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Team Fruitcake won clowns in the games last night and here is them in action.
clowns

The live webcams in the house are now working. There's a linking on the left of every page.

Right now, Camera 0 is in the main hall pointing at the front door. Fruitcakes are filming downstairs in the house today. I think they're shooting near the stairs, so I'll move the camera to point there when they start. Camera 2 is also downstairs, in the kitchen pointing towards the door which goes into the hall.

Camera 1 is unfortunately out of wireless networking range. It's in a really good place spying on the heart centre of Octopus Apocalypse.

The teams arrived yesterday and found themselves faced with a panoply of obscure 1970s board games. One member from each team played each game, their restrictions for today hanging on how well or badly they did. The games (of which there will be more later in the week) are in four categories: race games, dexterity games, mind games and strategy games. (Examples would be ludo, jenga, noughts and crosses and chess, respectively.)

Octopus Apocalypse got off to a bad start when Chris came last the evening's dexterity game, Hamster Wheel. He won his team the consolation prize of two local drama sixth-formers as their performers for the morrow. His team-mates, however rallied strongly and managed a clean sweep in the other three games, winning the best-rated location (the upstairs of the Hall), experts (a cinematographer and lighting expert), and camera equipment.

Your humble correspondent was half of the top prize in the performers category and was won by Degawdawns, whose Hamster Wheel skills were unsurpassed. Their team member's historical knowledge proved less serviceable in winning experts at today's mind game, Chronology, in which they won the booby prize of a local academic with no particular film-making skills. The rules require that they nevertheless use her in some capacity or other.

The complicated Hare and Tortoise led to a drawn-out competition in the race category, competing for the next day's locations. But the longest and tensest game was the strategy game Sisimizi, where four frowning contestants battled away for almost two hours to be the first to build seven anthills connected by a trail of ants. The cameras and editing software hinging on the game are not only of widely differing quality but will stay with the teams all week, not just a day, so this was the game with the highest stakes. Martin, for Octopus Apocalypse, surged ahead to take the crown, but competition for the other three places remained close to the end. Myk, playing for the Fruitcakes, had two chances to take second place, but when he failed to take advantage of them he ended up coming last. His team will be filming with two shoulder-mounted camcorders for the week.