that event was one of our most surprising Tribal Councils all season long where Jordan changed his vote and used his Hidden Immunity Idol at the last second to save James, and send season favorite Kyle to the Jury.

And now, with Kyle’s exit, we are down to 7. The three “bastards” are still here, surprising as that may be, as a result of Jordan’s idol play. That was a huge move that changes the trajectory of the remainder of the game, and we will see how that decision impacts Jordan’s own family member alliance with April and Graham. They’d been working with Kyle for a number of weeks (whether by desire or necessity) but he was a huge threat to get to the end, and now he’s off the board. The player Kyle’s departure has the biggest immediate impact for is Bryan.

STILL stuck between two 3-person alliances, Bryan lost his closest remaining ally and the only player in the same position he was in. Now he’d have a really tough decision to make. It may be more complicated than this, but the clearest outcome here is that Bryan would need to choose between the alliances. It would be tough to go over the Chris, James and Jon since he’d been working with the family since the merge hit, and with April since before then. But how well could he trust them now that Jordan had gone rogue? Was that just one vote? Or was Bryan in danger next? The only thing that Bryan could be sure of was that he needed some of his Immunity Challenge dominance to show up today.

And speaking of, let’s get to today’s challenge for our 7 remaining players…

The challenge was a little different this time around, testing knowledge of movies, Google searching release dates, and some simply addition. And maybe there was a little trick thrown in there accidentally!

1. Not telling the truth, twice
2. Burrowing rodent, 24 hours
3. An evil entity in designer clothes
4. Education about stone 
5. Body of water, not quite a dozen 

Solve the clues, add up the digits in the release years, add up those sums for your Total Sum, and send me that Total Sum as quickly as possible.

So the players would solve the clues above, name the movies, check the ORIGINAL release dates, add the digits up and send me the sum. Going too quickly here would be the downfall of many a player, because as you’ll see here are the movies and their release dates:

1. Liar Liar (1997)
2. Groundhog Day (1993)
3. The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
4. School of Rock (2003)
5. Ocean’s 11 (1960, then 2001)

I must admit that in my haste I too forgot about the original Ocean’s 11, but boy am I glad that I wrote “look up the original Release Date of each film” because that gave me the authority to count the original Ocean’s 11. Still, it’s a little too tricksy for my taste and I wish it would be more clear-cut, but here we are. I purposefully haven’t done trick questions all game long, but honestly the thing to remember is you need to submit the “likely correct answer, or the most correct answer” and sometimes that takes a double-check. Let’s break down the results:

The last player to answer was James, who was probably still working and submitted 63, which was incorrect.

Chris was 2nd last with an answer of 66, wrong again, and not a great start for his alliance.

The 5th player to answer was Jon, who submitted 64, which would have been correct if there hadn’t been an original Ocean’s 11 in 1960.

Jordan was actually 2nd to respond, but then answered again, and again, deleting along the way before he ended at his “most” wrong answer of 63. Still coming down off of last night’s Tribal Council eh big boy?

Officially the 3rd player to answer was April. As usual, her answer arrived to me only moments after Graham’s identical answer. It seems they always work together, but April’s answer always comes after Graham’s. What’s the point of working together if you’re always going to be 2nd to respond? Solve the questions solo and you’ll both have better results!

So as I mentioned, Graham was 2nd to answer with 77, which was the “most correct” answer, given that Ocean’s 11’s ORIGINAL release date was 1960.

And that means Bryan’s quickest answer of 64, which I’d LOVE to have accepted, will not count. That little bit of rushing makes all the difference today for Bryan who as I mentioned really needed this one.

So, for the 2nd Immunity Challenge in a row, and 3rd this season, the winner of individual Immunity is…

So we’ll be having our next Tribal Council on Saturday at 8:15pm, when 7 will become 6. Thanks for playing in yet another different style challenge, and I will sympathize with players who quickly skimmed the instructions and submitted their answers quickly, but there’s a reason I start every challenge with “READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!!!” because it’s not just speed that counts, but accuracy and in this case those instructions led to some players taking that extra step, while others didn’t, and that’s the difference.

As always, the Immunity Challenge only determines who can’t be voted for. It’s up to the other 6 players to make their cases, create a plan, and convince the others that there’s a better target than they are. That’s the real game, and all of our remaining players are very experienced by now. Take your future into your own hands, because the easy path is almost never the right one.

Good luck!

MH

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