The "Meet the Cast" video has shots of the challenge, which appears to involve a whole lot of shoving. Not to mention people actually moving (yay). This is, as you may recall, a huge improvement over the first episode of Survivor: Nicaragua. Now that the TV Guide Channel preview has aired, we know how the challenge works. We'll go through the various stages in sections below.

First, the two tribes march in, as usual, and Probst explains the challenge. The immunity idol is visible next to Probst, but appears to still be covered in the TV Guide Channel shots.

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The "Meet the Cast" video has shots of the challenge, which appears to involve a whole lot of shoving. Not to mention people actually moving (yay). This is, as you may recall, a huge improvement over the first episode of Survivor: Nicaragua. Now that the TV Guide Channel preview has aired, we know how the challenge works.

Challenge producer John Kirhoffer explains the mechanics: "The tribes race to build an ancient temple. They start by moving four huge blocks. Very heavy blocks." (Notably, the blocks are on rails, which wasn't immediately obvious before).

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Challenge producer John Kirhoffer explains this stage: "They race up the stairs on those blocks, where one person will use an axe [ed.: machete, actually] to chop a series of nine ropes. Temple of Doom-style, a set of stairs just drop out of the wall, and appear like venetian blinds."

Each tribe apparently has one person chopping (Ralph for Zapatera, Matt for Ometepe). Probst is there to watch Ralph doing his ropes, which may suggest Zapatera has a lead here.

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Challenge producer John Kirhoffer explains this stage: "The tribes race up the stairs to the top, where there's a really tough, really heavy block puzzle to complete the temple."

So who wins? Both tribes clearly make it to the puzzle stage, and it's hard to tell much from the various shots of partially completed puzzles. But there is a shot of Ometepe leaving the beach, and Phillip picks up the flag, and stalks off, head down. These do not match the actions of someone who's just won immunity. Especially someone who on paper appears to poorly mesh with his tribe. Which is perhaps not surprising, since the vidcaps suggest Rob doesn't allow much of a team effort on the final puzzle. Zapatera wins?

Update: The counter-argument to this would be the various hints dropped by spoilers, such as missyae and blackwhale. missyae says "Jeff Probst gave you the first boot" in the TV Guide preview (Probst's strongest words were against Stephanie), and blackwhale earlier said "Stephanie Valencia = Marisa Calihan?" If those claims are accurate, then Ometepe would be the winner of this challenge. We'll withhold judgement until CBS gets around to airing ads with actual contestants (which at the current pace, should be around the start of Survivor 23, in the fall).

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