Today, on a special bonus podcast, Survivor 43's Dwight Moore breaks down the tie-break mechanics in the latest episode of Survivor 48.[00:00:00] Hey, Rob Cesternino here, and in addition to tracking everything that's going on on these reality TV shows, I love tracking things about my personal fitness. That's why I love the newest smartwatch from Amazfit. It's got all the features I need to keep my day on track, but without the sky-high price tag you usually see with other smartwatches. Let me tell you about the Amazfit Active 2 smartwatch.
[00:00:23] The display is gorgeous. It's a 1.32 inch ammo LED, and I don't really know what that means, but basically it means that you can read your notifications even when you're outside in the middle of the day. It's got incredible battery life. No more scrambling for the charger. Half the time you have a smartwatch, the battery is on like 3%, you gotta take it off. I'm missing all of the steps that I'm taking. What's the point?
[00:00:48] It's also got a great app called the Zapp app, which gives you in-depth health insights, everything from sleep quality to steps and AI-driven coaching to help you get the most out of your workouts with 160 plus workout modes for whatever you're doing. You want to try it out? Head on over to Amazfit.com slash Rob. That's A-M-A-Z-F-I-T dot com slash Rob for a special discount. Seriously, if you're looking for a smartwatch that checks all of the boxes, fitness, style, battery life,
[00:01:18] without burning a hole in your wallet, give Amazfit a shot.
[00:01:48] Survivor tie-break rules are as they were explained in this week's episode. So I said, hey, Dwight, come on in. Let's talk about it. And so here's a clip from that patron Q&A call. And I hope that you might be interested in checking out the full thing. You could check it out as a member of our amazing patron community. Survivor is better when you're part of a tribe and join us every week for my survivor Q&A, taking your calls at Rob's website.com slash patron.
[00:02:18] Here's my conversation with Dwight about maybe a broken tie-break. We've got a special treat for you here today because I thought that this would be such a fun thing to talk about that this person had an incredible Twitter thread about the tie-break vote and all of its ramifications, of course, that he knows a thing or two about convoluted rules from playing Blood on the Clock Tower.
[00:02:46] Please welcome back from Survivor 43, the great Dwight Moore is here to talk about all this stuff. And Dwight, I thought it would be super fun to walk through this tie-break scenario with somebody who really knows the rules and get your thoughts on all of it. Dwight, how are you, by the way? I am doing great. Glad to be on this. Thank you for answering the call. Of course, of course. Gladly. Love to talk about rules and scenarios like this.
[00:03:16] This is fun for me. I probably shouldn't have made that long Twitter thread, but I was like, I just had to. I loved it. I read it yesterday morning. I was like, we should get Dwight to come on and talk about all this. Yeah, I'd love to. So, yeah, so the big thing for me with this, you know, it was another unprecedented situation where we had another tie where one person in the tie can't vote, one person can't. So we had this precedent set on season 47 where it was Sam and Sierra and Probe was like, okay, usually on tie votes, the two people in the tie can't vote.
[00:03:45] However, because one person already lost their vote, we're allowing the other person to vote to consider the fact that one could vote, one did when it happened. Yeah. Had that ever happened before? Because I know at that time and I had done the podcast with Christian that week and he was at that moment like, since when are we having this? Did you know, had there ever been a scenario in the past where was that a rule change going into Survivor 47?
[00:04:12] Devin? As far as I've looked up, I think that was not a rule change. It was just like the first time it happened. First time it happened. Whereas a tie and one person didn't have a vote. So as far as I'm aware that was not a rule change, someone correct me if I'm wrong about that. But this is the first time they had to actually come to that and realize, okay, we need to have a rule in place for this scenario. So fair. Again, I think that rule is a good one because it does account for the difference in voting status between two players on a revote. I think the one thing that isn't accounted for is like, and someone correct me about this, I'm not sure if there's a three-way tie.
[00:04:38] I think the rule is none of them, it's all number or none, but I think it's on a three-way tie. Let me ask the chat on that one and we can look up the three-way tie because somebody asked that question earlier. And I think that on the three-way tie, none of the people in the three-way tie are allowed to vote. Now, Dwight, let me just get your overall thoughts on this. So that were you thinking that Survivor got it right in terms of the tie break? Or do you think that there is an issue with what happened in this tribal council?
[00:05:06] I think they interpreted the rules as they currently have them correctly, and I think those interpretations are wrong. To extrapolate on that a bit further. So as we established in 47, we have this rule change when one person votes, one can't. So on 48, we have the same scenario. One person in tie can vote, one cannot, that being Cy can vote, Justin can't. Then we go to this revote where on this revote again, I'm sorry, Say. Say and Cedric are able to vote.
[00:05:32] And then we go to this deadlock phase, and suddenly the rule where one person has a vote, one doesn't, is thrown out the window. And it's now only Cedric. Which I think having those two phases of the voting system, the revote and the discussion phase, have different rules accounting for the lost voting status is unrecognizable. I don't think that should be a thing where the status matters at one point and one doesn't.
[00:05:58] Because, of course, like, and this is to go to a bigger example, but let's go on to back to 47. Let's say, because 47 was a 4 for a 1. What happened? Let's throw out the one that was 4 to 4 between Sam and Sierra, and you have a revote and go to deadlock again. And I think, as the rules are going to interpret currently, Sam would not get a Say in this and be a forced, like, it would be the 17th. So confusing. Does that actually have a person named Say also involved with this? Yeah, it doesn't help with the argument. I say, sort of Say a lot.
[00:06:27] But Sam and Sierra are in this tie. This was a 4-4. The revote happens. Sam was on the revote. Sierra does not. And then you go to the discussion phase, and then Sam would have gotten started. Sierra voted on the revote. But Sam did not. Is that right? I believe that Sam loves the one that lost his vote. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Whatever. Examples. Whatever. In this case, Sierra would have gotten to participate in discussions Sam wouldn't have.
[00:06:54] And the way the rules are currently interpreted, I think it would be the 7 people would get to discuss, not include Sierra. But once again, that throws out the fact that Sierra voted Sam did not. The rule I would currently propose is that... So I don't even think that there is a discussion. Josh, I think it's that in that scenario, Survivor 47, that there was a tie and that they had to do a revote. They did a revote. And the revote, because it was an odd number of people voting, I don't think could have been deadlocked. Yeah, that's why I said... I started to stare by saying throw out the one vote. Got it. I started to stare by saying that. So exclude that.
[00:07:23] Let's say it wasn't possible to have a deadlock. The rules would have been, as we saw in 48, Sierra would have then been removed from this conversation to 7 people talking. And personally, I think the rules should be consistent across considering the revote and the discussion the same, where anyone who participates on the revote should get to discuss about the ROCs. And even though, yes, that could mean in this 47 example, Sierra could just strong arm and say, okay, we're either voting out of Sierra or going to ROCs. And I actually think that should be how it's interpreted because it does...
[00:07:53] And I think it needs to properly... And this is a whole other discussion. People are going to be like, you're going to lost votes. I don't. But I think it actually does need to punish players who lost their vote more so. And that's like they should have less weight throughout the entirety of Tribal, not bring down a person to have a vote alongside them. If they have no vote throughout Tribal, they should lose a vote throughout Tribal, and other people should have a say when they do not. That should be distinctly... That should be made clear throughout the entire Tribal and not arbitrarily taken away at one certain phase of the whole voting process
[00:08:23] is how I believe the rules should be turned. It should be consistent. And it was not consistent on the episode. All right. So your major point of contention is that on the second revote that say should have still been involved in that decision, it should not have been between just Cedric making that call. It should have been... It should have been... Since Say was able to vote on the revote, then Say should be able to participate in discussion.
[00:08:51] Because my understanding of the deadlock rules is you need to convince people who voted that second time to just change their mind. And you need them to break away from the doing or they're going to go to rocks. In this scenario, Say vote on the revote. Say is saying stick to revoting out Justin. And then suddenly her vote's been taken away, which is going against the whole premise of deadlock, which is people voted for the same person multiple times. You need to convince them to break away from it. And suddenly removing Say's voice, even if she got a vote,
[00:09:21] her opponent didn't have a vote the whole time. So why are you now bringing her down to his status of having no vote? And that's just my problem with this. So after Say and Justin tie on the second time, what would you have wanted to see happen? Unfortunately, I think it should have just been like Cedric Islander realizes. And this is because it's an unfortunate scenario. It's down to four players this first time it happened. So people are going to say like, it shouldn't just be Cedric. I mean, so Justin's immediately eliminated.
[00:09:50] But rules need to be consistent. And the fact that the first time this happened was in such a low tribe example is unfortunate for this argument because people are going to say like, oh, Justin shouldn't be gone immediately. But going to the bigger example, once again, with Sam Sierra, I think if some people are, let's say it was like a split down the middle of a tribe and like Sam Sierra were opposite alliances, right? And Sierra has a vote, Sam doesn't. And then, okay, now it's, does Sam's alliance in this case agree, okay, we're going to vote out Sam? Or do we all play hardball and say, okay, we're going to go to Roxanne with even though Sierra would be safe?
[00:10:20] I think in this scenario, that's what should happen. And like, they shouldn't have the option of Sierra anymore, quote unquote, just because Sierra had a vote in Sam. They voted between one has a vote, one doesn't. Yeah. For bigger examples. But yeah, I think in this one, it should have just been, Cedric has to either vote out Justin or go to Rox, which is go home for him in this scenario. But see, I almost wonder if, because it's in this tiebreak scenario,
[00:10:49] you know, Cedric and Say have tied, okay? So, and Cedric has already cast his vote for Justin at the point where it's this tie vote. I guess, yeah, I guess, yeah, Cedric has to either change his vote to vote for Justin, because he already voted for Say. Like, if he, like, I feel like he cannot, he should not be able to vote Say out in that scenario.
[00:11:18] Like, I think his two decisions need to be either change your vote to vote out Justin, or it's now deadlocked, they're safe, and you go home. I don't think that Cedric should have the option to vote out Say in that spot. Like, why does he get the only decision? Like, he should be able to either, like, if this was a normal tie, you know, you either get to, somebody needs to change their vote.
[00:11:43] I mean, look back at the, going back to, say, Millennials versus Gen X, where it's like, okay, Will Wall could switch his vote and go to the other side, but it's not like that he's picking who's, who, like, the, everybody could just, like, this is a bad example. But does it make sense what I'm saying? Like, Cedric already voted for Say.
[00:12:07] Like, he shouldn't get more control over, like, now he's, like, an extra vote, for Say. Like, he can switch his vote to Justin, or then it should default to, all right, well, now those two are safe because they tied their vote. That's the rule. And now, Cedric, you automatically go home. So I kind of feel like he's strong-armed. Perfect. It's like, Cedric, in a sense, got an extra vote because of the current interpretation of the rules, right? Because it's a Latai example.
[00:12:37] One person votes one that doesn't. It gives way to Say having a vote, and suddenly it's removed, giving Cedric effectively an extra vote because it got all the way to deadlock. And I think, yeah, some people will disagree with me forever about this. Like, I think someone's saying in the chat, it's like proposing Justin's limiting as soon as Mary Shonda Dark hits. Unfortunately, in the world that I'm proposing, yes. I'm saying with the current interpretation of the rules, or not with the rules I'm proposing when re-vote happens and then, yeah, Say is forced to say Justin's name because of the tie,
[00:13:05] Cedric's options should be either Justin has to go home or Cedric himself eliminates. That is, and it sounds absurd, but I am proposing that if there's going to be consistent ruling, that's how this specific scenario with the Shonda Dark hitting and these votes, it should have resulted in exactly Justin going home almost as soon as that Shonda Dark hit. Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. Yeah. Because there needs to be a consistent ruling, and the only way to have a consistent ruling that actually respects the re-voting and the one person has to vote, one doesn't,
[00:13:34] is saying that the rule should be, if you vote on the re-vote, you should talk in discussion phase. That's just a consistent rule that would allow for votes to matter all the time. Dwight, do you think that all of this could just be solved when we say, like, we have a four-person tribal council that, should we have fire making at a four-person tribal council? Would that solve all this? Honestly? That would be kind of fun, too. I'd like that. That would be interesting. It's interesting because I think that this was similar to, like, at the merge.
[00:14:04] Well, actually, it's different because that the person, the person with the shot in the dark doesn't get a vote, whereas it's not like that somebody who won individual immunity, like, you wouldn't have this at the final four because the person who won individual immunity still would get to cast a vote. So this was a truly odd scenario that we had here where that there was two lost votes in a four-person tribal council where we had a tribal council with four people but only two votes. Yes.
[00:14:34] I'm impressed. It's wild that this would happen. I do want to, like, acknowledge something in the chat saying to go back to talking about second chances. Kimmy didn't have a say in the Thai vote when she went home. Yes. And that's something I cover in, like, a little video I made. So what happened in Cambodia is they did the first vote. It was 3-3, idle played. And the second vote was considered a quote-unquote re-vote, but all six people voted. So it was between Tosh and Kimmy. And you can assume, in this case, there was an implied actual re-vote because the first one had no vote. So it was an implied re-vote between Tosh and Kimmy
[00:15:04] where Tosh and Kimmy don't vote. So then those four people have discussion. So, again, you have to kind of, like, consider that implicit re-vote happening there. Tosh and Kimmy voted on the re-vote. They voted on the re-vote. They did. It went from 3-3 to another 3-3 vote. But because the first vote had zero votes because both people played Iles, Jeremy, and Kelly, there was a second, all six players voted. But you can assume there is a third implicit re-vote where it goes to 2-2. So was that first re-vote where all six people voted because the vote was actually,
[00:15:33] had it been, you know, because the votes were for, three votes for Jeremy, three votes for Kelly. Now it's like, get up, everybody vote again. And then it got tied for, what, Tasha and Kimmy on the re-vote. Yeah, Tasha and Kimmy on the re-vote. And I think they didn't really consider that, you know, this is a re-vote, but it's not really a re-vote because it's playing new people. Right. So yeah, there would be an implicit re-vote between Tasha and Kimmy. Those two don't vote. And I'd say those four have discussion leading to what happened, what we saw played on the other side.
[00:16:01] Right. And then Jeremy and Kelly are both immune, so you can't vote for them. Keith Nail says like, I'll just go to the house. That's fine. And then there's like, Kelly's like, but Keith don't do that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, and I think another part of the whole discussion is, yeah, someone said, yeah, rules for you need to have your vote and not give them a tie. Yes. And the rules for tie votes in Survivor up to season 47 were, if you're part of the tie, you can't re-vote. But suddenly the rules were changed
[00:16:30] to account for lost votes. And I'm saying, why are people saying, everyone was okay with the 47 ruling of the tie vote, like nothing, the re-vote should have, Sierra vote, Sam doesn't. Everyone was basically okay with that for the most part, because yeah, we should account for lost votes. So why are people suddenly not okay with this mattering for discussion phase? Rules need to be changed to account for changes in mechanics. The new era is going to have a lot more lost votes. It's going to be part of the game. And that will account for in the re-vote. But now we're not accounting for that in the discussion phase. And that's just a major problem I see with the design of the game. They're not having consistent rulings.
[00:17:00] They didn't make this clear. I think anyone, like a lot of people, you know, when I walk into the episode and text people, people thought Cedric voted himself out because of, you know, it makes sense with that ruling. It's because of the 47 ruling, but suddenly it's inconsistent on 48. And I just don't really like how there's not a concrete, you know, structure about who gets to participate in discussion. I think the way you can talk about this is you can say like, yeah, people who would be in the rock draw should get to discuss about it. Okay, so why did, you know, Jeremy and Kelly get to discuss in second chances? So that can't be it. Okay, it should be people who, you know,
[00:17:31] like if- Do you want to see people out of this conversation? Do you want to see them like removed from the tribal council during the discussion? What do you mean? Like when you say you don't want them to be part of the discussion, do you want them like, like, okay, go stand over there so you can't be part of this conversation? No, they should be there to influence. I'm just saying, you know, like having, having their voice actually made. Got it. Okay. Can we just, like at the risk of repeating ourselves, could we just talk through it one more time and then get Dwight's ruling on what should happen
[00:18:01] at each phase? Okay, so we have, we have our vote. Mary plays the shot in the dark. Mary is safe. We count our votes. Two votes for Mary. Re-vote. Everything, everything still fine, right? Right. Okay. Yeah, so Mary, shine in the dark hits. We have the tribal play out again where Cedric, Cedric votes for, Cedric votes for Say, Say votes for Justin. Okay, now what should happen? Okay, so that was the first vote. We re-vote with the rules established in 47. There was a tie between
[00:18:31] Say and Justin. Justin had no vote throughout the entire tribal council, so Say gets to vote again. Say will vote for Justin implicitly. And now Cedric has a choice between Cedric, I mean, Cedric's choice between Say and Justin. They go vote and we see what happens again. Say votes for Justin, Cedric votes for Say. Okay. The way I think the rules can be interpreted is if you participate in the re-vote and it's still deadlocked, you should have a Say in the discussion phase. So at this point, I believe that Say and Cedric should discuss whether Say or Justin should go home.
[00:19:01] Say is obviously going to say Justin's going home, so that means Cedric basically has to vote out Justin or go home himself. That is a harsh ruling, but I think that needs to be consistent with respecting the rules on that the re-vote make that consistent with the rules about deadlock. Yeah. And in that scenario, Say can convince Cedric to flip to Justin, but there are not two Justin votes in any scenario. So I feel like in that ruling
[00:19:29] that then if Cedric does not budge, the vote will continue to be 1-1, which forces us to the non-tied players having to draw a rock and Cedric has to go home. Exactly. Say should be immune in this scenario. That is my interpretation. That's what I believe should be the ruling. Yes. I agree. Yeah. I think we solved this. And so there was no scenario
[00:19:58] where Say should have gone home in that tribal council based on the way it played out. And Cedric should have been much more at risk of either Cedric, vote out Justin or you have to go home. Yeah. The fact that Say survived this tribal I think also led to a lot like not as much argument happening along. If Say went home, I feel like there would be a lot bigger firestorm around this ruling, but it kind of worked out the way in my opinion it should have. Yes. The way the survivor gods intended it. Right. Yes. Okay. Well, Dwight, this was incredible
[00:20:28] to talk through with this. I feel like that we really figured something out. Yes. Thank you for inviting me. I just need to talk. I just need to yap about rulings. I love doing this for some reason. Yeah. All right. Of course, if you like hearing Dwight talk about this sort of stuff, you could play Blood on the Clock Tower with Dwight, which he is doing constantly. A lot. Yeah. Dwight, how do people get more involved with hearing more about your rulings on Blood on the Clock Tower? So yeah, I stream Clock Tower on Twitch
[00:20:58] at twitch.tv slash doing more on Saturdays and Mondays. And yeah, I think the RTP Discord has a lot of people playing as well. New replay games going on all the time. So I definitely say look at that, try it out if you want. And yeah, I'll try to hop in sometimes and play some games. They get more time to do so, but I do want to do that more often. Okay. And check out Dwight on a new Survivors playing Blood on the Clock Tower video that's going to be dropping very soon on the YouTube channel. Ooh, fun. Okay. Awesome. Dwight, thank you so much. Appreciate you hopping in and hopping in last week
[00:21:27] on the Q&A with Owen. No, thank you so much for inviting me both of those last week and this week. I had such a good time. Okay. Dwight, talk to you soon, okay? Have a good one. Bye. Bye.