Make your picks, and think as little as possible please.

Because Survivor doesn't even bother making up exotic names for where it is anymore

It’s time once more to pick the winner of the upcoming season of Survivor based only upon your gut instinct and their bio picture.

In addition to picking the ultimate winner – something our readers have proven very capable of doing – you can also make some wild predictions.

Here was one prediction that came true last season:

JT will win! Coach will slay a physical dragon and eat its heart on live TV at the finale.

Ok… well… maybe only part of that one came true – but you get the idea.

Here is the link for the CBS Survivor Season 19 Bio Pictures to get you started. Enjoy!

If you want two chances to win, you can also go over to Pace’s blog and vote there. (I guess he got sick of waiting for me to put this post up)

Note: Actually thinking about this, reading bios, or doing anything more than looking at pictures and picking the winner with the kind of thought that a pigeon puts into picking a french fry to eat is considered cheating.

Survivor Tocantins: The Brazilian Highlands

It’s time once more to pick the winner of the upcoming season of Survivor based only upon your gut instinct and their bio picture.

In addition to picking the ultimate winner – something our readers have proven very capable of doing – you can also make some wild predictions.

Here was one prediction that came true last season: 

Bob will win the entire thing. On the survivor finale / reunion show, he will create a major stir when he appears in his normal hair and makeup and reveals to the world that he is actually Anderson Cooper.

Ok… well… maybe only part of that one came true – but you get the idea. 

Here is the link for the CBS Survivor Season 18 Bio Pictures to get you started. Enjoy!

As a bonus category – of special interest to all of Pace‘s friends at VitalSmarts – you can also make a prediction of the “Castaway you predict is in most need of Crucial Conversations Training.” (Which is obviously a subjective category, so I will just randomly pick the winner on this one)

Surivor “Gabon” starts tonight next thursday. It will be the first season of Survivor broadcast in high definition – which sounds great until you realize that in every episode of survivor at least 10% of the available screen real estate consists of blurred-out boobs and butt cracks. I guess the nature scenes where they juxtapose animals eating each other with castaways talking strategy might better in HD. (I know I can’t wait to see a spider eat a big bug in HD).

Surivor “Gabon” starts tonight next thursday. It will be the first season of Survivor broadcast in high definition – which sounds great until you realize that in every episode of survivor at least 10% of the available screen real estate consists of blurred-out boobs and butt cracks. I guess the nature scenes where they juxtapose animals eating each other with castaways talking strategy might better in HD. (I know I can’t wait to see a spider eat a big bug in HD).

Rather than do a full-on fantasy survivor this season we’re going to go back to the old tried-and-true “pick the winner based on pictures alone.” For bonus points, you can make wild predictions about individual castaways as well. 

To view the contestants, visit CBS’s website and go to the “survivor 17 bio page”

As always, post your entries in the comments. 

Here’s an example of a proper entry:

“I predict that Gillian, despite her arthritis and dementia, will win. I also make the following wild predictions:

Danny is lazy, and his laziness will contribute to his downfall.

Jessica will sleep with at least one guy on the island. Probably Randy. This affair will end his marriage, but will launch his career as a reality-show circuit star. He and Jessica (Sugar) will eventually have their own show on E.”

The more bold and crazy the predictions, the better. If the predictions come right, a wild and crazy prediction will be worth as many points as guessing the winner of the show.

Ryan 140 points
Nicole 132 points
Aubrey 122 points
Marla 107 points

The finals points for each player were as follows:

Todd 44 points
Jean-Robert 35 points
Amanda 33 points
James 33 points
Frosti 30 points
Courtney 29 points
Erik 28 points
Jaime 24 points
Sherea 20 points
Ashley 18 points
Denise 17 points
Aaron 14 points
Chicken 11 points

And Aubrey came the closest to picking the winner when she picked Amanda.

Surivors and their points:

Only survivors who are on RyeBlog teams are included in this list.

RyeBlog leaderboard:

Surivors and their points:

Only survivors who are on RyeBlog teams are included in this list.

RyeBlog leaderboard:

Survivor China is here!

Survivor starts tonight, and as always RyeBlog has some competitions based on it. This year, Survivor the show will be slightly different – and understanding these differences may influence how you play the games on RyeBlog.

According to Mark Burnett:

We got rid of exile island. We still have a hidden immunity idol but it is right under their noses.

According to the wikipedia:

In lieu of Exile Island, the game gives the tribes the ability to kidnap a player from the opposing tribe as part of winning a reward challenge; the kidnapped player remains with that team through the next immunity challenge and will receive a clue to the location of an immunity idol at that camp.

Competition #1 – Pick winner based on pictures alone

How to compete:

1. Go to http://www.cbs.com/survivor/
2. Use your mouse to learn the names of the different faces on the top of the page.
3. Use your intuition to pick a winner based on their picture.
4. Post your winner here in the comments.

Tiebreaker:

• Pick the 2nd place person based on a picture alone

Competition #2 – FANTASY SURVIVOR

For this competition, you pick five people and you get points based on what happens to those five people throughout the show. You can look over the scoring categories before picking the five people, or you can just pick five random people. Sure, it might come down to 99% luck – but so does Fantasy Football and people still like playing that!

Scoring:

1. Each vote cast against a member of your team gives you 2 points.
2. If the team your survivor is on wins immunity, you receive 1 point.
3. Each week your survivor is on the show, you get 1 point.
4. If a survivor wins individual immunity, you receive 5 points.
5. If a survivor is “kidnapped” by the other tribe, you receive 1 point.
6. If a survivor goes home for a self-inflicted injury, you receive 5 points.
7. If a survivor goes home for a pre-existing medical condition, you lose 5 points.
8. If a survivor goes home because another survivor attacked him and mortally wounded him, you receive 15 points. The survivor who does the wounding receives 20 points.
9. Any survivor who takes home a car as a prize loses 2 points
10. Being in the final vote gives you 5 points
11. Each vote cast FOR your survivor in the final vote gives you 1 point
12. The overall winner of survivor receives 10 points

To Compete:

1. Pick a team of FIVE survivors.
2. Post your “team” here in the comments.

Strategy:

You should notice that votes cast against your survivor gain you points. So factor that into your team. A valuable player would be one that gets you the most points over the course of the show. Someone who gets votes against him every week but manages to hang on regardless is valuable… Also, someone who is stupid and cuts their leg off will get you a lot of points – so they will also be valuable – BUT – a fat slob who goes home because he can’t hack it will lose you a ton of point.

Your team of 5 must be unique. If someone else has already picked those 5 survivors, you MUST pick at least one different person. This will avoid any potential ties.

Make your predictions / picks now!

It’s that time of year again

Survivor is about to kick off a new season. Mark Burnett appears to have his mind fixated on this “Have’s versus have-nots” theme that he is using on The Apprentice: LA, and now the same theme will carry over to Survivor.

To be honest, I couldn’t be more bored of a show than Survivor. Sure, I’ll watch it – but I sincerely hope they change something about that immunity idol. Yul and Becky were about as exciting as wheat bread and unsalted crackers. Thanks to that idol, they were on way too long.

Gameplay aside, it’s time to make two predictions for this season…

1. Based on Pictures Alone, predict the winner.

Go to http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor14 and look at that flash thing – or you can save yourself time and go to the un-official survivor site at http://www.survivor.com/ and they have them all posted on one page. Come back here, and in the comments, predict who you think will win in the comments.

2. Based on Pictures Alone, predict who has the personality closest to your own.

This is the interesting one. Sure, nobody who is entirely sane will volunteer to leave their job and go live on an island for a month or so with other crazy people for an insignificant chance to win a lot of money. If you are reading this blog, it’s obvious that nobody on Survivor is exactly like you – but of all of the ‘castaways’ there is probably one who has a personality closest to your own.

Maybe it’s only one aspect of their personality, so you can qualify it:

For instance, lets pretend your name is Pace and you see the picture of Boo and think he has the same intellectual prowess as you. You could say in the comments “For personality, I think Boo and I think alike. I don’t think he has the same moral constraints as me, but I think he’s just as smart.”

This last category will make for some interesting viewing as, inevitably, we will pick people who we think have “personalities closest to our own” that end up to be total loons.

To play – go to Segregation Central The CBS Website and look at the picture of all 20 contestants standing (or kneeling). To identify them, you can mouse over the bar at the top of the page…

How to Play:

1. Look only at the first page pictures on the Survivor site. (Yeah, I know, I’ve bent the rules and let people use the information pages… but this time since CBS doesn’t have some lame animated page – pictures only)
2. Make your prediction
3. Post your prediction here as a comment

When the season is over, you will score 50 points for having guessed the correct winner.

BONUS POINTS

Since Survivor is trying to generate buzz by creating some “seperate but equal tribes” – in addition to your prediction, please provide insight into racial stereotypes by predicting these things for the portion of the game that is going to be played segregated…

Answering these questions correctly will each score up to 5 points for you (some questions will have partial credit available):

• What ethnic group will win the highest number of “physical” challenges.
• Which ethnic group will do best at the memory challenges?
• Which group (or groups, if you think they will boot two out from the start) will be the first to loose a tribe member?
• In what order will the ethnic groups be completely wiped out?
• What ethnic group will the person who holds onto the immunity idol the longest be from?
• How many episodes will it take before we hear a racial slur (or hear a bleeped out reference to one)?

Disclaimer: I reserve the right to cancel this contest if Cerie in any way appears on this season of Survivor – because I will no longer be able to judge the show due to my lighting my TV on fire in a fit of uncontrollable rage.

Outwit Danielle & Aras

Here’s a fun mental game to see who could “outwit” Aras and Danielle. Suppose someone – for the sake of this situation, we’ll call that someone “Shane” were to say to you: “Pick a number between 1 and 1 million.” What number would you pick if you went first? What number would you pick if you went second?

Here’s how it broke down. Aras picked “4″ and then Danielle picked “10″. The first person to explain why Danielle and Aras are both idiots based on these decisions gets a high-five.

To put Aras in perspective – some random loser (scroll down to the bottom of the discussion thread) posted a description of him before he was on Survivor. Aparently he was a hothead poser before Survivor even started.

The new format in “Exile Island” makes the game refocus on the idea of being a sole survivor. Every week, someone will get punted to the “Exile Island” and left alone. Although they will be left to fend for themselves for days at a time – they will also have something to do. They can spend their time searching for the Immunity Idol (that will be re-hid each week).

This season, the Immunity Idol will not be played until after all the votes have been read. The idol is transferable – meaning that the person who gets it can trade it to someone else. In the event that the person receiving the most votes plays the idol, the second-most vote-getter goes home.

I assume they have already taken into consideration the possibility of fraud in this (i.e. the person with the idol holds onto it and while the votes are being read sneaks it to their ally who needs it most) – but imagine the changes in gameplay.

There has never been certainty in Survivor voting – with people flip-flopping up until the last minute. Usually the flips served to favor the “majority.” Now an alliance can have all the votes but still not be able to kick off someone. That added uncertainty will likely lead to an early breakup of alliances and lots of interesting tribal councils once the numbers start to dwindle down.

As everything seems to do, this will likely just make me mad as the person I hate somehow slides by week-to-week. Still, it is an interesting change – and gives anyone who has been to the exile island the ability to bluff. Even if they don’t have the idol, it’s not safe to vote for them because they might have the idol.

McGowan will love this.
Read: Immunity idol complicates ‘Survivor Panama’ (at MSNBC.com)

This will be particularly hard to do – seeing as the format for the game is going to be changed around. Instead of two tribes, there will be four tribes. The tribes will be divided up between men and women, old and young.

Somehow, somebody will be sent to “Exile Island” each week. Who knows what they will have to do there, or what it involves other than a freeky prop of a gigantic skull.

Time to post your predictions for winners… etc. in the comments. Use only the pictures! (If you read the bios, I guess that’s okay – but you shouldn’t trust them.) You can’t add any predictions once the show has aired (or after you have watched it on your TiVo), so get on it now!

Oh – and click the more button and you can vote in a poll on who you think the winner will be. (It annoyingly inserts itself at the beginning of this post, not at the end…)
[poll=44]

CBS.com – Survivor Panama

Predictions from September 15th

Ryan: Originally predicted Gary or Judd. Later on that day, something made him change his mind, and he predicted Gary or Danni.

In an updated prediction… I will throw out Danni’s name for possible winner. I’ll stick with Gary and Danni – and not Judd.

Aubrey: Predicted Danni all along.

It’s totally going to be a girl this time. I think either Brook or Danni.

So given the two of us that made predictions, we were both right in naming Danni as the final winner. Not bad for using pictures alone!

Next time the rest of you should try to compete in our challenge

(See offical news at CBS.com)

Tonight is the season premeire of Survivor season 11 – “Survivor Guatemala.” For most of the country, this premeire will happen at the scheduled time. For those of us lucky enough to be in Mountain Time, we have to watch the President’s address first.

Whenever President Bush is done talking to us from Louisiana, Survivor will start here. KUTV lists the approximate start time at 7:25 pm – but everyone else thinks that President Bush will talk for an hour.

Today’s competition will be to pick out alliances and the eventual winner based only on the pictures shown on CBS’s website. If you mouse over the headshots at the bottom, it will show their names. Read their bios if you must, but stick with your gut feeling that comes from the pictures.

Bonus points for guessing who the “Two Mystery Survivors” coming back for this season are…

Submit your guesses before the show airs – or before you watch it and we’ll see who is best able to “judge a survivor by his/her cover”

(Submit your guesses in the comments section here)
CBS.com