Jenny West is heading to her second final after securing her safety by winning the Fortress Bricks challenge. The Total Madness winner huffed and puffed her way through the grueling, endurance-based portion of the challenge then completed her puzzle before any other girl… or did she.
Eagle-eyed Challenge fans noticed that Jenny’s top and bottom puzzle pieces were placed incorrectly. Jordan even commented on Jenny’s seemingly incorrect solution.
To be fair, this was not a perfect puzzle by design. The pieces were actually planks of wood that were inserted into a frame to hold them upright. However, there was no margin to ensure each piece was perfectly aligned horizontally. As such, most planks were slightly off-center, making the puzzle look a little warped.
This might explain why Jenny’s solution was given the OK by production. Her colors were in the correct order, but if you look at the top and bottom pieces (especially the lower right corner), it’s obvious they were placed incorrectly.
In a perfect world, Jenny’s solution would not have been accepted and she would have needed to revise the top and bottom pieces to be deemed correct. But, there’s no rule limiting the number of checks and she likely truly believed she was right. The fault she be assigned to the producers, but once they’ve accepted her puzzle, their decision has to stand. Otherwise they would have interfered with her ability to win with the correct solution.
Any time there’s a bad call, the what ifs start to pop up. In this, we case have to wonder if this prevented Cara Maria from winning.
If the edit is to be believed, Jenny had a substantial lead on Cara Maria and Rachel (the second and third girls to finish their puzzles, respectively). The edit made it seem like Bananas, Kyland, and Derek all completed their puzzles between Jenny and Cara. However, if you look closely, you can see the episode shows the male and female timelines independently. When Cara Maria finished, you can see Derek at the station in front of her still working on the puzzle. When Derek finished you can see the station behind (Cara’ station) him has a completed puzzle.
Theoretically, if Jenny’s win didn’t count, the second-place finisher would have taken the winning spot. This would have been Cara Maria, but she also had a 3-minute penalty. Rachel claims she finished about 45 seconds behind Cara, so Rachel believes she would have won. In her Instagram Story, Cara Maria believed Rachel’s timing was off. She said that she counted to three minutes with Jordan on the sidelines after finishing the puzzle, confirming she earned second place even when you factor in her penalty.
We’ll likely never be able to confirm which girl would have won, nor will we know how big Jenny’s lead was on Cara Maria and Rachel.
If we’re being honest, Jenny’s puzzle looks about right, but it’s not difficult to see where the errors are. If she was given the opportunity to fix her puzzle, it likely wouldn’t have cost her the win. We’ll likely never know because it’s very unlikely this discrepancy will ever be acknowledged on the actual show. But when fans claim Cara Maria was robbed of her victory this season, this will be the basis of the claim.
Stop Being Polite 