New XKCD Forums

Title text: The ten-way tie was judged a ten-way tie, so no one won the grand prize, a rare fishing monopole.

Wouldn't you only have the one pole exposed, the same pole on each, and therefore they would repel?

Not necessarily. There are three ways this could not be the case:
1. The individual magnets are mounted randomly, and thus have fields arrayed so they wouldn't repel each other.
2. The magnets' field is not aligned parallel with the mounting point, thus allowing spin on the short axis to cause alignment of the magnets.
3. Turbulence. Small disturbances will cause powerful magnets to flip to align with each other, regardless of original orientation.

3 is most likely and is supported by the jumble of the magnets as drawn.

From what I recall, fishing magnets aren't really enclosed in anything, so at worst there's a small eyelet for the string right where the pole is, which probably doesn't prevent another strong-ass fishing magnet from sticking to it