And Burnett and his team decided to outfox the veteran survivors by not trying to outfox them with the various twists and turns that have become a part of the game in successive seasons. Burnett said the 18 "could not have been more paranoid" and Probst agreed.

"We were . . . saying — 'How are we going to outthink 18 people who have done nothing but think about this game for years?' — we realized, like Mark said, let's just go back to the basics," Probst said. "They'll never expect nothing."

A lot of the contestants arrived already in the midst of plotting and planning, the physical conditions on the Pearl Island, Panama, camps made conniving take a back seat to surviving.

Each tribe received only a single machete — no food, no way to make fire and, thus, no way to purify water.

Contestants who were "strategizing from the very beginning" decided to call "a timeout, because it was really tough," Burnett said.

It's the same method to that madness, however — the goal is to make the contestants reveal their true selves. Even if Rob Mariano (Marquesas) says he won't be a conniver, and Jerri Manthey (Africa) says she won't be, well, awful.

"These people come out there and say, 'I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that,' " Probst said. "And this is the hardest 'Survivor' ever. . . . You are who you are. The layers get ripped away fast. So there is no way to come out and say, 'I'm going to be nicer this time.' You either are nice or you're a (witch)."

And, while you can argue that all the best survivors aren't on hand for this "All-Stars" event, that won't diminish the game, they insist.

"As far as I'm concerned," Probst said, "whoever wins this game beat what we consider 18 of the best people to ever play the game. And I'm sure they'll take bragging rights for life.

"And there will be 17 other people (complaining) about it."

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com