Harbourside Survivor 2025: Week 4
On Wednesday, October 8th, the Dartmouth office once again congregated in the Lunchroom for the weekly survivor challenge. With two eliminations every week for the past month, the three teams are looking much smaller than when the games began. Players were forewarned they’d have to put their thinking caps on for this week’s HORIZONTAL. Five letters. Synonym for “challenge”.
(The answer is “trial”. This week’s trial.)
Team Crossword Puzzles
Teams cluster around crossword puzzles at all ends of the lunchroom. All thoughts of food forgotten until the crosswords were filled. Chairs had to be pulled in tightly in order to find room for the competitive puzzling.
Teams were handed sheets of paper, face down. Each team would have to complete a series of miniature crosswords, before the competition. Divvying up the pages as players saw fit, a flurry of papers turned as the timer started.
As far as puzzles go, crosswords are particularly interesting. Crosswords come in a variety of difficulties, meaning anyone can attempt to solve a crossword puzzle, given enough time. This makes the barrier to entry for crossword puzzles quite low. When it comes to brainteasers though, the skill ceiling on crossword puzzles is actually quite high. Timed challenges are not uncommon, and some crosswords require very specific knowledge of trivia or pop-culture in order to complete them. Crossword veterans will say that one needs to think in very particular ways to solve some the trickier clues. Some people love this kind of challenge, while those who think in more literal terms may find this type of puzzle frustrating.
In other words, it’s the perfect challenge for a group of engineers. Take a group of intelligent individuals with analytical minds and have them collaborate to solve obscure clues written in vague language. There were triumphs, there were pitfalls, and in the end, Green Team finished a few short seconds ahead of Red Team! Blue straggled a little bit behind, but that didn’t matter; there could only be one winner.
The Dwindling Teams
Now Red and Blue were each forced to vote off another teammate. The numbers are dwindling! In traditional Survivor fashion, the teams will have to be re-shuffled, or the teams will be dismantled into a free-for-all competition.
Although players will still be involved when it comes to the Final Jury vote, it is always sad to have to let a teammate go. The spirit of Survivor is such that it encourages alliances to direct voting in one’s favour, and to avoid burning too many bridges along the way (pardon the pun from an engineering firm that specializes in bridges). Still, the nature of the game is to winnow the numbers down to a select few contestants. With this in mind, even though someone is eliminated from the game, they are still part of the greater Harbourside Team. In these circumstances, how can the company encourage continued involvement in the group activity when someone has been “voted off”? How can the game promote inclusivity AND competition at the same time? Is an elimination challenge antithetical to the spirit of cooperation?
Some answers are simple. Our engineers are hard at work! Fifteen minutes at lunch isn’t much of a commitment on most days, but sometimes we have to be on-site or meet with clients over lunch. In these circumstances, a surrogate is needed to participate for us. This is a great way to ensure that team members still get to be included, even if they’ve been voted off. In addition to the promise of a seat on the Final Jury, it means that no one is ever truly out of the game.
So far, Harbourside Survivor has followed a format very similar to the reality T.V. show on which it is based. That does not mean it will always stick to this format. There is always room to grow and change to allow for more participation, and less focus on elimination. The end goal is to have fun as a team, to break up the workday, and to inspire a little friendly competition. Having a strong and supportive corporate culture is essential for this type of game, because it means that players still get to feel involved, even if they aren’t in the running to win.
As our company continues to grow, perhaps we will shift from an elimination style tournament, and focus on a points-based competition? Maybe we will begin to pull from different reality T.V. shows for inspiration when organizing next year’s Survivor. Maybe next year the format will be more aligned with a game show rather than reality T.V. (Family Feud comes to mind…). For the time being, we all must do our part to ensure that even those who’ve been voted off understand that they are still part of the Harbourside team, and that their contributions will matter greatly during the final week!