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Puzzle Some More!
I'll continue where I left off yesterday. As you may recall, there had been many puzzles calling for trivia and ingenuity. The second part of the day called for appetite and playfulness.
After my team finished the puzzle whose name I forgot, I had some time to kill while other teams finished through and the potluck dinner finished heating. I spent it chatting with Artistry, another member closer to my own age. He lives out in Yorba Linda, and is a great puzzler. We talked about various movies, particularly The Last of Sheila, which Artistry heartily recommended to me as a puzzle movie. We also talked about devising some sort of puzzle/mystery event; something I thought would be fun.
Eventually, dinner was called, and we all went and got food. I spent most of my dinner talking with Cramerica and Artistry about various television shows. Bluff, who was much older than the three of us, just kind of listened.
After dinner, we all got together again and Cramerica introduced us to his favorite game from the recent NPL convention in Vancouver. One Two Three is a fun and simple two player game. Two people simultaneously say "One, Two, Three," followed by a randomly selected word. That is, each player says a word that he or she randomly selected. Now, the players do the same thing, except that this round, and in all subsequent rounds, instead of calling out a random word, he or she needs to call out a word that logically relates to the two previous words. This continues until both players say the same word at the same time.
Here's a quick example of actual play:
One, Two, Three . . . Rice!/Telephone!
One, Two, Three . . . White!/Animal!
One, Two, Three . . . Polar bear!/Polar bear!
On the first line, two players chose the words "rice" and "telephone" at random. On the next line, each player tried to come up with a word that bridged these two very different concepts. One thought of "white rice" and "white courtesy telephone" and so said "white". The other (Cramerica, actually, straining for anything to say) thought that animals eat rice and had seen phones shaped like animals. On the third line, two people both thought that a "white animal" would be a polar bear, and that particular set was over.
This game was adapted to a large group by Lunch Boy (a New York NPL member) and was named One Two Many by Codex (an NPL member and friend of Cramerica's). This version is pretty similar, except that anyone can jump in next. The first person to think of a connecting word says, "One;" the next person says, "Two;" then both say, "Three," before saying their words.
It's a fun game that doesn't translate well to the page, but there's a certain transcendent joy that accompanies finding a word that matches "cabinet" and "The Twilight Zone." (One person said "door"; I said "beholder". Cabinets [be]hold things, right?). We played this for a while, then moved on to Cluesome.
The game of Cluesome is much more complicated than One Two Many, mostly because it has scoring. And it has complicated scoring involving wagers and bonuses. So, I'm going to ignore those scoring rules for the purpose of this explanation.
First, each player takes a bunch of index cards, usually six, and writes his or her name on one side, and an answer on the back. The answer can be anything, really, a number, a person, a word, a phrase, a title. After everyone has done so, the cards are passed around so that each player has six cards with answers from six different people. Then the fun begins.
The first player becomes the Cluegiver, chooses an answer from his set of cards and creates a clue for that answer. Everyone writes down what they think the answer is (except the person who supplied card), and after thirty seconds, everyone reveals their guesses.
Here's the tricky part. The Cluegiver has to create a clue that will be answered correctly by at least one, but not more than half, of the other players. If nobody answers correctly, the Cluegiver loses points and has to clue the same answer again. If too many people answer, the Cluegiver loses points and has to create a clue for a different answer in his hand. The only restrictions are that the clue must be specific enough (the clue "One of the planets" is fair, since it becomes a guessing game) and cannot rely on "insider information" (Asking "What I had for breakfast this morning" isn't fair if you had breakfast with one of the players). Beyond that, anything is legal. Apparently, some people have simply said the answer and hoped that one player will write down the same word.
Like the Make Your Own Treasure Hunt, the clues were very individual. Here are some I remember, along with about how many answered correctly. (Multiple clues on the same number means that the same person had to give multiple clues for the same answer.):
Answers below.The game is more involving, but still a lot of fun.
After the game of Cluesome, most people left. A few of us stayed, Conundrum (who lived there), Cramerica and his friend, Kegler, Music Man, Bartok, Artistry and me. We lounged around and chatted. Eventually, we pulled down the game of Taboo and played, since many people had never played it before. We had a good time. My record was five cards for the night, but Cramerica took top honors with eight. Eventually, my team lost by one point, but, as you may have noticed, we don't often pay all that much attention to scoring. After Taboo, Kegler and Music Man left also, and Cramerica's friend taught us a game called "Jotto" which is basically a combination of Hangman and Mastermind, but I was bored by it, so I won't take the time to describe it. I played Conundrum, and he guessed mine early, so we played One Two Three until the others finished. Then we played One Two Many with them since Conundrum really liked it. Artistry tried to organize a group flat-writing, but we were all too tired to think about it, and so we drifted out.
I eventually made it back home just before midnight, after having a twenty-eight hour day.
The invisible seems to be working, so here are the answers to the selected Cluesome clues.
TueNYTX: 4:30.
After my team finished the puzzle whose name I forgot, I had some time to kill while other teams finished through and the potluck dinner finished heating. I spent it chatting with Artistry, another member closer to my own age. He lives out in Yorba Linda, and is a great puzzler. We talked about various movies, particularly The Last of Sheila, which Artistry heartily recommended to me as a puzzle movie. We also talked about devising some sort of puzzle/mystery event; something I thought would be fun.
Eventually, dinner was called, and we all went and got food. I spent most of my dinner talking with Cramerica and Artistry about various television shows. Bluff, who was much older than the three of us, just kind of listened.
After dinner, we all got together again and Cramerica introduced us to his favorite game from the recent NPL convention in Vancouver. One Two Three is a fun and simple two player game. Two people simultaneously say "One, Two, Three," followed by a randomly selected word. That is, each player says a word that he or she randomly selected. Now, the players do the same thing, except that this round, and in all subsequent rounds, instead of calling out a random word, he or she needs to call out a word that logically relates to the two previous words. This continues until both players say the same word at the same time.
Here's a quick example of actual play:
One, Two, Three . . . Rice!/Telephone!
One, Two, Three . . . White!/Animal!
One, Two, Three . . . Polar bear!/Polar bear!
On the first line, two players chose the words "rice" and "telephone" at random. On the next line, each player tried to come up with a word that bridged these two very different concepts. One thought of "white rice" and "white courtesy telephone" and so said "white". The other (Cramerica, actually, straining for anything to say) thought that animals eat rice and had seen phones shaped like animals. On the third line, two people both thought that a "white animal" would be a polar bear, and that particular set was over.
This game was adapted to a large group by Lunch Boy (a New York NPL member) and was named One Two Many by Codex (an NPL member and friend of Cramerica's). This version is pretty similar, except that anyone can jump in next. The first person to think of a connecting word says, "One;" the next person says, "Two;" then both say, "Three," before saying their words.
It's a fun game that doesn't translate well to the page, but there's a certain transcendent joy that accompanies finding a word that matches "cabinet" and "The Twilight Zone." (One person said "door"; I said "beholder". Cabinets [be]hold things, right?). We played this for a while, then moved on to Cluesome.
The game of Cluesome is much more complicated than One Two Many, mostly because it has scoring. And it has complicated scoring involving wagers and bonuses. So, I'm going to ignore those scoring rules for the purpose of this explanation.
First, each player takes a bunch of index cards, usually six, and writes his or her name on one side, and an answer on the back. The answer can be anything, really, a number, a person, a word, a phrase, a title. After everyone has done so, the cards are passed around so that each player has six cards with answers from six different people. Then the fun begins.
The first player becomes the Cluegiver, chooses an answer from his set of cards and creates a clue for that answer. Everyone writes down what they think the answer is (except the person who supplied card), and after thirty seconds, everyone reveals their guesses.
Here's the tricky part. The Cluegiver has to create a clue that will be answered correctly by at least one, but not more than half, of the other players. If nobody answers correctly, the Cluegiver loses points and has to clue the same answer again. If too many people answer, the Cluegiver loses points and has to create a clue for a different answer in his hand. The only restrictions are that the clue must be specific enough (the clue "One of the planets" is fair, since it becomes a guessing game) and cannot rely on "insider information" (Asking "What I had for breakfast this morning" isn't fair if you had breakfast with one of the players). Beyond that, anything is legal. Apparently, some people have simply said the answer and hoped that one player will write down the same word.
Like the Make Your Own Treasure Hunt, the clues were very individual. Here are some I remember, along with about how many answered correctly. (Multiple clues on the same number means that the same person had to give multiple clues for the same answer.):
- A number, a bomb, a cafe. (4/11)
- Stop sign. (5/11)
- Shakespearean. (1/11)
- If it loses force, it becomes a nameless depression. (0/11)
They wouldn't name one after Denzel, even though he played one. (4/11) - It's the row where it ain't necessar'ly so. (2/11)
- He said "Froderick". (0/11)
- Tarzan's foundation. (0/11)
- It has a white tip in Orange County (3/11)
- Some may get angry when it sings (0/11)
It may be necessary to crack a difficult case (4/11)
Answers below.The game is more involving, but still a lot of fun.
After the game of Cluesome, most people left. A few of us stayed, Conundrum (who lived there), Cramerica and his friend, Kegler, Music Man, Bartok, Artistry and me. We lounged around and chatted. Eventually, we pulled down the game of Taboo and played, since many people had never played it before. We had a good time. My record was five cards for the night, but Cramerica took top honors with eight. Eventually, my team lost by one point, but, as you may have noticed, we don't often pay all that much attention to scoring. After Taboo, Kegler and Music Man left also, and Cramerica's friend taught us a game called "Jotto" which is basically a combination of Hangman and Mastermind, but I was bored by it, so I won't take the time to describe it. I played Conundrum, and he guessed mine early, so we played One Two Three until the others finished. Then we played One Two Many with them since Conundrum really liked it. Artistry tried to organize a group flat-writing, but we were all too tired to think about it, and so we drifted out.
I eventually made it back home just before midnight, after having a twenty-eight hour day.
The invisible seems to be working, so here are the answers to the selected Cluesome clues.
- Atomic. (An atomic number, the atomic bomb and the Atomic Cafe.)
- Octagon.
- Sonnet. (Not the best clue, most answered "Elizabethan", but one person caught the logic and that was enough.)
- Hurricane.
- Poverty. (Poverty Row is the setting of Porgy and Bess.)
- Marty Feldman. (In Young Frankenstein)
- Concrete Jungle.
- [The] Matterhorn. (Which is a prominent attraction of Disneyland in Anaheim, Orange County.)
- Stool pigeon.
TueNYTX: 4:30.