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Grab your notebooks, future reality show contestants! Survivor winner Rachel LaMont reveals 5point plan to conquer puzzles

Grab your notebooks, future reality show contestants!

Survivor winner Rachel LaMont reveals 5-point plan to conquer puzzles

Grab your notebooks, future reality show contestants!

By Dalton Ross

Dalton Ross is a writer and editor with over 25 years experience covering TV and the entertainment industry. *Survivor* is kind of his thing.

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October 7, 2025 1:15 p.m. ET

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Rachel LaMont on 'Survivor 47'. Credit:

People do all sorts of preparation before they go and play *Survivor*. They practice making fire. They wean themselves off things like coffee and nicotine. Some put on extra weight (Boston Rob Mariano) while others start shrinking their stomach (Jeremy Collins). But many ignore preparing for the most important things that can often determine life and death in the game — puzzles.

Carson Garrett took *Survivor* puzzle prep to the extreme courtesy of a 3-D printer, but what if you don't have such fancy technology? And how you can sharpen your puzzle-solving skills once out on the island? We went to the expert to find out. Rachel LaMont was an absolute puzzle terminator on *Survivor 47*, dominating the brain-teasers during the pre-merge stage of the game, and then winning the final hanging bat puzzle immunity contest on her way to becoming the Sole Survivor.

Rachel has now taken her love of puzzles off the island by launching her own puzzle company with partner Ryan Plaisted (who is known for recreating *Survivor* puzzles himself with Vexzle). The new company is called RE:SOLVE GAMES and the duo launched a Kickstarter campaign today for their very first game, *Puzzle Hungry: Umami Rush*. (And yes, those are former *Survivor* contestants Owen Knight, Andy Rueda, Tevin Davis, and Gabe Ortis playing in the picture below)

'Survivor' stars Owen Knight, Andy Rueda, Tevin Davis, and Gabe Ortis playing Puzzle Hungry.

Courtesy of RE:SOLVE GAMES

"*Puzzle Hungry: Umami Rush *is a competitive jigsaw puzzle game," LaMont explains. "It's restaurant themed. We're chefs in a kitchen and are doing puzzles of food, which are all worth points. And there are other things that come up along the way that you have to deal with. You may have to step in to be a server because we're a little shorthanded, or maybe someone hits you with a health code violation. So it's a dynamic, competitive way to play jigsaw puzzles that I think most people have never experienced."

It's also features something other puzzles do not: re-playability. "We we're kind of struck with this idea of: How do you get people to want to play puzzles over and over again?" Lamont says. "And we kind of figured out that it's by not making it about the puzzle, it's making it about the game that exists *around* the puzzle. When you're playing a game, getting better at the puzzle helps your game."

But what about helping people's game when it comes to S*urvivor? *Grab your notebooks, future reality show contestants, as the season 47 champion presents Rachel LaMont's 5-point plan toward mastering *Survivor* puzzles.

'Survivor' Winner Rachel LaMont and Puzzle Hungry.

Courtesy of RE:SOLVE GAMES

Practice doing puzzles (duh)

"Obviously you should practice doing jigsaw puzzles, but I think a way to do them that prepares you more for *Survivor* is to not look at the box. You don't get a picture of what the *Survivor* puzzle looks like when you start a challenge. So do a bunch of 200-piece puzzles without looking at the picture.

"You also don't need an expensive 3-D printer to recreate *Survivor* puzzles. You can print out a picture of the item and cut the lines yourself. You can see them. So there are ways to be creative, and those are also ways to get your brain to think creatively and think outside the box, which is also a good way to set yourself up to play *Survivor*.

"Also, one of the things that I think takes people by surprise on *Survivor* is that the pieces are obviously very large and you're not allowed to spread them out. Usually you're used to doing a puzzle at home and you see all of the pieces on the table. Instead, leave them in piles, and then don't allow yourself to try every single piece. Try to look at the shape that is missing from the piece you need, and then look at the pile of pieces and see if you can find it that way. Because that's what you're going have to do out there."

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Learn the trick to slide puzzles

"A slide puzzle is not anything like a jigsaw puzzle. And if you try to go out on *Survivor* without knowing the formula for solving a slide puzzle, you will never solve a slide puzzle. It's like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube without knowing the formula. You will spin it forever and never get it done. The formula to slide puzzles is actually very simple. You can look up a couple of videos on YouTube. I actually printed the *Survivor* logo and cut it out and moved the pieces around at home. You can learn so easily with no resources, and there's just no reason not to. If you go out on *Survivor* and you don't know how to do a slide puzzle, I think that you are just woefully unprepared."

Teeny Chirichillo, Andy Rueda, Rachel LaMont, Sue Smey, Sam Phalen, Genevieve Mushaluk and Jeff Probst on 'Survivor 47'.

Keep your mind sharp

"There are all sorts of different ways that puzzles are incorporated on *Survivor*, and you can't reasonably practice for all of them. I think a better way to practice in general is to keep your brain sharp. I really like *New York Times* games — like Spelling Bee, Wordle, Connections, the Mini, all of those things get your brain working and flexing a lot of different muscles that you might have to use out there. There are a whole lot of other ways that *Survivor* forces you to kind of use your brain and think outside the box, so do a Sudoku and all different types of puzzles."

Rachel LaMont and Jeff Probst on 'Survivor 47'.

And keep your brain active while on the island

"On Gata during pre-merge, we would play games around the fire. We didn't really do word games, but we did a lot of brain teaser games or games where you're trying to find patterns. There are a bunch of games where you guess something and I know the trick, but you don't. And we would do some *Survivor* trivia and stuff like that because why not?

"I think anytime you're trying to engage socially instead of just resting, you should. You can socially connect with somebody over some *Survivor* trivia or some movie knowledge or whatever it is. I think keeping your brain active in any way is a good thing, because it's very easy to just kind of check out and allow the brain fog and the depletion to get to you. Being able to reach back into any sort of memory bank you have and have these kind of conversations will help you. It's like warming up for a challenge physically, but you go warm up mentally before it starts."

Sam Phalen, Rachel LaMont and Andy Rueda on 'Survivor 47'.

Finally… study the show!

"Watching previous seasons and seeing what types of puzzles they're giving people is super useful. Hunter had that journey where he had to put all of the seasons in order. You might think you can do that, but can you actually test yourself? *Survivor* has a pretty known history of repeating puzzles on different types of challenges and you can prepare for those things if you go back and watch. I scrubbed through every single season and wrote down every single word on a word scramble in every challenge and had them in my notebook in pregame."

***Want to be kept up with all things Survivor? Dig deep and sign up for 's free Survivor Weekly newsletter to have all the latest news, interviews, and commentary sent right to your inbox. ***

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