The Finale

I'm still amazed that I won. As you guys will notice, I said a mouthful in my private confessionals (which you'll find below) so I'll keep this very short. Thanks to everyone for making this such a fun experience, and I apologize if anyone takes offense to anything I said in private confessionals - it was just the state of mind I was in at the time, and I don't actually hate anyone who was involved in the game. I look forward to keeping in touch with you, and Travis, once again, thanks for doing such an incredible job hosting! :)

Final Private Confessional (extremely long)

Wow. It's the end. :) It's truly amazing that I was actually able to make it here. Over the course of the last two days, I've sort of been looking back to the start of the game, and I remember that during the first week, I felt really frustrated with the AIM problems and also with the fact that it looked like the game was chock-full of people who were not only active, but who also seemed pretty good at bluffing and double-bluffing, and I totally expected to be unable to beat them as a result of that. What I said in my "thoughts on execution #8 public post" was completely true – I really didn't think I'd be able to beat out so many people, especially these people. Yes, there were some who rolled over and died, like Player 15, Ellery, Kyle and Beth, but the majority of the other players WERE people that I thought would be hard to beat. What's most amazing is that, despite how far they got, it really does look like Ginger, Paul and Breaux all got executed and had NO clue who The Mole was (Breaux especially made it to the Final 6, but according to what he had told me, he didn't think it was Elise AT ALL). I figured that if I was able to make it far, I'd probably make it with a bunch of other players who also knew who it was, and my chances of winning would be slim. It makes me feel even more proud of myself that I made it to the end being one of the few people who discovered who the real Mole is.

That leads me to Brian. I'm still not sure who he thought was The Mole, but nothing was said about a tie… if he went for Elise, he would've presumably tied both Blaise and I, so my GUESS is that he did not go for Elise, since Travis didn't say there was a tie. I can't imagine he was dumb enough to split his vote on the Final 4 quiz, so I'm assuming he went completely for someone else, and based on the things he was telling me, it LOOKED like he may have thought it was me. After In The Dark, Brian and I were talking about how it sucked that we couldn't get organized, and Brian was like "well its ur job rite?" so that did lead me to assume he thought it was me, and you have NO idea how happy I'm gonna be if at the finale it is actually revealed that he did go for me. Based on things Brian had said to me earlier, it was clear that Elise was ONE of his suspects, so if he was actually leaning towards Elise, but then went for me at the last minute, I would be so giddy, lol. I really had been trying like hell during the last few rounds to double-bluff him into thinking it was me by trying as hard as I could to seem like I was trying SOOO hard to convince him I was innocent (if that makes sense). I feel like all the posts in the "Make the case" thread were helpful, portraying me as this person who's effectively formed friendships with most of the players, perhaps as a way to manipulate all of them. My only worry actually came while we were playing the In The Dark challenge, because there were a couple of instances in which Blaise and I did certain things and Travis would say "interesting" or "that makes no sense" (whereas there was one time that Elise made a move and Travis said "that makes sense") so I was worried that Brian would realize, based on that, that Elise was The Mole, since the host would never say "that makes no sense" to the real Mole, as that would be helping in pointing out the fact that he/she is doing something suspicious. I also got worried that Brian would catch on to the fact that Mini Mole never seemed too interested in attacking Elise, and actually only attacked her when she was in a square with other people. Thankfully, it seems that Brian didn't notice any of these things. Seriously, the annoyance had already gotten to an extreme point prior to In The Dark, but I could've never expected that it could actually get even worse: "GIMME UR MONEY RITE NOW!! DO IT!!! RITE NOW!!!" I really hope he gets a chance to re-read that transcript and understand why he wasn't getting through to us. Yes, my hesitation to give him anything WAS mostly based on fear of an exemption and fear that I wouldn't look suspicious if I gave him the money, but when he started saying those things, it just made it even worse, and there was NO way I was going to cooperate with him.

Brian, when you read my private confessionals, you might be surprised, considering how nice I was to you during the game, but the thing is that it's very important to be in people's good graces in this game, because of several reasons: 1. If you exhibit a likable, pleasant personality, chances are people will think you are suspicious (which, in turn, is exactly why Elise's fits of anger have been brilliant on her part as The Mole, since being combative makes you look NOT suspicious), 2. This game is about gathering information, and you never know when you may need to get information from someone, so being friends with you would mean it'd be more likely you'd give me information I needed from you at some point, if I ever did, and 3. If we had had any challenges in which someone who was well-liked would have been well-positioned to get an exemption, I would've obviously wanted to take advantage of that. So, I definitely had to be nice to you, even though I have to admit you truly were severely annoying, and I'm obviously not alone in thinking that. All I'm wondering now is just how much of how you behaved was strategy and how much was genuine. That's pretty much the factor that'll determine how interested I will or won't be in keeping in touch with you after the game. I seriously hope most of it was strategy.

Let me make something clear: the personality I've exhibited in this game hasn't been fake. I'll sound really full of myself in what I'm about to say, but I really am a very friendly person, and in my group of friends, I tend to be the "go-to" friend that people recur to for heart-to-heart conversations and to make them feel better, and that's not something I purposely do to make people like me. I'm just like that, and you can ask anyone who knows me in real life if you don't believe me. It hasn't been something I've been faking for this game. Have I EXPLOITED my real personality to my advantage in this game? Sure. But I see nothing wrong with that. I also don't think I've done anything unethical in this game, EXCEPT for one thing that I've been planning to apologize for, and I was originally planning to say it in my final public confessional so that it was out there before the reunion, but I think I'll just wait till the reunion. I want to apologize to Brian and Paul for the Exemption Auction, and really to Elise as well, because even though she wasn't affected by it in the sense of the exemption, I'm sure that as The Mole she may have concocted a plan on how to go about sabotaging the challenge, and Blaise and I didn't even give her a chance to do that. But the apology is aimed mainly at Brian and Paul, because I AM fully aware of the fact that we were utter rogues in not letting them even get within arm's reach of the exemption. No, Blaise and I didn't BREAK any rules, but we still did something that was extremely dirty, because we didn't even ALLOW them to have a chance. I am really, really, really, REALLY sorry, and I will repeat this to them at the reunion. I may have had problems with things both of them did, but I do think both of them are good people, and I do feel bad on a personal level. I don't feel bad on a strategic level, because it had to be done, and even though I'm apologizing for it now, I wouldn't take it back – it was the correct strategic decision. I had no idea whether either of them (or both of them) knew that Elise was The Mole, and giving one of them an exemption would have made that person feel safe enough to go 100% for one person in their exemption quiz, and if they went for Elise, they'd be getting tons of cumulative points on her, and that would have been something that could have screwed me. In addition, let's say that Brian knew Elise was The Mole, but Paul didn't - if Paul won the exemption, that would also have made me extremely vulnerable. In this game, when you're not the host or The Mole, you have to play with hypotheticals a lot, and you really have NO idea how anyone else is thinking, so you HAVE to be as paranoid as possible and do everything in your power to prevent others from having an advantage. Blaise and I saw an opportunity in being online and we took it, and not that I'm trying to justify myself, but if people like Ginger and Mitch had still been in the game, and they had had the power to do it, they would've also done it in a heartbeat and without looking back. But I really am sorry about it, and I do hope Brian and Paul will be able to forgive me for it.

I was very surprised that Elise decided to be helpful at the challenge! :) I was assuming that she'd actually just sabotage blatantly seeing as she had nothing to lose, but now that I think about it, she basically did the same thing as Bill in the second season of The Mole. Bill had the choice of either adding $100,000 to the final pot or not adding it, and he chose to add it, even though, as The Mole, he obviously wasn't going to be eligible to win that money. Later on in interviews after he was revealed as The Mole, he said he did it because he wanted to increase the amount of money that either Dorothy or Heather (the two players remaining) would win. Obviously, I'm not in Elise's head so I can't know what she's thinking, but maybe she did it because she likes me and Blaise (I'd love to assume that if she had been at the Final 3 with Brian and Paul she would've done absolutely everything possible to make them lose, just so both of them would have had mental breakdowns, lol). We could've easily not gotten that final puzzle if she hadn't helped us at the last minute, so even though it was Blaise who kept the $18 at the end, I do think we owe that money being added to the pot largely to her. I was probably the one out of the group of three who helped the least, as I have been this whole game, lol. I just suck. :( Just like Bill, Elise probably felt that she has already done a great job sabotaging the challenges in this game (which she has) and felt it was okay for us to make a decent amount of money in the final challenge. The thing that made me happiest, though, was that my prediction was correct: I felt so calm during that challenge and actually had fun during it, instead of the stress/annoyance I felt in most of the other ones. I can't even begin to explain how much more at peace I was during this challenge than I was last week when I had to deal with stupid Mini Mole and stupid fucking Brian. We honestly worked together very well, I thought, and there weren't any messes or nuisances anywhere. I think that Blaise, Elise and I were the most calm and collected of the original group of 15, and we were also the most rational, and I think that helped us work together so well, and the only reason why we hadn't been able to do so in the past was because we had so many other people getting in our way.

There have definitely been a lot of obstacles in this game. I didn't reveal anything about my suspects in my first three private confessionals, because I wanted to wait, but during the first round, as I was taking notes on who I suspected and getting ready for the very first quiz, I wrote that my main suspects were "Brian, Elise, Paul and Richard… with Cheri and Ginger as secondary suspects." I put Breaux as The Mole on that first quiz simply for mathematical reasons (even though Breaux did enter my list later). Of course, Cheri and Richard left quickly, and I was soon able to eliminate Ginger because she was too obvious, and that left me with Brian, Elise, Paul and then right around round 3, Breaux entered the mix, and those were my 4 suspects. I say that I faced obstacles because when you think about it, I made it to the final 6 with my coalition partner Blaise AND with all 4 of my suspects, lol, which made it especially tough to figure out who it could be. I mean, it WAS a good thing when Ginger was executed at the Final 7, because I considered her to be such a threat, but at the same time, it was like "jeez, please let one of my suspects get executed already." Thankfully, in that Final 7 round, the Mafia challenge made things a little clearer, and I'm relieved that that happened because at that point, I was actually pretty close to deciding Breaux was The Mole. I really thought the guy was pulling an amazing role and that he was fooling everyone and that I would be the sole person to nail him. So, the Mafia challenge was coming up, and part of me thought that maybe I'd get picked as Mafia. For some reason, I thought The Mole would pick people who were well-liked and thus wouldn't be voted against. I actually kind of thought maybe the Mafia would be me and Ginger. Not sure why. As soon as the challenge got underway, I could tell that Elise was Mafia because of things she was saying (like "suspicions, guys? lol"), and once I got killed quickly, it sort of gave me time to just sit there and watch and think about things. Paul was a Mole suspect for me, but he definitely was too hardcore about ensuring the Mafia were found out and killed. As I said, Breaux was becoming a huge suspect for me… until, as the investigator, he literally copy/pasted his chat with Travis to prove he was the investigator. That was too un-Mole-like. Actually, in the Mole games I played before, we never had the Mafia challenge, but I think that if that challenge had been done in the game in which I was The Mole, I would've picked myself as the investigator. That way, no real player would be gathering any information on who's innocent and who isn't. And of course, Brian voting against Blaise instead of Breaux in that final round was just ridiculous. He had a prime opportunity to sabotage that and didn't. I still cannot WAIT to hear all about how pissed off Elise was at Brian for that, lol. I said this before, but as much as it was probably an effort to make the top Mole suspect more suspicious and get him an exemption, I think she should've considered that Brian is too volatile and unstable ("IT'S JILL! KILL HER! DO IT!"). If she had picked me as Mafia, we would've killed all those heathens and gotten ourselves exemptions. :) I do understand, though, that she didn't pick me as Mafia because she probably figured I'd be a vote in her favor. I think it was probably smart to pick herself as Mafia because most people would think maybe The Mole wouldn't do that. The only thing is that, as The Mole, if you make yourself Mafia you decrease your chances of being able to successfully sabotage the challenge because it's you and the other Mafia versus everyone else, whereas if you're not Mafia, it's you plus the two Mafia against everyone else, so that's THREE people working to ensure the challenge isn't won. I think that, ultimately, the reason why the Mafia challenge bumped Elise to the top of my suspect list was the simple fact that I didn't think that if any of the other people were The Mole, they would pick her as a Mafia. I didn't see a reason why Blaise, Breaux, Brian, Ginger or Paul would pick her as Mafia if they were The Mole. I would've figured that if The Mole was not selecting themselves as Mafia, they would pick two people who would be able to get along, so that they'd work well to sabotage the challenge, and everyone was clearly aware that Brian and Elise weren't the best of friends. So, I just knew something was off about those Mafia selections, and it's what prompted me to target Elise. You know how people will often say "Ah, I'll sleep on it," and then they go to sleep and they don't REALLY think about whatever problem they're trying to work out? Well, I really did sleep on it that night after the Mafia challenge. I woke up feeling pretty certain that Elise was The Mole, even figuring that the whole thing she did with refusing to provide her bio in the beginning was probably staged, and that even led me to send an addendum to my private confessional that morning in which I stated that.
Even in light of the Mafia challenge, I still had obstacles because I wasn't yet 100% positive that it was Elise, and as I stated in an earlier confessional, Elise has been hard to score points on ever since quiz #2. As much as it would look like this would've hurt me, I think it helped me in the fact that it probably contributed to executing other people, because other players would obviously be having a hard time scoring on her as well. I'm now convinced that Brandon and Richard were executed so early because, starting with that quiz, she was made hard to score on, so those two guys probably tried to hit the majority answers on each question, without keeping track of how many points they were actually getting on each person, and that's what executed them. In my case, since Elise was a main suspect from the start, I obviously wasn't going to allow myself to get only 1 or 2 points on her on my quizzes – in fact, I never got anything below a 4 on her. On the first quiz, it was easy to get a 5 on her, which I think was fair to the players, because at the start of a game with so many people, it's completely impossible for anyone to have a solid idea of who The Mole is. Then it started getting harder on quiz #2, and I now am really happy with the risk I took on picking her as The Mole to get 4 points on her, and keep only 2 points on Mitch (I was SOO scared Mitch would turn out to be The Mole and I'd be screwed, lol). Then on quiz #3, she was still hard to score points on, and I also had started to suspect her less due to the refusing to give her bio thing, so I still got only a 4 on her (it should be noted that on all these quizzes I was getting like 5s or above on mostly everyone, except like Ginger and Kyle). Then on quiz #4 I suppose I lucked out with the font color question being thrown out and all, and I got a 6 on her. Then came quiz #5 which featured questions #2-7 all of which had answer choices lumping Breaux/Brian/Paul together and not Elise, so even though at that point she had become my top suspect, I still only managed a 5 on her on that quiz (since I didn't want to risk the chance that one of the guys was The Mole), by aiming for her on the "individual" questions (in which one answer choice applied to each person). Then on quiz #6, I was still wary that Paul might be The Mole or that I was missing something obvious that either Breaux or Brian had done, so I still played it safe, scoring a 6 on her, a 4 on those three guys, and even a 5 on Blaise lol, even though he wasn't a suspect anymore. But then with quiz #7, it was the final 5, and I knew that it was time to become decisive, so I finally took the gamble, and it paid off. I did the same on quiz #8, and now here I am, one quiz away from the end of the game. So, I'm actually GLAD that The Mole was made hard to score on, because if it had been made easy, it could have made someone who wasn't onto The Mole unwittingly get a lot of answers right, and that would've sucked.

There certainly are a lot of things that I'm only noticing now in retrospect, since I've been sort of looking back on the game, now that we're this close to the finish line. I bet one of the funniest things that'll be said at the reunion is how Elise posted only 3 URLs for One-Hit Bloggers while everyone else posted 8 or more, and people hardly seemed to notice. I attributed it to inactivity, to be honest. In fact, in my confessional after Brandon and Richard were executed, I literally said "How the heck did they get executed over Beth, Elise and Kyle?" And of course, Beth and Kyle were promptly executed next, lol. Another thing I'm noticing now is that during round 2, Travis made a thread in the waiting room titled "What is identity?" in which we were meant to talk about how we felt about walking the fine line between our aliases and our real personalities, and I assumed one of the questions on the quiz would be "Did The Mole post in the 'What is identity?' thread?" and indeed it was, and what I'm noticing NOW is that Elise made a post on that thread basically at the last minute, and all she said was "Interesting, and confusing!", which kind of makes it sound like Travis contacted her and said "Psst… I'm gonna ask this question on the quiz, so just post whatever on the thread so that the correct answer will be yes." It just seems that Elise's post in which she simply says "Interesting, and confusing!"was something that was just done for the sake of posting. There's also something that happened in round 4 that I really should've picked up on, but didn't, and that's the fact that when Elise entered the chatroom for the Hangman challenge, Travis said "wow, look who showed up." If I had looked at that more closely, I would've definitely considered it suspicious that he seemed to be pretending to be surprised that she appeared all of a sudden. The "could I be The Mole?" blog post that she made towards the beginning of the game was simply brilliant. She noticed that players were trying really hard to look suspicious, and she wanted to look like she was one of those people, a player wanting to look like The Mole, and I have no doubt that it worked on a lot of people. Same goes for her comments saying "I'm not surprised I survived because I AM THE MOLE!" It takes guts to do that, but she did it, and I've no doubt that it paid off. I've been looking back at the conversations I had with Elise at the start of the game (just because it's obviously interesting to read them now knowing for sure that it's her and observing how she was trying to play things), and it's amazing just how player-like she looked. There's other things I've remembered just from reading earlier stuff now, like when we had the MB challenge in which we had to form words (F, FA, FAX, FAUX, etc), and I was in a chatroom with Elise, Ginger and Paul. The latter two wanted to finish off the challenge, but Elise messaged me privately and said "call me spiteful, but I don't really want Ginger getting more Mole bucks," and that was an incredibly player-like thing to say, because The Mole obviously doesn't care, but a player is obviously concerned if another player has a lot of Mole bucks, since that may give that person too much of an advantage. So, that was very intelligent of her to say to me.
I'll also admit there are dozens upon dozens of hilarious quotes from Elise in several of the conversations we had, and I couldn't help laughing so hard when re-reading some of them. This here is actually our very first conversation, which was on AIM, and it's pretty short. The move to start things off with the "alliance?" joke was brilliant and something that made me think less that it was her since the beginning. I wonder if she did it with other people, too.

omc6player09 (6:48:35 PM): alliance?
omc6player09 (6:48:52 PM): lol just kidding, hi i'm elise
omc6player03 (6:48:54 PM): Hi! How are you? :)
omc6player03 (6:49:19 PM): Haha, I was about to say "Oh, great, are people going to be that straightforward and blunt here?"
omc6player03 (6:49:29 PM): I'm Jill. :) Nice to meet you.
omc6player09 (6:49:42 PM): nice to meet you too :)
omc6player09 (6:50:00 PM): idk i don't think anyone has been THAT blunt lol
omc6player09 (6:50:07 PM): yet, to me, at least
omc6player03 (6:50:20 PM): Me neither, in fact you're the first one to contact me!
omc6player03 (6:50:36 PM): Even though it appears several of them are online, which is interesting, I guess.
omc6player09 (6:50:45 PM): it's so weird, it's like there are people online, but everyone just stays to themselves
omc6player09 (6:51:02 PM): it's a real shrink experiment, i guess the host was serious about all that psych stuff lol
omc6player03 (6:51:32 PM): I mean, I understand it's been less than 24 hours, but we need to get the ball rolling somehow!
omc6player03 (6:51:56 PM): He certainly seems it, he looks like he has some interesting things planned out
omc6player03 (6:52:04 PM): just from the website, I mean
omc6player09 (6:52:21 PM): i hope so, it looked like a really fun game
omc6player09 (6:52:34 PM): there isn't much as designed and stuff as this is
omc6player03 (6:53:19 PM): Oh yeah, I definitely hope it's a fun one, even if I'm sure it'll be horribly nerve-wracking at times.
omc6player09 (6:53:43 PM): haha at least we'll all be nerve wracking together! i hope i will at least lol
omc6player03 (6:54:02 PM): I know!
omc6player03 (6:54:36 PM): It certainly is a bit overwhelming to have 15 people. I'm nervous just thinking about having to compete with so many, you know?
omc6player09 (6:56:13 PM): i'm worried too, like i'm not that experienced or anything when it comes to these things, but this group just seems sort of... odd, you know?
omc6player03 (6:57:55 PM): You think so? I haven't exactly gotten to know them yet, but I'm assuming you may have gotten more insight than I have thus far...
omc6player09 (6:58:32 PM): i haven't gotten much insight at all actually lol
omc6player03 (6:59:12 PM): oh, haha! I just figured since you thought they seemed odd, I wasn't sure what had given you the idea. But i can definitely see how it's probably true.
omc6player09 (6:59:15 PM): i want to talk to you more, but i have to run
omc6player03 (6:59:28 PM): No problem! I'd love to talk to you more, too. :)
omc6player09 (6:59:29 PM): so, hopefully i can catch up with you later :) you seem nice
omc6player03 (6:59:41 PM): You too! Thank you. :) Later, Elise.

The other thing I find amazing is how awesome it is that Blaise, Elise and I actually DID make it to this point. Ages ago it seemed like one of those totally idealistic things ("ahh, how nice would it be if all these annoying people left, and we were all together in the end?") and now it's actually happened. I always thought that Blaise and Elise were the only people who seemed rational on a similar level as me, and I just never felt like I could keep up with the boisterousness of all the other people. This is hilarious, particularly the joe schmoe bit, rofl:

Elise: we're discussing how we're the only normal people left, so i sent this to him...
we're going to show up to the next live challenge
and i swear to god, the host better reveal that this is the online version of joe schmoe
me: ROFL!!!!
oh my God, I love you
if we don't make it past these incredibly immature people in this game, life just isn't fair
Elise: the reason they're never online is because they're all the same person
and they all suck
it's a ploy
me: if it weren't for you and Blaise I would be so done with all this
Elise: they're all 13 year old robots, we win!
me: D&D players :) hee
Elise: seriously, if you survive past me and blaise, i will feel sooo happy for you and sad at the same time lol
i might contact you across executed lines just to see if you've lost your sanity lol
And then, in another chat, we were talking about Ginger, and Elise bluntly said:
Elise: she's a creeper
ugh, i hate everyone left except you and blaise
Finally, here's an extremely funny Brian one (which I think we have a large collection of those, lol), and the final comment Elise makes here had me laughing for like a minute, lol:
Elise: have you ever heard of a mcguffin? brian just used this word with me...
me: McGuffin? Definitely not. Let me look it up...
Elise: "Brian: lol im getting all metaphorical on ur ass"
he just explained it to me
i'm kind of insulted... but i don't know why

That's sort of what it was always like with Brian – I was kind of insulted and annoyed by him, but I never knew exactly why. I don't believe the problem REALLY were his typing skills, because there's other people online I talk to who use shorthand. I think it was like some expressions he used (like "make us proud babygurl" WTF???). As I've mentioned so many times, Blaise and Elise were so helpful in helping me keep my sanity, especially when it came to Brian-related things. In a way, it was perfect that Brian made it to the final 4 with us (mosquitoes are, after all, annoying and never go away – thank God that last quiz worked as insecticide) and now the three of us are here at the end. It couldn't have worked out better. :)

In the spirit of this sort of retrospective I've been doing of the game, I'm actually going to address everyone who was involved in it one last time, and the only people I'll leave out are Beth and Ellery because I never once had a conversation with either of those two. So, here it goes:

Cheri – Many were surprised to see you go early, and I guess I was, too, but now that I think about it, during the one round that you WERE in the game, you only contacted me twice. One time it was to ask me what I thought of your inkblot, and you then signed off. The second time it was to ask me, like, how old I was and where I was from (I guess you thought those things would be asked on the quiz, even though they weren't part of the bio questions that Travis asked us), and both times you didn't seem interested in engaging in conversation. That's a mistake that several other people have made. I don't understand why so many players felt it was so important to focus on the challenges, to the point that they'd get on gmail only for challenges and never at other times to chat (Kyle and Mitch are great examples of this – I never saw them on gmail after the first week). Yes, the challenges are an important part of the game, but I THINK that the place in which you FIND The Mole is in the conversations, where you assess behavior and analyze why people say things the way they do, etc. Despite the Mafia challenge, what REALLY made me basically sure that Elise was The Mole was when she started talking to me at the start of round 6 after I went more heavily for her, and started trying to convince me that she had gone 100% for Brian on the quiz and that we should work together now, etc. The challenges aren't enough to find The Mole because people (like Mitch, heh) do shady things on purpose at the challenges to throw you off. It's in the interaction with the players that you find The Mole, which is why it was always so important for me to converse with the other players, and it really looks like Cheri failed to do that.

Brandon – Oh man. You told me that I was your top suspect, and I didn't know whether to believe you or not. Of course, once you told me that, it simply gave me an opening to continue acting suspicious in my conversations with you, and I did it, because I had to. I said it before and I'll say it again, I would've PREFERRED someone else getting executed for thinking I was The Mole, because I really did like you a lot, but if I had an in with getting rid of you, of course I had to take it. I had to do anything that would get anyone but me executed. But with that said, you really were extremely cool to know in the short time you were here. I suspect perhaps you won't come to the finale since it's been so long, but it'd really be nice if you surprised me and showed up. :) Also, if the picture you posted of yourself on your blog is real, can we, like, go out, please? lol

Richard – For my sake, it was best that you left so early. I was extremely suspicious of you as The Mole, but ALSO, something told me that if you weren't The Mole, the information you were feeding me in our supposed coalition wasn't true. You just struck me as the kind of guy who is ostensibly harmless and pleasant, yet has a deadly agenda. It really was a shock that you left so early, considering how active you were, and I wonder if you've continued following the game after you left. It'd be cool to hear your thoughts at the reunion.

Kyle – I'd like to say as little as possible here. You couldn't keep yourself out of trouble, even after you got executed. I'm sticking to my prediction that it was you who contacted someone outside of executed lines (there's just no way it was Beth), and that's such an immature thing to do. Hopefully you'll be punished by not receiving an invitation to the finale.

Mitch – I actually kind of want to apologize for the mean things I said about you in earlier confessionals. Yes, I had good reason to be pissed off. You LIED about your bio information, which is a ridiculous and unnecessary thing to do in this game, but I didn't consider the fact that maybe you had formulated some sort of strategy in which you felt it was advantageous to do that, so I'm sorry. The blatancy with which you sabotaged some things was definitely too much, and I can't say I agree with those who say you did a good job at looking suspicious, because I don't think you did at all. I also didn't really see you on gmail after the first week, so you didn't do well in the crucial part of the game of interacting with the other players. I will admit, though, that I enjoyed the conversations I did have with you during the first week, and I thought you seemed like a really cool guy.

Ginger – I didn't always speak too positively of you in my confessionals, but I now realize that that wasn't actually because I didn't like you. It was because I was scared of you. I was scared of how into the game you were. I was convinced that your 10 million MBs would screw everyone over in the end. I really feared that I'd make it to the final round with you and you'd then be impossible to defeat on the final quiz. As much as I didn't lose a suspect when I lost you, I lost a threat, and that was definitely a relief. But now that you're gone, whenever I read a conversation that involved you, it's always so much fun. You really were quite a character. There was a challenge in which we were being disorganized as usual, and you randomly blurted out "Stop screwing this up, Mole!" and I thought that was so funny. I have to admit I also had a really fun time with you and Elise coming up with ideas for the MB story, trying to work through the sexual innuendos without making them dirty. And, of course, this excerpt from the second round of Mafia is awesome:

Brian: ok im the investigator for real now
Ginger: NO! SHUT UP! Brian is THE MAFIA
Brian: LOL U R THE MAFIA
JILL ITS GINGER
me: Vote: Player 10

You were definitely a very good player, and I could never even aspire to make a blog that was as technically impressive as yours, lol. I really hope you come to the finale and share your opinions.

Breaux – During these last few rounds, I have SOOOO felt the absence of your lulziness. It really sucks that it wasn't until the last like two rounds that you were in the game that we started to talk because I could've been having a riot with you from the start, but then again, you actually weren't on gmail a lot during the beginning rounds. Talking to people online can be like pulling teeth sometimes because you can't sense any sort of expression, but somehow, you managed to be extremely expressive in our chats, and I was never bored for a second with you. You really made me want to let my guard down and just talk to you normally without restraining myself from telling you my true thoughts, and it WAS hard to be dishonest with you about who I thought The Mole was, but when you told me that you really didn't think it was Elise, I HAD to keep it that way, because I obviously needed to do everything I could to ensure I stayed and everyone else got executed. I just wish you had been there at the final 4 instead of Brian. But jeez, I REALLY hope you do come to the reunion because we're definitely gonna be in need of your entertainment, and I really want to find out who you are so that we can talk after this is all over. Thanks for being awesome. :)

Paul – I'm sticking to my prediction that, once everything with the game is over and done with and the challenges are no longer a concern, you'll be a pleasant guy to get to know. You definitely did irk me with your constant jabs at the group for not doing well in the challenges, especially in your public confessionals. I hope it was mostly strategy because if it WASN'T, not only was it annoying, but it was detrimental to your game because it led people to not suspect you. People who play this game NEED to freaking understand that it should NOT be a player's priority to do well on the challenges. I could do nothing but cringe whenever I saw you having an enema over us losing a challenge. The only USE that the challenges should have for a player is to sabotage them to look suspicious and to observe what others do to figure out The Mole. If you try too hard to win the challenges, chances are you're just putting money into someone else's pocket, and at the same time, you look unsuspicious – so, it's not worth it. I don't know if you were being honest when you said this, but you did tell me that Mitch was your top suspect and then later you said Ginger was #2 on your list, and if that's all true, then you're definitely not as observant and as good at this game as I initially thought you were, because there was clearly no way Ginger or Mitch were The Mole. However, I do hope to see you at the reunion and to hear what you think of how everything unfolded.

Brian – I wonder what more there is to say, lol. I'm still curious to hear how much of what you did was strategic and how much of it wasn't, so I guess I'll find out soon. I suppose I should commend you because apparently a lot of people did think you were The Mole, but the thing is, I'm wondering just how much of it was intentional. I'm wondering whether you actually purposely did things to get people to think like that, or if it simply happened that way. If it's the latter, I can't really say you deserve a lot of credit, but if it's the former, good job.

Blaise – Best… coalition partner… ever. That's all I have to say. Blaise is so awesome simply because of how laid-back and easy to talk to he is. It was so simple to work with him, and we were definitely on the same wavelength in so many respects. The one thing I feel sorry about is round 6, because I did try to sort of steer him in the wrong direction by making him think it was Breaux, but he obviously caught onto it, and it really was a bad idea, anyway. Everything was going to work better in terms of getting rid of Brian and Paul if he and I played together rather than against each other, and that was obviously the case with the exemption auction. Blaise, you're obviously a good player, since you've made it this far… now I wonder just how good you are, mainly because of my apprehension of what's gonna happen with the final quiz. It's come down to you or me, so I wonder if maybe you've been concealing the fact that you've known it's Elise since the beginning and it'll be impossible for me to win. No matter what the outcome at the reunion, it's been really great to do this with you (I still can't believe we actually did it!!!!!), and I'd really like to be able to keep in touch with you after the game is over. You've always struck me as the kind of guy who has a sort of quiet intelligence about himself, and that's always intrigued me. Also, I think you probably stated one of the most satisfying quotes of this game when you cast a vote at the Mafia challenge:
Blaise: VOTE: Player 10 DIE
LOL. Put that together with Elise's quote in the In The Dark challenge where she said "Brian, will you give me your key and die?" and you've got total perfection, lol. Blaise, you're a great guy, and I can't thank you enough for helping me get to this point.

Elise – You're probably tired of hearing me talk about you so much, huh? :) Well, I'll try to keep it short, but I can't make any promises. I can't stress enough what an incredible charade you've pulled. As someone who's been The Mole and who is really into the dynamics of this game and the different strategies that go into the deception of playing this role, you've no idea how happy it makes me to have witnessed a performance as amazing as the one you've given in this game. I feared early on that The Mole would just suck, and a bunch of people would figure out who it was, and I'd be executed early for being careful with my quiz-taking strategy of allocating points to each person. The other thing I feared was that The Mole would be annoying, which actually could have definitely been a possibility. If Brian or Paul had been The Mole, it would have pissed me off like you don't even know, and if it had been like Ginger or Mitch it would've also bothered me a lot because they were blatant in a way that The Mole shouldn't be blatant. If it had been Brian or Paul, I could've still been able to do well in the game and made it to the end, but it would've just been blah. I would've been happy if I had won the game with The Mole being one of them, but it's so much more satisfying to know that The Mole is not only someone who was great at keeping their identity hidden, but also someone whom I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know. You're incredibly sharp, which is something I knew the second I met you, but you're also unbelievably hilarious and you have no idea how much entertainment you've provided for me during all these months of playing OMC 6. My theory has been that the angry persona is something you've been putting on for this game, and that the personality you've been displaying when talking to me is the real you. It was the best move to be the real you when talking to me because, honestly, there were SO many freaking times that you were talking to me that I just wanted to trust you completely and tell you everything I thought, so you were obviously doing a perfect job. Likewise, I bet the angry persona worked well on someone like Paul, and I can't wait to see his (and everyone else's) reaction when the unveiling is finally done. I wonder if it's been difficult for you to carry on the angry persona because my guess is you're not really like that. I do know that being The Mole is incredibly hard. People think it's easy because it's a free ride to the end of the game, and they don't realize how tremendously tough it is psychologically. You have to try to work so many angles and cover all your bases and be REALLY careful about not even coming close to slipping up. It's a challenging role, and I think you've done it perfectly. I just can't wait for this to be over so that you're able to talk openly about everything. I bet you have a heck of a lot of really interesting things to say and that your private confessionals should be a great read. Thank you so much for being such a good friend to me in this game. I can't even imagine how much less fun this whole experience would've been for me if you hadn't been a part of it. And I can't wait to know who "Elise" really is. :)

Travis (Player 15) – Considering that you did so poorly as a player, not even making an appearance or submitting a quiz, I guess it IS a good thing that you did such a great job hosting. :) This game was extremely well-organized, nicely paced and completely fair. It's obvious that you've been really diligent in ensuring things are fair for everyone, which is why the initial decision to make it an alias game was definitely a great idea. The In The Dark challenge is an extremely well thought-out challenge, and it was incredibly hard. The challenges we've had in this game have been really fun, but at the same time, they've been very effective at keeping with the theme of this game. Take, for example, a challenge as simple as Trust Falls, in which all you need is for the players to send you an e-mail with one of two words, TRUST or BETRAY. It sounds like an awfully simplistic challenge, but it's perfect for a game like this in which it's all bluff/double-bluff galore. It's totally fitting for a game like this. Every time we've had a challenge you've been extremely on top of everything, thus making it clear that you prepare yourself really well for them, and you don't just half-ass things like so many other hosts. One of the games I played, the host was ridiculously lazy, and it came to a point, when we were at the final 5 that we'd just HAD it with his slowness, and we decided to end the game on our own, with The Mole voluntarily revealing himself. I'm so glad that this game was able to reach its completion and that it was so worthwhile the entire time. You were more "detached" than the other hosts I've worked with, who were usually online and would even talk to players, but that's probably a wise choice on your part to ensure you don't accidentally give something away or look like you might be giving an advantage to whoever you're talking to. You've been very professional in the way you've handled everything, and you've given us an extremely fun experience in doing so. I have to assume that you must do this because you find it fun, because I can't imagine why anyone else would put time and effort (and real money from their wallet!) into something like this unless they enjoyed it, and it's so good that there's still hosts out there who are aware of what an incredibly great and challenging experience this game of The Mole is and who want to host online versions of it. About 5 years ago was when the show had last aired and I last played in a game, and I figured that since the show didn't look like it was gonna air anymore, the online games wouldn't continue, and I was really disappointed by that and figured I'd never get to play again. Thank God that the show came back this year, not just because I was able to see it again, but because it led to a renewed enthusiasm in online Mole games, which obviously led to this game happening and having so many active people in it. Thank you so much for making this happen, and for making it happen WELL. I can't wait to hear about your thoughts and observations at the finale on all of the behind-the-scenes stuff – it'll be great to hear from the one person who's actually seen absolutely everything that's happened. Thanks again for a great game, and I hope you're really proud of the work you've done on OMC 6. :)

Oh, that's right, I've been doing all this jabbering, and there's apparently this big quiz that's coming up that I should be really worried about, right? Well, I indeed am very worried, but it's a different type of "worried". Prior to this round, there's always been the fear of possibly being duped and on the wrong track in terms of who The Mole is. I don't need to worry about that anymore. I just need to worry about how good Blaise is. I have no idea whether or not I'm capable of beating him. So, I AM nervous, but only in the sense that I know I have a 50% chance of winning, and that it can probably go either way. Regardless of the outcome, as I said a few rounds ago, if I discover who The Mole is but don't WIN the game, I'll still be OKAY with it, because the objective of the game, and the one thing that interests me the most, IS finding the real Mole, no matter what the final outcome is. My priority isn't the challenges nor the money nor anything else. My priority is the psychological part of the game, assessing each player and figuring out which one of them it is, and I successfully did that. This game is all about engaging in detective fun, and I think I can say without sounding cocky that I was obviously a better detective than several other people, and that's why I was able to make it to this point. If I don't win, I'll have nothing but the heartiest congratulations for Blaise, who has been an awesome player. If I do win, it'll be an incredible accomplishment and I can't even begin to describe how happy I'll be. I'm very excited about the reunion. I can't wait to learn who each executed player thought was The Mole, to read people's private confessionals and to finally hear everything Elise has to say after all these months of gameplay. No matter what the outcome, it'll definitely be an awesome night that will conclude what's been an extremely fun ride of an online game. Thank you again, Travis, and I know you're supposed to be impartial and all, but please wish me luck!

Episode 8 Private Confessional

The first thing I'm going to bring up is, well, a suggestion that could potentially keep the game from suffering any breaches on its integrity, lol. Since you have all our passwords to the blogger account, and you're currently the only person who can access executed player accounts, it MIGHT be a good idea to log into Ginger's blogger account to be able to edit her blog and to remove the tagboard. Things look like they've been dangerously on the cusp of possible communication from players out of the game, and especially now that Elise brought up the fact that she believes an executed player sent her porn spam to her e-mail, it could be a good idea. I'd imagine that the possiblities of a breach of this sort would be even more likely after the next execution when the game is at the final round, and people are itching to yell at The Mole or whatever (which is totally immature, by the way, and it has happened in the past games I played, and it was always so infuriating and unnecessary). Ginger really shouldn't have even been able to put an application on her blog that opened the window for outside communication (and it looks like other players besides me are looking at it, because apparently Blaise is exchanging comments with whoever the heck "SUPERSALAD" is).

Paul, I know that you believed that nobody thought that you were The Mole, but well, you were wrong, haha. Despite your lack of sabotage, I always considered your behavior suspicious. It wasn't until last round that I finally re-evaluated things and decided there was no way a Mole would be as helpful as you had been so far. But you definitely had me going, with several things, including what happened with the question you answered correctly at the first live challenge, then the whole issue with your favorite color (which I STILL don't understand, and I can't wait to get the explanation at the finale), and most recently, the whole "money money" thing, which was quite shady. I had to take a risk, though, and on the last quiz, by going 100% for Elise as The Mole, I scored only 1 point on you, and I certainly hesitated before clicking "send," but I had to take the risk.

Elise told me that she got porn spam in her e-mail, and sad as it sounds, this doesn't surprise me in the least bit. Immaturity from executed players is a very common thing in these games. She claims that it is Paul, though, which I don't think is accurate, because Paul may have whined about challenges, but you have to be really immature to do something like sending someone porn spam, and Paul certainly isn't an immature person. He may have had a stick up his ass as far as the challenges were concerned, but he's not immature. If anything, this looks more like something Breaux, Ginger or Mitch may have done. Maybe one of them saw Paul's execution, and they've deduced based on whatever their quiz scores were that Elise is The Mole, so they're being childish sore losers and sending her that (I have to say I really would be disappointed if it turns out it's Breaux doing this, because I think he's better than that). It's because of all of this, though, that it really may be a good idea to just get rid of the tagboard. If you get executed, you should DEAL with it, and wait for the finale, and even AT the finale, you really shouldn't spew insults at The Mole – he/she was just fulfilling a role.

Elise said that she traced the IP address to the porn spam she got, and that it would indicate that Paul is from New Jersey (or from Hicksville, New York, ROFL!!!!), which I don't think is correct because, as I mentioned in an earlier private confessional, the fact that Paul uses googlemail and not gmail is already hard evidence of the fact that he's from the UK (let alone all of the evidently British expressions he'd use, such as "oh my word" and "I cocked up that challenge"). So, I suppose that this person who apparently lives in New Jersey (or in Hicksville!) and sent her this would be someone like Breaux, Ginger or Mitch. I mean, actually, as the host, you probably know their IP addresses since you have everyone's e-mails, so I imagine that maybe you'd be able to investigate that, though I guess that if Elise is The Mole, she'd know them as well. Speaking of that, if she has my IP address from my accessing the gmail account from my home and work computers and my blackberry, and she has traced them as she said she was doing with that of whoever sent her the spam, I suppose she's discovered that, like Paul, I'm not from the U.S. either. And yes, I know I indicated in my initial application that I was from Boston, and actually, that's technically true, because that's where I lived the whole time that I was in college, until I graduated a few months ago. I've just had experiences in the past in which hosts have been skeptical about selecting someone not from the U.S. (and you obviously weren't, since you cast Paul as a player as well), so I just preferred to say that, especially since Boston had been the place I lived in for such a long while recently (and that's actually where I'm headed today, until Monday).

I'm really glad that the gamble with Blaise paid off. If I had allowed him to get that exemption last round and then had gotten executed, I would've regretted it so much, lol. He's definitely been good to work with, and the only frustrating thing is obviously the uncertainty of whether or not he or I or both have actually succeeded at getting others to think we're The Mole. You'd figure we have, considering we made it here, but I actually wouldn't be surprised if everyone has thought it's Brian (which would actually suck because it'd mean the kid won't stop gloating at the finale about how many people he fooled, bleh). I'm glad that at least Blaise decided to sacrifice himself at the challenge, because I just… I couldn't bring myself to do it. The paranoia was telling me that getting killed would make me ineligible for a possible exemption, and I just couldn't do it. The severely annoying Brian was privately messaging me asking me to sacrifice myself because he and Blaise had the most lives. If I didn't have to exercise restraint for the purposes of looking suspicious, I would've gone ahead and said "FUCK YOU" right then and there. I have to admit, though, that Blaise spoke the wisest words of the night when he said "Brian, they just don't trust you with the money!" I think that, at that point, Elise and I were both like "THANK YOU", lol.

In past confessionals, I've referred to Brian as being dumb. I don't retract any of those comments because there's definitely been instances in which he's been terribly dumb: his rationale about the game in terms of the people who he claims were active at the beginning and burned out is completely laughable, his ideas about challenges and pot money being so important are misplaced, his idolizing people like Ellery and Kyle is ridiculous, and the moves he made in the Mafia game were beyond asinine. With that being said, though, I'll give Brian credit for several things. I DID suspect him a lot during the first half of the game, prior to the Mafia challenge. At the very start of the game, I thought he was playing the Craig role of being the funny, lovable guy of the group. And the fact that Elise picked him to be Mafia alongside her probably means that she did it because he was the top suspect, and so she could make him look more suspicious AND possibly get him an exemption to ensure he'd stick around longer. From what Brian has said, it's also evident that Elise HAS been on his suspect list for a while (I just can't get a gander as to who he suspects most out of myself, Blaise and Elise, and that may just be the crucial factor that determines the next execution). He even rightly pointed out that Elise would be a great Mole because her angry demeanor is a great non-Mole persona, and he's absolutely right about that. He's also managed to make it to the final 4, so the kid really can't be that dumb. And he isn't. He's just done some dumb things, which even smart people do all the time. Oh, and he's really good at playing rock/paper/scissors, apparently… good for him, I suppose.

I have to admit that I was totally frightened throughout the painfully long live challenge. I was extremely scared that any move I made could possibly yield Blaise or Brian an exemption, which is exactly why I was so reluctant to give Brian anything (lives, money, or whatever)… of course, when Brian starts yelling "GIMME UR MONEY RITE NOW!!!!" severe annoyance also becomes part of my reasoning in not wanting to cooperate with him. I mean, honestly, the way he says that, it sounds like he was fucking pointing a gun at us and robbing us of our money. He just lacks so much tact, and the logic he comes up for things is often so convoluted, and I'm sorry, but I've had it up to here with him. I'd give anything to have Breaux, or heck, even Paul, take his place in the final 4 (heck, I'd even prefer Ginger or Mitch – they were loud and both did shady things, but at least they were entertaining, which is the complete opposite of what Brian is). With all of this being said, though, I have to admit that another problem I had was that I think I understood, um… oh, about 40% of the challenge, lol. Everything having to do with the fire and the hose and the gas and the valve, I had NOOOO clue what was going on. Thank God that I didn't screw anything up too badly with my ignorance, though - I wanted to try to LOOK like I knew what I was doing because The Mole would know what they're doing, but there were just times that I had to display my confusion and ask what was going on because I really had no idea. It was definitely a GREAT challenge, it's just, well… if you do an OMC 7, you should probably pray you get someone who's slightly smarter than me to take part in it, lol. I suppose you started doing the countdowns because it had already taken longer than it perhaps was expected, and I think it was a good idea, as much as it made things even more difficult and nerve-wracking.

The puzzle boxes challenge… sigh. Okay, Elise, I have no idea whether or not there really is an actual exemption there, and if there is, I have NO clue whether or not you actually WERE trying to help me or whether or not you'd even actually want me to win an exemption, lol. But I understand your going offline and saying "I'm going to leave you on your own." If you were trying to clue me into something, there was really only so much you could do because you're obviously not going to give away your identity or go out of your way to help me. And you shouldn't. As with the live challenge, though… I just have to admit that I'm really, really bad at this stuff. I've honestly tried. I think that maybe when we were talking last night you got the impression that I wasn't trying. But I REALLY have tried ever since I've had all the clues in my power, and I honestly don't know. You see, I do consider myself good at this game in the sense of assessing behavior and observing what people do, and determine who might or might not be The Mole, and that's the MAIN goal of this game, so I guess it's great that I'm good at that, but I'm not good at all at these labyrinthine challenges that wrack your brain. The reason for that is that I'm really not an intelligent person. You probably think that's just low self-esteem talking, but no, it's true. Observant and attentive? Yes. Intelligent? No. It's as simple as that. You also have to understand that, when you're not the host or The Mole, there's so much information that you don't have, and it can lead to so many paranoid thoughts of possible scenarios. Today's gonna be a busy day for me (which is why I actually wrote the majority of this private confessional several days ago), and I already know I'm probably not gonna have enough time to solve it. With my luck, I bet that when I get off the plane and check the game website, it'll already be updated saying that either Blaise or Brian has an exemption, and I'll be like "oh, cool… red screen coming up for me." I do get the impression, though, that you may have wanted to see me get the exemption (if there is one), and I am really glad and thankful for that, and if it turns out that you gave me what was supposed to be a really helpful clue and I didn't notice it, I promise I'll kick myself a bunch of times, and you'll have every right to call me on my incompetence at the reunion, lol. To my credit, though, last night I was just really exhausted after the live challenge and couldn't even think, and now today, I don't exactly have a heck of a lot of time, so it's not like I have much of an advantage either. Oh well.

Yes, I HAVE said it every single time, but I do think my time has come. Even if an exemption isn't won, I feel like I'm going to screw a question up, and if it IS won then it's basically guaranteed that I'm leaving. The only consolation I have is that I did not only make it really far, but I beat a lot of people I didn't think I would beat (Ginger and Paul are examples). Also, it'd mean that it'll only be a few days until the end of the game (Ginger got executed almost a month ago – I can't IMAGINE having had to wait that long). I think that Blaise and Elise have been great in this game, and I won't feel much shame in losing to either of them. I really like both of them a lot, and I really hope that my relationship with both of them ends up lasting more than just a few minutes after this game is over. But it really will pain me a lot to lose to Brian. In fact, there's a lot of people who probably didn't deserve to go before him, so it could very well happen to me as well. I can't say I'll offer many congratulations to him if he wins this game. I know that this game isn't necessarily about who "deserves" this and that, but I don't really think he deserves anything, and I'm sorry for sounding so harsh. If I do leave, I'll be at the reunion rooting for Blaise to win and shutting up anyone who has bad things to say about Elise (as I said, as someone who's been The Mole, I know what it's like to get inexplicably badmouthed for doing things you HAD to do, as it was part of the role you were playing). This quiz is pivotal. And I really don't want to leave. But it may be out of my hands.

Episode 7 Private Confessional

I'm sending this early, as I've done before, because I have a lot to talk about. The first thing I'd like to get off my chest is how confusing I find it that people in this game place so much importance on the challenges and the pot money. I'm here because I'm enthralled by the mystery element of the game. I'm here to assess behavior, have conversations with the players to get to know their personas and determine if they could be The Mole or not, and to take the quizzes in a way that I can aim questions at those I suspect. It's just beyond me why people care so much about the challenges and the money that comes with them. Granted, you'd have no game without them, but in my mind, they are secondary considerations. Basically, for me, the challenges are like the lines you have to make at the amusement park to get on the different rides. You're not too excited to make the lines, but you know they're gonna lead you to the good stuff, and while you're in line, you can at least observe what's going on with people who are on the rides already. It's a good analogy because that's exactly the case here. The only two purposes that the challenges have for me are (1) sitting back and watching what others do to see what is suspicious and what isn't, (2) doing suspicious things on my own to throw people off. Winning the actual money for the challenges just isn't that important to me. I know that it's possible that you find that offensive because you put time into making these challenges. Maybe you weren't thrilled that Blaise and I cost money that had been won over the course of several challenges that had been won and that you had put time into. But first of all, if we had only bid a little money and then put up our MBs to stop it, we wouldn't have looked suspicious. We would've just looked like players who wanted an exemption (which is exactly what we are – but we don't want the others to know that). This is the type of challenge that The Mole WOULD take the opportunity to do some severe damage to the pot. So, we had to lose money. And also, there are plenty of other Mole games and other types of games in which these gambling challenges have a severe effect, and suddenly a lot of money is lost. Everyone knows that. So, it's not like what we did is an abnormality for this sort of game. I'd also like to make this observation: when they were complaining on the message board about what happened with the exemption auction and they were using the term "hate the game," I don't think what they meant was "hate Travis for not letting us know in advance" or "hate Travis for creating a challenge like this." I think they meant "hate the nature of this game in general for having situations in which people can get screwed over." And when I say "the nature of this game" I'm not referring to OMC 6, but to any Mole game. I understand that maybe you were miffed that it was you they were accusing, but I don't think that was the case. They were just upset with the situation.

My sole aim in this game is to play detective and have fun at it. If somehow I end up winning, it won't really matter to me whether the final pot is $40 or $15 or $5. It's not even that I'm rich or anything – it's just not my priority. And not to sound overly-confident, but I do think I have my priorities right when it comes to this game. Less energy should be spent on the challenges and more should be spent on discovering the identity of The Mole, which is clearly the aim of the game. Sure, if I were on the real TV show in which thousands of dollars are offered, it'd be different, but you know what? In that situation, my priority would still be to just have detective fun, because I really think that that's what this game is all about. Others are entitled to disagree with me, but this is just the approach that I take towards this game, which I think is an awesome intellectually-challenging experience.

There's something that's kind of interesting about last round. This is OMC 6, last round was episode 6, we were down to the final 6, and player 6 was executed! How coincidental is that? Sorry, lol, but I tend to notice things like that. Breaux, you would've been an excellent Mole. In fact, since what a Mole does is basically play a character and take on a persona that is hopefully seen as unsuspicious, I hope you won't mind, but if I ever play The Mole again, I may steal some things from the persona you portrayed in this game. In the very first game I played, I was a regular player, and one of the other players in the game was this dumb, flirty blonde who seemed more interested in having fun chatting with people than playing the game. She did make it to the final 5, but she wasn't The Mole, and she wasn't suspected ever. And since I noticed that she wasn't suspected, in my next game when I was The Mole, I behaved exactly like that, and it worked very well. As The Mole, you just want to find a personality that people would find really likable AND non-shady (and I do think that The Mole in this game has been successful at that, but more on that later). So, I may have to use a little bit of your Breaux lulziness if I'm ever The Mole again. :) Breaux, every thing I said about you in my reaction to your execution on my blog is completely true. You're so funny, you've got a super charming personality, and I can't wait to chat with you again.

The purpose of what I did with Blaise was very simple: keep anyone else from getting the exemption. If any of the other two people here who are players and not The Mole would have gotten the exemption, I'd be in severe trouble. I'm still in trouble right now, just not as much as I would've been in that scenario. Why was I so asinine to just let Blaise be the one to get it? There are several reasons. It made more sense for him to get it because he was the one with the power to get it, as he had so many MBs. For the sabotage that Blaise and I coordinated for the Trust Falls game, we had him be the rogue who chose "BETRAY," so in keeping things consistent, we had him be the rogue here who nabbed the exemption. I think it also makes me look more like The Mole if I seem like I was taking advantage of costing the group money, yet the exemption ended up falling into someone else's hands, thus making it look like I want that person to be the one who stands out and I want them to just ignore what I did. I think I won't even mention the exemption auction challenge in my public confessional just to look like I'm trying to get them to forget about it. If Blaise is The Mole, I did score high on the last quiz, but I haven't exactly scored high on him on quizzes prior to that, so I don't think I'd still be here. EVERYTHING the guy said to me on Monday night when we were coordinating the exemption auction thing indicated that he's a player who wanted an exemption and who wanted to look suspicious. He's probably going to say in his private confessional that he can't believe I was so dumb to hand him an exemption. And maybe I was. We'll find out.

Let's talk about Paul. Ever since I finally revealed who my top suspects were in private confessional #4, I've talked about how I find his behavior suspicious. The approach of looking like a player who really wants to win the challenges and who gets pissed off when we don't would be excellent for The Mole. But the thing is… where IS Paul's sabotage? Have you seen it? I haven't. If he's The Mole, he's done wonderfully in terms of behavior, but not at all in terms of challenges. The only noteworthy things are him and Ginger not submitting their dino comics in round 2, and the whole shady business with "money money" last round. You also may recall that in that same private confessional I talked about something Paul did in the very first live challenge that was EXTREMELY suspicious (with the question in which the answer was a page number). I still can't get over that, and if he is The Mole, and I get executed, I'll probably kick myself for not letting that weigh on my mind more. But if it IS him, I'll definitely be VERY interested in attending the reunion and being dazzled by all the subtle sabotage he's done that we all just haven't noticed. And it better not be "Oh, well, you people were screwing up so much yourselves, that I hardly had to do anything!" Even if the team sucks, The Mole still needs to sabotage because that's their role. If he's The Mole and he actually used that program to figure out that the Hangman answer had to be either "defenestrate" or "teledendrite," that definitely was TOO helpful, and not something a Mole should do.

The only two candidates who make SENSE as The Mole in terms of having sabotaged challenges are Brian and Elise. They are the ones who have helped on select occasions, yet they've hurt more in others, a good example being in round 3, Brian helping at the "Where in DC" challenge, but then costing us $6 in Heist. The Mole WOULD help add $2 or $3 to the pot during a round, but then cost $6 later on in that same round. So, how do I determine which one of the two it is? Let's take a look at each of them.
Let's go back to the beginning of last round. Ginger has been executed. She was clearly allied with Brian. Mitch had been executed the round before that, and he also seemed to have something going on with Brian. Okay, that definitely makes Brian out to be very suspicious, if his allies have been dropping like flies. Elise comes to me and tells me she went 100% for Brian on the quiz, and look at that, she's still here, and Ginger (who was obviously Brian's ally) is gone. Brian must be The Mole, right?
Not so fast. Before I get to Elise, let me say a few more words about Brian. A few weeks ago, I said that if he's The Mole, he's doing a good, but not stellar job. I've changed my opinion on that. If he's The Mole, he's done terribly. He's been a completely shady player from the beginning. Everyone suspects that his hideous typing skills are fake. But more importantly, if he is The Mole, it is just RIDICULOUS that in the last vote of the exemption round of Mafia, he voted against Blaise right after BREAUX had just voted against HIM. Any chance he had of successfully sabotaging the challenge was gone, because what he needed to do, upon seeing that Breaux voted against him, was to vote against Breaux, so that Blaise would then have a chance to break the tie and hopefully Blaise would vote Breaux out instead of him. Even if he's not The Mole and he's actually a player, it was very stupid, because this kept him from earning an exemption. If Elise is The Mole, I can't imagine how pissed off she must have been at Brian for the results of the Mafia challenge, but hey, she picked him as Mafia, right? Elise, if you had picked me, we would've totally slaughtered them and gotten ourselves exemptions. :) (Did you notice how I was the only player whom no one voted against, ever, on either of the two games of Mafia we played? Being well-liked by the group can have advantages for purposes of sabotage) Now, Brian did keep seeming like he kept constantly getting the investigator's identity wrong. From what Elise copy/pasted to me of their chat, it seems Brian initially thought I was the investigator and decided to kill me. He then thought it was Paul and killed him. And then in the final round, he apparently thought it was Blaise. He made a point of ensuring people knew he kept getting the investigator wrong, even saying "lol wrong one" when Breaux was like "Brian, stop lying, I'm the fucking investigator." So, the ONLY way that I could see this as a smart thing for The Mole to have done is if he wanted to seem like he didn't know who the investigator was since, of course, The Mole DID know who the investigator was. But it's just beyond me why he would waste such an opportunity to sabotage and vote off Blaise instead of Breaux. Paul even pointed out that "Brian made a silly error," which is an understatement, but Brian still responded to that he didn't make a silly error. Jeez, Brian, lol.

As for Ginger getting executed and being Brian's ally… there's actually no reason why Ginger couldn't have thought Brian was The Mole. You see, SEVERAL WEEKS ago we saw a lot of Ginger publicly accusing Brian of being The Mole, and obviously doing so to get people to go after him… but suddenly, she stopped. Suddenly, she switched to publicly accusing Mitch of being The Mole. In fact, when Mitch got executed, and she made her "Moley Mitch… not!" post, she said she was down to only a few suspects, "unless a certain person starts acting weird again." I imagine that that person was Brian, because it seems like she's referring to someone that she wanted to trust but had acted shady on other occasions. Ginger could've easily believed that Brian was The Mole. What was most interesting was that Elise comes to me after Ginger's execution… and the quiz was one in which I aimed several of the individual questions that you couldn't spread out at Elise, in order to get a decent amount of points on her, and even though Elise had refrained from sharing thoughts on suspicions thus far, she suddenly wanted to talk about suspicions, and somehow, she conveniently knew that Brian and Ginger were "a clear-cut alliance." How did she know that? No one ever said explicitly that they were. Well, I did… but in my private confessionals. There's a final point I want to make about Brian before I fully move on to Elise. It always confused me why he chose to reveal his dino name in his comic. He included the word "velociraptor" in his comic dialogue, and I never understood why he'd want to help. But now it makes sense. From things Brian has told me, I've sort of drawn the conclusion that Brian was not just strategically tied to Ginger and Mitch, but to Kyle as well. Perhaps he was even more loyal to the guys. This would explain him wanting to help the two guys win exemptions (thank God they failed). I'm also thinking that maybe it was Brian that Kyle illegally contacted when Kyle got executed. We know that it couldn't have been Beth who did it, because Beth did nothing in this game, and we know Kyle kept constantly getting in trouble while he was in the game, so there's no doubt he may have tried to contact his buddy. My only hope is that he didn't give Brian terribly helpful information. Stupid Kyle. He was so overrated by people; he was nowhere near the masterful player people believe he was.

Let's move on to my beloved Elise, though. I'm gonna work under the assumption that, as The Mole, she reads these, so I'm going to address her directly, if you don't mind, and I do hope she reads what I'm saying here. What you've been doing since Ginger was executed is brilliant. It would work on almost any player. I'm just a nut-job who's too obsessed with the intricacies of this game. I've been The Mole and I know exactly how to convolute things to throw people off. I don't want you to be frustrated, because I think you've done a great job, and I'm going to be explaining why I think you have. But the first thing I want to say is that I'm getting the impression that you're no longer too interested in talking to me, and I can totally understand that. You probably feel that it's useless. "Why keep playing the whole 'Brian is The Mole' card if she already knows it's me?" You're completely right to feel like that. You might wonder why I haven't gone ahead and told you "k, sorry, I think it's you," and why I've kept sort of playing along with the whole "Brian is The Mole" thing. I'll tell you why. When I was The Mole, towards the end of the game, there was one person who pretty much was almost sure it was me, and this person would IM me and just be like "yep, yep, I know it's you" and "wow, you really fooled that person who just got executed, good job", etc. I personally found it annoying because, like… as The Mole, what do you respond to that? It's frustrating to know that they know it's you and that you can't do much about it, even though in my responses I still responded as a player (I never gave up and went "k, you're right, whatever") because just for the integrity of this game, The Mole needs to keep playing the role all the way to the end. So, I don't want to do that to you, and I won't, especially because of how good a job you're doing. If Brian were The Mole, though, and I realized it, you can bet I would taunt him. Just because it'd be fun. :)
I'll give you my perspective on the things I believe you've done. As I said a few long paragraphs ago, The Mole has to play a role that is an unsuspicious persona. He/she has to establish a character. From the bio you filled out, it really does look like maybe you originally intended on playing the drunken twerp who got pissed off at stuff easily, etc. I think it's a good thing that you adjusted your strategy and decided not to overplay it. You've still used the most effective aspects of that persona in displaying a short-fuse temper against people like Brian and Paul, which definitely made you look like a player. Also, if you had gone full force into the drunken angry twerp persona, you wouldn't have developed the bond you did with me, and that bond was definitely helpful in keeping you out of the top 2 spots on my suspect list for a very long time. Don't think you wasted your time in those chats with me, because you didn't. There are SO many things you did that made me want to believe it wasn't you. The very FIRST thing you did, IMing with the "alliance?" joke was brilliant, and not something I would expect The Mole to do, and I actually wish I had done that when I was The Mole. It's a good thing to do at the very start with someone, too, because you get them to appreciate you for your wit. I sure did (check out my very first private confessional, in which I stated I wished I could have even more chats with you because you seemed like someone I could relate to). But the thing you did during the first week that MOST made me think you weren't The Mole was, I believe, in the second chat we had. You said that Brian had sent you his bio mistaking you for Brandon and that now you had his info and that we could somehow cause chaos by sending it to other people, and you seemed to suggest that you wanted to come up with ways to pit people against each other and have fun while doing it. I was delighted by the idea. And of course, the real Mole would want to pit people against each other, but he/she wouldn't SAY it directly to someone, which is exactly what made me not suspect that. Of course, I don't know exactly what you've done with all the players who've been executed, but I've no doubt this strategy worked on several people. There's something you did in round 2 that I notice now in retrospect, and it's the "could I be The Mole?" blog post. You noticed that in those early rounds people were being super roguish pretending to be The Mole, so what does a fabulous, smart Mole do in that situation? Pretend to be one of the players who want to look like The Mole: "I could be The Mole, and maybe it doesn't matter what I do!" Perfect. Another thing that's funny is that I always noticed how Breaux used to say "I am The Mole" a lot, and I always found it suspicious because it's a great thing for a Mole to say… and it seems I sort of forgot that you said it on like two of your public confessionals, and that was very smart.

And then of course, there's the bio thing, which could easily be one of the most intelligent Mole moves I've ever witnessed. When you informed me that you did not wish to share your information, I was THIS close to crossing you off my list. Staging the whole thing, with Travis then posting on the message board that people had nothing to gain by withholding information was VERY smart, because it makes it look like maybe several players went to you, asked for your information, you refused it, and they then e-mailed Travis complaining, and he then made that post. It COMPLETELY made you look NOT like The Mole, and I really, really applaud that, and I wish it's an idea I would've come up with when I played the role of The Mole. Honestly, behavior-wise, the only thing that kept you higher rather than lower on my list was the fact that I could just tell you're really sharp and that you could easily be pulling off a truly brilliant role. And it turns out that you ARE playing a brilliant role. If you are The Mole, then somehow I've managed to answer the "Who is The Mole?" question correctly on every quiz since quiz #2… now, SOME people in that situation would toot their own horn and say "Ha! I had The Mole from the beginning." But there's no way I'll say that, because it wouldn't be true. The truth is that on quizzes 2, 3 and 4, I put you as the answer to that question solely because of mathematical reasons: to get more points on you. You've been difficult to get points on in the quizzes… which I guess makes sense now. :) In fact, the first time that I selected you as The Mole, which was quiz #2, I sort of had a dilemma. I only had the last question left to answer, and I saw that I had three points on you, and two on Mitch. I had three or above on everyone else. So, I had to either play it safe and pick Mitch as The Mole, thus having a 3 on both of you, or pick you and get a 4 on you, and keep only 2 points for Mitch. I really felt that Mitch wasn't The Mole, and I had a feeling that somehow it was risky to only have three points on you, so I went ahead and did what I did. Before the results were announced I was so scared that somehow Mitch would be The Mole, and I had screwed up, but thankfully, that wasn't the case. So, like I said, it was more out of a need to play the odds that I picked you on quizzes 2, 3 and 4, and it wasn't until quiz 5 (the Mafia round) that you took a plunge upwards in my suspect list. But in those early stages, you definitely weren't at the top. After Richard was executed, my suspects were you, Brian and Paul, and then eventually Breaux entered the list as well, but out of that group of 4 people, you were always like #3 or #4. So, my having picked you every time since quiz #2 doesn't mean anything, and I'll be the first one to admit that.

Now, let's talk about what I think you've done in terms of the challenges. In round 1, you noticed that a few of us were one shy of a complete inkblot report, so you did the same, BUT you did it in a less shady way than the rest of us because you did post your sixth one, but it seemed like it was something that you either didn't include the whole thing, or it was meant to indicate that Richard was going to be commenting on your blog, and then he didn't, so maybe you used it to get people to suspect Richard (which was good – Richard didn't last long, but he was certainly suspicious while he was here). In the live challenge, you did exactly what a Mole should do. You got one of the questions right all on your own, you then contributed a bit to the question about the machines (which had multiple answers), but you tried to slow us down by asking us to do inventory on who's doing which file, etc. Then in round 2… it's amazing how it seems people haven't noticed that you only posted three URLs (and not even all three of them were valid) whereas everyone else posted like 8 or more. You made it a point of saying you'd be busy during a full day of that weekend (which, round 2 indeed lasted only a weekend) and that was smart. For the dino comics, I'm not sure if you did much, since pretty much everyone except Brian wanted to keep Kyle and Mitch from getting exempt. In round 3, in "Where in DC?" it's interesting how you helped with getting an answer right, but if you look at the transcript, it was clear that Breaux was about to guess it, so you simply took the opportunity to guess it yourself, so that you'd be the one who seemed helpful, and that was a great move. You then posted this HUGE link to a photo. I'm assuming you did it to distract us, but I'm not sure. In Heist, you were never TOO quick to post "RUN", but Brian definitely stopped any opportunity you may have had to sabotage it. And you took advantage of something to look helpful: Breaux mistakenly made a post saying the challenge was failed because Ginger had posted something incorrectly, and you promptly made a post telling him that that wasn't true. You knew that either Travis or someone else would eventually point it out, so why not do it yourself and look like you wanted us to win? In round 4, at the hangman challenge… you correctly guessed letter T for "defenestrate," but you probably did so only because Paul had just revealed that the answer had to be "defenestrate" or "teledendrite," so it was logical to guess that. For "spinach," you saw that everyone had guessed wrong, so you promptly guessed wrong as well. Now what interests me is your guessing the N for "penny," which was obviously helpful. Did you want us to get it right? Before we went ahead and said "guess penny!" you seemed to be like "um, isn't there anything else it could be?", which there was: "henna". It could've easily been "henna" and it's interesting that no one thought of that. I imagine, though, that since you didn't get much of a chance to sabotage there, you then felt obligated to pick "BETRAY" in Trust Falls, and you did.

With all of that having happened, though, you were still always hovering between spots #3 and #4 on my suspect list. You definitely weren't in my #1 or #2 range until round 5 and the lovely Mafia game. Before this challenge even happened, I knew that it would be a crucial one in terms of gathering information on who The Mole was because of the fact that The Mole was the one selecting the roles. My initial thought was "oh, hey, my 4 suspects are Breaux, Brian, Elise and Paul, and 3 out of the 4 of them have the key roles in the challenge… this totally points at Paul." Well, I'll simply reiterate that if Paul is The Mole, I have no idea where his sabotage is, and I look forward to being dazzled by it at the finale, if it's him. I imagine that you selected Brian as your fellow mafioso because people suspect him, so you'd figure you could get an exemption for yourself and for the top Mole suspect, thus keeping him in the game. Brian's too unstable and unreliable, though, lol, and I can't imagine how pissed you must've been at him. But since you were unsuccessful at sabotaging Mafia, you knew you had to do some serious damage the next round, so you were very smart to inform me that you were going to sabotage the next challenges to look suspicious, and you then rightly proceeded to bet all your money on one outcome at the gambling challenge to ensure we lost.

When the last quiz was posted, which Travis was rushing to post the quiz and the challenge transcript because he had to work late and posted the quiz later than he intended, I simply assumed that in the challenge transcript the link to the bingo boards was included. I didn't need to look for it because I had saved that link to my favorites because I knew it was totally a piece of information that could easily turn up on the quiz. I didn't realize until much later that the link didn't appear on the transcript because Travis gave it to us at the very beginning of the chat, and the transcript started at the point that the Pass The Box game began. So if someone didn't save the link, they'd be screwed on the question about the vowels. I imagine maybe some people complained about it, but this time, Travis didn't eliminate the question like he has before, because this game is about being a good detective, and any good detective makes sure he/she saves any evidence that may be needed later. So if Blaise, Brian or Paul forgot to save the link, too bad for them. But you certainly took advantage of this, Elise, and I really like what you did. You saw that I leaned a little bit towards Paul on the quiz, so you went ahead and told me you didn't have the link and that you just guessed C. 2, which was the answer to Paul, thus perhaps justifying how you would've stayed in the game even if you had gone 100% Brian, because it would've meant you inadvertently scored a point on Paul. That was very smart. And you're probably thinking "Well, it clearly wasn't, because it didn't work," but I'd just like to reiterate the fact that, it's not really that I'm smart, I'm just CRAZY, and I love this game too much, lol, and I've thought about this game a lot, so I have a gander on the things people will say to bluff and double-bluff others. You've done things perfectly, and I imagine it's what has kept you from being suspected by so many others.

There are certain things I've noticed in terms of potential clues as well. As I had mentioned before, I always found it interesting that the T in "Sabotage" in the logo seemed to be pointing at the "6", which could have meant Breaux, but the way it's pointing at it, it would seem like it's asking you to flip it around, which would be 9. Also, the horizontal line at the top of the T seems too small, whereas there is a larger horizontal line at the BOTTOM of the T, which would indicate a need to flip the T around, therefore prompting you to flip the 6 around as well - the "C" in OMC 6 also seems to have arrows pointing at the number 6. There's also something I can't believe I hadn't thought of before – the game's title itself, "SERIAL Sabotage." Only one of the players' names can be made from the word SERIAL, and that's Elise. By the way, I've said this several times, but it bears repeating – if somehow Paul is The Mole, the title "SERIAL sabotage" is completely inaccurate, lol. The other thing that had caught my attention early on was the fact that you were the NINTH person to post on three of the initial threads of the game (Introduce Yourself, Pawn Color and Psychoanalysis), and nine is your player number. More recently, though, something related to the last MB codes caught my attention, specifically the code that the answer was "pyromaniac". The small letters under the number form the word "DANGER" which looks to be a clue to the MB code answer, since a pyromaniac is obviously dangerous. But I can't help but wonder if the allusion to fire relates to your yellow pawn color. The thing that makes me think this even more is that there is a smaller word where "DANGER" is and I copied it to Paint to magnify it, and though it's really difficult to make out, it SEEMS to say "sallow"… which is a word for a yellowish color, specifically for sick people. Did you notice that I put the word "sallow" on my bingo board? :)

Elise, I want to tell you that you're awesome and that everything I said about you in my last private confessional is true. The reason why in that last confessional I didn't reveal a whole lot about my ideas on The Mole's identity was because I wasn't too sure, and I wanted to see if I survived to confirm it. If I was wrong and got executed, then saying all that stuff in my confessional would've made me look like an idiot. :) And actually, if I'm wrong about you being The Mole, then this confessional will certainly make me look like an idiot, lol. As I was mentioning earlier, I completely understand if you'd rather not chat because you find that it'd be awkward and useless. It sounds cliché to say this, but I know the feeling really well, as someone who's done what you're doing. Contrary to popular belief, being The Mole isn't this awesome, comfortable free ride to the end of the game. It's extremely tough, and I think you've done it amazingly. Just a few days ago, Paul randomly said that he thought that if you turned out to be The Mole, it'd be meh. I don't think he's noticed the brilliance of the things you've done, and I sure as heck hope he gets duped by them and is one of the next two people to leave.

You crack me up so much. Any time I re-read your blog confessionals, for some weird reason I always laugh at that early one in which you said "I'm not sure I'm good at all this website stuff (lol)," obviously making fun of people who actually say stuff like that. In one of our early chats when we were talking about exposing these 13-year-old Dungeons & Dragons players for what they are, that was easily some of the best entertainment I had in those early rounds in which everyone was being either lame and bland, or way too loud for my taste. You sure got me to like you and you really, really made me want to trust you on several occasions – those are all things a Mole needs to accomplish, and you did them. Honestly, it would annoy me severely if Brian turned out to be The Mole - I'd much rather The Mole be someone I like. Then there's your riot of a blog post turning things around on Paul, which is undoubtedly the funniest thing done in this game (and I do count all of Breaux's witticisms when saying that). And let's not forget the making fun of Brian sessions, the chat with him when we found the thing that said he was under 13, and all the side conversations we had during challenges… which, now I wonder, were they solely for the purpose of having fun, or were you also trying to distract me from what was going on? :) You really are great, and my only hope is that you're not one of those Moles who, once it's all over, you don't really care about anything or about interacting with anyone, since it's over, and I just hope that even though the role has forced you to deceive that you still value all the fun we've had in this game. Okay, before I start getting too corny, I'll stop now, and I'll go back to addressing Travis. I just want to leave you with the assurance that if you are The Mole, you really have done a heck of a job, and we can cuss out whoever tries to argue with that. :)

At this point, if Elise isn't The Mole, I am guaranteed to be executed, especially with Blaise having an exemption. What's funny, though, is that if I'm right about my suspicion, I could still be executed, if Brian and Paul know it's her. And okay, if ONE of the two of them doesn't know it, then I should be safe THIS round, but if the other one does, then I could easily be screwed at the final four as well, so the road to winning this game isn't going to be easy in the least bit, especially since Blaise seems to suspect Elise as well. Quite frankly, though, if I get executed despite having identified The Mole correctly, there really won't be any regrets because it would mean that I did everything I could've possibly done. I've been doing everything I can to get Brian or Paul or both to suspect me, but I really have no idea how effective my attempts have been. If this is my last confessional, thanks for hosting a great game, Travis, and I'll look forward to the reunion.

Episode 6 Private Confessional

Before I get into any other topics, there's a discrepancy that needs to be addressed that came out of the last quiz. Apparently, Paul has lied about his bio information. The bio he sent me indicates that his favorite color is blue, yet "blue" was not one of the alternatives for that question (sure, "baby blue" was an option, but that applied to Ginger). Conveniently, the other day on IM Paul was talking to me about how he was fearful that The Mole would lie on his/her bio to get people to screw up on the quiz, which I promptly corrected him that that would NOT be an acceptable thing within the standards of this game because if someone is intelligent enough to approach The Mole and get their information, they should get the correct information. I mean, honestly, ALL players should give out their correct information because there is NO gain in lying about it. If I find out that Paul is The Mole and the whole purpose of this was "Oooooh! Well, he said "blue" on his bio, but of course the correct answer is "red" since The Mole's favorite color HAS to be red because The Mole LOVES executing people, so we did this as a clue!" … that would positively be the lamest thing ever. I've no doubt that the clues you've come up with are far more intricate, and that you wouldn't actually come up with something as inane as that. See, I stated that the whole thing with Elise refusing to give out her bio was probably unethical, BUT ever since I realized that it could've very well been staged to make her seem like a player in refusing her bio AND add to that the fact that she later came forward and said "okay, I guess I'll share now," THAT makes it acceptable if she were The Mole, but Paul being dishonest about his information isn't acceptable, Mole or not, but ESPECIALLY if he actually is The Mole. And if you want to corroborate this, Paul sent me his information via a private message on the message board, so just login as me on the message board and go to my private messages and click on the one he sent me, titled "35 ickle answers" and look at his answer to question 21.

Wow. Okay, a few weeks ago, people were acting all shocked that Kyle was executed, and they stood in awe at how much of a "threat" he was. I never agreed with that. The guy was hardly online after round 1, he was obviously lazy, and he freakin got penalized three times in a row. ALL signs of a lack of interest in your self-preservation. But Ginger? Wow. I thought she was going to make it impossible for me to win this game. I thought that even if she wasn't sure who The Mole was, she'd figure it out eventually. I DEFINITELY thought that Mitch's execution would've helped her out a lot, since they were strategically tied, but it obviously didn't. With that being said, despite Ginger's departure, winning this game will still be an uphill battle because these people are all going to be very tough to beat. You've got Blaise, who I'm supposed to have a coalition with, but he's become totally unresponsive in the last few days, probably due to the fact that he believes that he has information that I'm not aware of and he wants to see if he can win this game on his own. Sad thing is, I may not be able to stop him. You've got Breaux who plays the class clown, but is obviously clever as heck under all the lulziness. You've got Brian whose ghastly typing skills (whether they're fake or not) still don't hide the fact that he's obviously intelligent… and quick. You've got Elise, who I recognized to be sharp from the second I met her, despite her bouts of inactivity (which were really limited to round 2, a round that lasted only a weekend, anyway). And finally you've got Paul, who annoys people with the jabs he takes at the group for poor performances in challenges, but if you analyze the details he brings up within those jabs, you notice that he's observant as heck. So, I'm definitely screwed with these people I'm up against.

Okay, I did TRY to sabotage the challenge and I TRIED to do so in a way that was actually suspicious rather than blatantly looking like a player purposely sabotaging, like Mitch, but I may have failed. I think I was too obvious. Maybe I was too hard on Mitch. Maybe it's not as easy to genuinely look like The Mole as I thought. I mean, jeez, if I can get at least ONE of them to think it could be me, it would definitely be helpful. As for the gambling challenge, there was no way to ensure that I sabotaged it since I obviously didn't know what the outcome would be in each case, but I guess I ended up not winning any money for it, so perhaps that's good. I think that people REFRAIN from going to the person they suspect and telling them "k, so I think it could be you," so if anyone did suspect me, I probably would have no way of knowing it, anyway. I don't know if I'll have a creative spurt in the next few hours and suddenly decide to do the avatars, but at this point I probably won't make them, only because I'm really not a creative person in the least bit, and I feel like whatever I come up with is gonna pale so much in terms of wit against whatever, say, Breaux comes up with. If I were to make them, they're all gonna look at them, and be like: "Well, THAT'S lame."

I actually don't have much to say about Brian and Paul this week because I haven't talked to either of them very much. Brian has started to play up the whole thing of being the kid who can't be on the computer much, by making a blatant statement on his latest blog post about how he's "on the family computer," and both times I've spoken to him this round, he claims he has to get off because his mom needs to get on (so now he's switched from saying he's gonna "go eat sumthin" which used to be his excuse). Then I brought up his screwing up the Heist challenge by posting a camera out of order, but I mockingly said that he probably enjoyed playing Boomshine, and he responded that his mom is obsessed with that game. Seriously, can he come up with more varied excuses? Paul has said that he's got something big going on in real life, thus causing his recent inactivity. It's very interesting, though, how we all voted that we wanted Wednesday for the challenge, and all of a sudden something came up for you, and the new poll was a choice between Thursday and Monday (and duh, of course, they're gonna pick Thursday, who's gonna want to wait so long?), so then the challenge gets changed to Thursday so that Paul can make it. Pssh.

There's information that has come to my attention this week, courtesy of Elise… information that could be absolutely crucial. Now, I've drawn a conclusion from this information, but I don't want to say what the conclusion is and I don't want to explain my reasoning for reaching said conclusion because… well, I want to see if I survive. If I get executed, then clearly what I'm thinking is wrong and I've been totally fooled, so there'd be no use in talking about the conclusion I've reached, but if I STAY, then I will definitely feel more confident in the deduction I've made, and I PROMISE a detailed explanation in my next private confessional (and you know you love my long, detailed rants, haha… well, you probably don't, but if I do stay, I'll still give it to you, anyway). But the thing I wanted to point out is this: I haven't given this information to Blaise, even though I formed a coalition with him. I feel like a bitch for it, but there are reasons why I've chosen to do this. First of all, I think it would just HURT me to have others know what I know (or what I think I know). If I have crucial information and don't really need anyone to confirm it for me or anything, why would I reveal it to anyone else? And secondly, I actually have a VERY strong suspicion that Blaise is keeping things from me as well. I just hope that the things he's keeping from me are wrong. If they are, then it's probably best that he keeps them from me, anyway, because hearing them would probably just confuse me and steer me in an incorrect direction.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: it's crazy to think about how amazing a performance Breaux is giving if he is The Mole. I feel more strongly about this opinion every day. The guy entertains me so much in our chats and he REALLY makes me wanna trust him. I haven't exactly revealed MUCH to him, because I'm not gonna totally let my guard down, but he's so easy to talk to, which is exactly what a good Mole should be. It's because of this that I felt so bad about revealing to you that he told me he signed on to gmail during the blackout period. It's just… ANYTHING that can help me at this point, I HAVE to take it, and there's no question that a penalty against Breaux, if it were assessed, and if he's not The Mole, could very well help me. Nothing's been said of that, though, so I don't know what'll happen.

You have no idea how much I appreciate Elise right now. When this game began, excited as I was about playing because of how much I love the psychological dynamics of this game, I was actually feeling somewhat depressed because most of the people just seemed so bland and… well, bot-like (Elise knows what I'm talking about here, lol). Suddenly, I met Elise and I could tell right there that I had someone I'd be able to relate to a heck of a lot. I just didn't know IF it was gonna happen, because maybe one of us would get executed early, or we'd simply drift apart. But it hasn't happened, and now we're freaking awesome friends. You see, short as his stay was, I appreciated Brandon because, okay, we're supposed to stay within the constraints of our aliases and not reveal anything about our true identities, but that doesn't MEAN we can't have conversations about non-game things. Brandon talked to me about simple stuff, like the fact that he was having trouble registering for a class, and he talked to me about the music he was currently listening to. Insignificant as that seems, I appreciate that, and the same is currently happening with Elise, with whom I had a very interesting and enlightening conversation about the abysmal Elisabeth Hasselbeck and her ultra-conservative views. And it was ELISE who brought up the subject, so it wasn't like I had to encourage it or anything. She helps me keep my sanity in this game, and I love our side conversations during the challenges when we make fun of everyone, haha. It really sucked that she couldn't make it to this last one because we would've had a riot. No matter what the outcome of this game, I at least know I've made a friend, and that's definitely worth a lot.

This time I'm actually pretty positive that I'm getting executed. It's not because I think I'm completely clueless, but rather because I think that everyone else has TOO MUCH of a clue and that they're all onto The Mole, so I'm going to be eliminated because I got one less question right than everyone else, or maybe even because I have the lowest amount of cumulative points (which I'll call "cum points" in honor of Brian, lol). I guess that leaving now wouldn't be the worst placement ever and I wouldn't really have anything to be embarrassed about; I'd just hope the weeks go by fast for the finale to come, because if I go and can't have anything to do with the game for so many days, the suspense is probably gonna kill me, haha. It's also really going to suck not being able to chat with Elise for so many days. But if it does happen, I want to thank you for running such a fun and well-organized game. It's been really difficult. I thought that after so many years that I've had of thinking about this game since I first saw the show, I'd have every possible intricacy down and that it wouldn't be so tough to figure things out. So thanks a lot for providing me with something so challenging, and I'll be looking forward to the reunion!