How Often Do The Twins Trade Places On 'BB17'?

If you are a fan of Big Brother, you know that you need to be ready for a twist at any time in the competition. Sometimes, the audience and the contestants are both surprised by the changes that happen in the game and other times America is let in on a twist before the players find out. It was supposed to be the latter case with the Big Brother 17 twin twist, though the houseguests are quickly catching. What does this mean? Twins Liz and Julia Nolan are competing on Big Brother as an individual contestant by switching back and forth. Right now, the twins are just known as "Liz" and no one really knows who is who while the girls try to keep up this facade. If they can survive eliminations until week five, they are allowed to openly compete as individuals and cease switching places. Still, it's got to be pretty tricky pretending to be the same person and maintaining a consistency in stories, demeanor, and rapport with the other contestants. The twins only have a few minutes to catch up while making the switch, but how much do they have to talk about? How often do the twins switch places on Big Brother ?

At this point, there isn't an exact answer for this question. However, this is not the first time that there has been a twin twist, so we can estimate an answer based on the previous occasion. In Season 5, twins Adria and Natalie switched back and forth and made it to week five in the competition, which allowed both twins to compete as individuals. Host Julie Chen revealed that they switched back and forth 10 times at that point. The most basic math would tell me that it makes sense to say that they traded places about twice a week, but that's not necessarily accurate. It's unclear if Big Brother is using the same strategy this time around or switching it up a bit.

I'm not an executive producer, but I feel like it would make more sense for the twins to switch places more often than my simple math estimation reveals. It would would allow the twins to catch up more often and they would not have as much to share with each other. This would make the transition more realistic and less transparent to their fellow cast members, but again, not my call.

It has also been revealed that twins make the switch when they are in the diary room. Every contestant gets called into the diary room to do interviews about the show so it would never seem odd for "Liz" to be going into the room alone, since all the contestants do so. With that said, it's unclear exactly how often these interviews happen.

At this point, this twin switching process is a little bit unclear, but at least we have some past precedence to go on. But now that the other houseguests are watching "Liz" like a hawk to catch her switching places, I wouldn't be shocked if one of them starts keeping track of just how often she enters that diary room.

Image: Sonja Flemming/CBS