After a video recap of last week's doings, we're off and running one more time.
Darwin:"It's weird having to be here and having no exposure to the outside world, to current events, or anything."
Al: "It has been so long since I've sen my wife and kids, and I am wearing down."
Bill: "I was feeling guilty...about coming here with Mom very ill."
Heather: "I miss home. I want to go home. But dammit, I want to win this money. I want to win this game. And I know I can do it, I know I can."
Anderson tells the team to select three people who are swimmers, three who are runners, and one who likes to talk.
Al immediately volunteers to be the talker.
Al: "So my hand shoots up. 'I like to talk'. And then I get Darwin behind me. 'You've done so many great things already, you shouldn't be involved in this."
Darwin nominates Katie to be the talker, since she also volunteered.
Darwin: "I think most of the time, since we've been so unsuccessful in winning these games, we want to get the best players in. And with Katie, it was just fairness. I don't think that Katie's a better talker than Al. I just thought that Katie may participate in this game."
Katie will be the talker.
Rob, Dorothy, and Elavia are the runners.
Bill, Bribs, and Darwin are the swimmers.
Al thinks Darwin is picking on him.
Heather says she will be angry if they get exemptions.
Katie will be at the blackboard for this game, natural for a teacher.
The game is based on questions about the city of Vicenza, Italy. Anderson tells the runners to find the answers in the city of Vicenza. They will be put in the blanks on the board to find the answers. 15 letters will have boxes around them. The boxed letters will form the answer to the fourth and final question.
The game is worth $20,000.
The catch is that the swimmers are the timers for the game. They must tread water. As long as one of them can tread water, the game continues. If they stop, game over. But after every five minutes, a weight is added to a swimmer.
Darwin: "Our strategy is to have Bill take most of the weights, 'cause he said he was a strong swimmer. After he drops out, I take as many weights as I can. So we keep Bribs fresh for the final leg of the game."
Anderson gives Katie the phone to call the runners with the questions. The question is "Next to the Tempio di San Lorenzo, there is a statue of a poet. What is his name?"
Rob answered the phone, so he goes. He must go alone, and without the aid of the map or the phone.
Back at the pool, Anderson gives Bill the first weight, 1.1 pounds, which is the weight of all the weights.
Rob: "My question was, there's a statue of a poet, what's the name of the poet? It was very nearby. I got lost - I went the wrong way. The map was upside down, I got lost."
Bill is appearing to have difficulty treading water.
He goes under - he's out.
Rob finally makes it to the statue. He says the name to himself, running back.
Darwin: "Bill jumps out after eight minutes, and I'm worried about how long I can last, because if he can't tread water with one weight on his neck, I'm thinking that I won't be able to, either."
Bribs: "Bill, I thought was a shoo-in, for hanging in there for, you know, for four or five weights. I don't see how he couldn't last more than eight minutes."
Bill: "I'm just not very good at treading water. If I could have traveled, got on my back, I could have stayed in there a while."
Katie calls the runners to tell them a swimmer is down.
Elavia and Dorothy are in disbelief that one swimmer is already down. Darwin gets another weight.
Rob calls in the name, but his answer is wrong.
Katie reads off the spelling, changing a V to a Z, reading Giacomo Zanello. It is still wrong. Darwin suggests changing the last letter to an A, which makes it the correct answer.
They ask how he knew. He says it's because he's the Mole.
Katie calls with the next question: "Directly behind the Arco del Scaletti, how many stairs lead up to the top of the hill?"
Dorothy goes.
Poolside, they try to spell out the number with their tiles. They can't.
Darwin: "When the first weight was put around my neck, it didn't feel very bad at all. However, its effect of the weight around my neck grew exponentially."
Dorothy: "My run was extremely difficult. I ended up getting lost, and I asked several pedestrians where the Arc is, and no-one knows where it is. "I really just started losing energy and felt nauseated."
She pukes on the side of the road.
Darwin: "The fifth weight is added, and I'm feeling extremely tired. I can take one more weight. I'm giving Bribs an extra five minutes."
Darwin is dying with all the weights. He does his best to stay above water. With six pounds of weight and 35 minutes treading, Darwin finally drops, leaving only Bribs.
Rob: "Dorothy's gone, and somehow they just figure the answer there at the swimming pool."
They do figure out the correct answer by guesswork at the pool - 183.
Katie calls the next question to Elavia. "Which famous author's tomb lies in the Tempio di Santa Corona? Don't fret, the answer is just outside the front door."
Bribs says to tell Elavia to run quickly.
Bribs takes his first weight.
Elavia: "My question was 'Find the famous writer who is buried at Tempo di Santa Corona'. I kept picturing Bribs in the water. I'm like, oh my God, he's probably like drowning by now."
Bribs takes his second weight.
Bribs takes his fourth weight.
Elavia finds the place. She searches for the answer, but doesnt find it. She asks a local standing there in fairly decent Italian the answer. He tells her.
Elavia makes it to the phone and tells Katie the answer - "Luigi da Porta".
Anderson says it's incorrect.
They correct the spelling and it's still incorrect.
Bribs calls out suggestions.
They get it right finally.
Anderson gives Katie the last question. She must answer it. "Their love was sealed with 'a righteous kiss'"
They immediately say Romeo and Juliet, but the answer is in Italian. They have to spell out Romeo and Juliet in Italian.
She has overlooked a boxed "G" from Luigi.
Bribs takes his sixth weight, after treading water for 65 minutes.
Darwin and Bill cannot help, since they have dropped.
Bribs: "I tried my best to give as much output as I could, but I was absolutely exhausted. I couldn't breathe anymore, let alone shout out answers."
Bribs says he can't do it any longer. He falls, after 73 minutes.
TEST FAILED TOTAL - $166,000
The correct answer was Giulietta e Romeo, impossible with the missing G.
Bill: "Forgetting the G is going to be something that looms larger and larger, and I will find it suspicious."
Darwin: "It seemed pretty obvious that Romeo was the last word. And if you add the last word, it's only a matter of spelling, and she's a teacher, so she should be able to spell Giulietta."
Bribs: "Katie - how can you not be suspicious about that? It was the only G. The only G."
Katie says she feels like an idiot.
As well she should.
Anderson explains the connections among the answers, that Luigi da Porto was supposedly the actual author of Romeo and Juliet, and they were based in Vicenza, which nobody really cares about. Dejected, the players head off to eat.
Al: "I had a real problem with Darwin, and what he had said, and the way I was feeling about what he said. I couldn't go through another day not saying something. So I wasn't going to have it out at the dinner table, in front of everybody, but I was going to have it out."
Al and Darwin do have it out. Al is bothered by Darwin taking him out of the talking role. Darwin explains his thought process. He figures Al has gotten too many 'head honcho' roles. He wanted to give Katie one.
Darwin: "I tell you, if there was an Olympic event for jumping to conclusions, Al would be champion of the world."
Bill: "What's happened with Al is he's getting so serious in the games. It's sort of a life-or-death thing."
Al: "Darwin's kind of a take-charge guy. You know, maybe he thinks that he can call the shots here. And I was going to make it clear that he doesn't call the shots when it comes to me."
Darwin apologizes. His intentions were not hostile. Al accepts, since he(Darwin) didn't want to sleight Al.
They shake hands.
Darwin: "I'm glad we cleared it up, and I hope it's water under the bridge."
Al:"They say 'Hey, come over here', so I wake over there, on the door of the van is a message from the Mole."
Mihty oliath took a bi fall. David or defeat, it's your call.
Bill: "Oh yeah, there was something amusing about that message if you're a masochist or a sadist. All the Gs were missing, which is actually what killed us the day before from winning $20,000."
Al, Heather, and Myra, those who didn't play the first game, head off for one of their own. They are in a deep dark cavern. The only lights are torches and one light bulb.
Anderson says each of them will be locked in a cell. If anyone, even one of them, can get out within a three hour time limit, the game is won and $40,000 is added to the pot.
They have an extra incentive - tonight the players will be able to talk with their loved ones. If they cannot get out, they will not be able to.
Heather: "To phone home at this point is extremely important. We're almost at the breaking point, where it's been over two weeks, and you know, having no, I mean zero contact with anybody from home, it's really starting to wear on you."
Anderson takes the torches with him. Only a single light bulb remains to illuminate the cave. They key to release them from the cells is attached to the bulb.
Everything they need to free themselves is within the cells. They can communicate and share what they have however they please.
Al says the key won't come down until the light bulb breaks. Myra has a slingshot within reach of her cell to knock it off and grab it. At the behest of his wife (?), Al hesitates. They figure the David and Goliath message refers to this.
Heather and Myra remove their shoelaces. Heather tosses a hanger to Myra to make a stick. A bucket lies below the light. If they hit the light, the key will fall into the bucket. She throws her blanket out to try and grab the bucket. With a long stick made from the components of Myra's cot and a hanger from Heather's cell, they grab the slingshot off the wall.
Heather has the bucket hooked with her shoe. Once the light goes out, she will be able to retrieve the bucket and the key.
All three of them throw blankets out to retrieve the key if it doesn't fall in the bucket.
They try to shoot the slingshot, but find out it's just a prop and doesn't work.
They throw rocks at it. Heather hits it flush and it doesn't break. It breaks, care of Al after a great many throws. Heather pulls the bucket in. Seeing with the key with a black light, Heather pulls the key to her and unlocks her cell.
Suddenly, the lights flash on. Anderson appears and makes an offer to her, since she is the one actually holding the key. If she walks out on Al and Myra, she will get an exemption. She can also choose to unlock them, but no exemption.
Myra: "I do not want to spend the night in this cell, but we all know how badly Heather wants an exemption."
Heather decides to unlock Al and Myra. She says they did this together. She would never leave them there. There was no doubt in her mind.
TEST PASSED - +$40,000 TOTAL - $206,000
Heather: "I have wanted an exemption up to this point extremely bad. So it's really ironic that this opportunity came up the way it did. Because it really wasn't a choice for me. I can't imagine anyone doing that to another person."
Al tells the other players of Heather's selfless act. They very much appreciate it.
Anderson tells them they will all get to tele-conference with their loved ones.
Bill is apprehensive about his mother's health.
Dorothy speaks to her family, Raymond, Kiden, and Daniel.
Bribs speaks to his mom, Terri.
Darwin speaks to his wife, Lindsay.
Elavia speaks to her boyfriend, Brian.
Heather speaks to her boyfriend, Nathan.
Al speaks to his wife, Robin.
Myra speaks to her sister, Carol.
Rob speaks to his brother, Andy.
Bill speaks to his wife, Shirley, who says Bill's mom is fine.
Katie speaks to her parents, Judy and Ron.
Bribs and Darwin form a coalition in the hotel.
They share their quiz answers, back from the first quiz even. Bribs is amused that Darwin answered a couple of questions for him.
Bribs: "I wouldn't say Darwin is necessarily the first person who comes to mind when I think about forming a coalition, but the more and more I think about it, it couldn't hurt, especially since I got his journal when we switched journals."
Darwin: "I can trust Bribs to the extent that you can trust someone in this game. I don't think he's playing me at this point, but you never know. You can't trust anyone."
At dinner, Rob performs a card trick with Anderson. Anderson says if this freaks him out, he's gonna punch him. The trick is performed, and Anderson punches Rob.
Rob: "I am actually enjoying spending time with everybody in the group. I think this is the group that's very tightly knit, and we all get along, you know, perfectly. The best times we have are the meals. That's when we get to know each other, and when we get along the best."
The players share who they tele-conferenced with, at the behest of Anderson. Prior to this, Elavia had not divulged her boyfriend's name. The players find this to be a crucial piece of intelligence.
Al: "We were at the table, and Anderson was reviewing with us. He was asking who everybody teleconferenced with." "That's the first time his name has been said, because she's been reluctant to give up a name." "I'm telling you man, something's up with this gal."
It is time for the quiz.
1. Did the Mole decline dessert after dinner at Al Pelegrino two nights ago?
2. In town during the Think or Sink game, which runner was the Mole?
Katie: "I definitely suspect Dorothy to be the Mole. I mean, she could still be in Vicenza right now counting the steps. We don't know!"
3. At the pool during Think or Sink, what was the maximum number of weights the Mole wore?
Dorothy: "It seemed very unusual that Bill, the Navy rear admiral, was unable to sustain the water for more than eight minutes."
4. During the Get the Key game, when was the Mole released from their cell?
Katie: "I don't want to think that Heather is the Mole, 'cause we have a coalition, but..."
Bribs: "...what she did was to put her shoe in the basket so she would be the one that gets the key. She was the one that got out. She looked like the savior because she knew that the exemption was going to fall into her hands, and if she was the Mole, why would she need an exemption?"
5. With whom did the Mole teleconference last night?
Al: "Well, that just seems a little to co-incidental, that she never said his name until she absolutely had to. And then sure enough, there it is, a question on the quiz."
Bill: "It's so subliminal that she could be the Mole. She's my top pick amongst the girls."
6. In which room did the Mole sleep last night?
Myra: "Boy as far as Katie forgetting the "G", that's a tough one. I know it seems very suspicious, but I think it was completely unintentional on her part. I know she feels very badly about. Or she's a very good liar."7. The Mole was born on what date?
8. How tall is the Mole?
Al: "Myra, Myra has recently moved up on my list just because she's quiet, she flies low under the radar. I almost forgot about Myra."
9. Does the Mole consider themselves to be low maintenance or high maintenance?
10. Who is the Mole?
Rob: "Anybody. It could be anybody. I don't think anybody here has a clear-cut idea of who the Mole is."
Now the execution. Click on the pictures below. If a green thumbprint appears, that player is still in the game. If a red thumbprint appears, that player has been executed and must leave the game immediately.
The executed player is very good-natured. The group all hates to see this player go. The remaining nine are genuinely singing the praises of the executee.
Who is definitely NOT the Mole: Heather, Myra
Who may very well be the Mole: Bill, Dorothy.
Click here to read the recap of episode six.
