Mystery Hunt 2012 Recast: COMPLETE!!!

[LordKinbote]

Correct.

Next: Highlights by Josh Ain

[gftt*]

I own three of those.

(Pandemic, Puerto Rico, and (of course) Settlers of Catan. Played Power Grid once but I think it was the US map.)

[SuperSlug]

11 games pictured, pull 1 letter per game for our 11 letters?

I looked at the rules for #8 Small World.
I see one discrepancy: the Ratmen are in Decline, in one region there are 3 Ratmen tokens when there should be only 1.

Edit:
#9 Saint Petersburg
The bottom player has a hand of 4 cards, a player can have at most 3 cards.
_________________
Some people are lost in the shuffle. I'm shuffling along with the lost.

[DejMar]

#6 PowerGrid, there are (at least) two errors:
(1) The Yellow player has 9 houses but the scoring track shows 8. The rule states that when a player adds a new city to his network, this position is to be immediately updated so every player can see how many cities each player has.
(2) The Red player has 2 units of coal on his #07 Oil power plant.
The rule that the player can only buy resources for plants he owns is not violated, as he owns the #15 Coal power plant, but the resources placed on the power plant may only be of the kind that the power plant uses to generate electricity.

[gftt*]

[DejMar]

Got it. Saw the erratum, but failed to apply it when I started looking at the gameboard. (I hadn't, at the time, identified it as the sixth gameboard.)

[gftt*]

Pandemic - it's in the middle of the first player's turn (infector phase); must be the dispatcher that is going. But the dispatcher must have played 3 cards from his hand (probably Beijing, to move the scientist; Atlanta, to fly away from Atlanta to Johannesburg; and Johannesburg, to build the new research center) and then his fourth move was to drive to Kinshasa. That means he should end with 1 card, and then draw two for 3, rather than the 6 that he seems to have.

Settlers of Catan - there are three "3" tokens on the hexes when there should be two. A "4" is missing.

[gftt]

1. Race for the Galaxy: 1 should be 5: R or F
2. Dominant Species
3. 7 Wonders
4. The Settlers of Catan: 3 should be 4: E or S
5. Puerto Rico: 2 colonist tokens on ship should be 5: U or T
6. Power Grid: 8 should be 9: I or D
7. Space Alert
8. Small World: 3 should be 1: A or S
9. Saint Petersburg: 4 should be 3(?): N or I?
10. Vegas Showdown
11. Pandemic: 6 should be 3: M or N

[SuperSlug]

[gftt]

Thanks.

Looking at Race for the Galaxy right now, which I've seen played but not actually played myself. The instructions say to discard the 10-point victory chips until the last round but there is one in the middle. The total does seem to be correct (47 victory points in the middle, if I've counted correctly - it's hard to distinguish all the chips since they are in a pile - plus one for the player on the right) so I'm guessing that's just an oversight by the puzzle creator.

[SuperSlug]

I'm looking at that one card in the bottom player's hand, thinking there should be more but haven't figured it out.
_________________
Some people are lost in the shuffle. I'm shuffling along with the lost.

[gftt]

There should be a lot more cards in the discard pile, too. It starts with 8 (setup is deal 6 to each player, and they choose 4 and discard 2) and then the explore phase should have one more discard per player, and we still have 3 more phases to go...


OK, after one round the discard pile should have 18, not 10, and the bottom player should have 4 + 1 (explore) - 2 (develop) - 1 (settle via conquer) + 3 (trade his windfall good) for a total of 5, not 1. I'm going to guess that the 18 is another oversight by the creator, forgetting that the discard pile starts with 8, not zero.

[gftt]

I must say Dominant Species sounds pretty cool.

In any case, green should only have 4 cylinders on the right but has 7, unless there is some rule I haven't found that allows a player to add cylinders...

1. Race for the Galaxy: 1 should be 5: R or F
2. Dominant Species: 7 shoudl be 4: N or I
3. 7 Wonders
4. The Settlers of Catan: 3 should be 4: E or S
5. Puerto Rico: 2 colonist tokens on ship should be 5: U or T
6. Power Grid: 8 should be 9: I or D
7. Space Alert
8. Small World: 3 should be 1: A or S
9. Saint Petersburg: 4 should be 3(?): N or I?
10. Vegas Showdown
11. Pandemic: 6 should be 3: M or N

call in FIRST DESIGN?

[LordKinbote]

[SuperSlug]

First:
7. Space Alert: 9 should be 5
(There are 9 green energy blocks on the central reactor in the lower white station which has a maximum capacity of 5)

Then treating First Design as a direction:
1. Race for the Galaxy: Thomas Lehmann: Suzerain (1991): S or R
2. Dominant Species: Chad Jensen: Combat Commander (2006): C or B
3. 7 Wonders: Antoine Bauza: Chabyrinthe (2007):
4. The Settlers of Catan: Klaus Teuber: Barbarossa (1988): R or B
5. Puerto Rico: Andreas Seyfarth: Zorro: The Fight Against Alcalde (1990): O or O
6. Power Grid: Friedemann Friese: Landlord (Wucherer) (1992): D(R) or -
7. Space Alert: Vlaada Chvátil: Arena: Morituri te salutant (1997): I or A
8. Small World: Philippe Keyaerts: Vinci (1999): N or V
9. Saint Petersburg: Michael Tummelhofer (Bernd Brunnhofer): Dodge City (1983): G or D
10. Vegas Showdown: Henry Stern: Vegas Showdown (2005):
11. Pandemic: Matt Leacock: Borderlands (1995): R or R

Correct Numbers: RB-BO AVD-R

Incorrect Numbers: SC-RODING-R
SCHRODINGER

call in SCHRODINGER
_________________
Some people are lost in the shuffle. I'm shuffling along with the lost.

[LordKinbote]

Correct.

Next: Pirates of the Tyrrhenian by Paul Jeray

[Suspence]

Tyrrhenian is part of the Mediterranean around Italy, and each line has a number. Roman numerals

250 shore excursions = CCL - Carnival Cruise Lines
10 grade A seamless pipes = X‎ - United States Steel Corporation
1400 apple pies = MCD - McDonalds
3000 window insulator kits = MMM - 3M
160 toilet bowl cleaners = CLX - Clorox
901 diesel engines = CMI - Cummins
150 toothbrushes = CL - Colgate
2001 cellphone patents = MMI - Motorola
5 prepaid gift cards = V - Visa
500 renewable energy certificates = D - Dominion Resources
100 ATMs = C - Citigroup

Looks like they tie out to stock symbols.

Here are the headquarters for each company, and the letter that ties out to on the state map.

S - Doral, FL = CCL - Carnival Cruise Lines
T - Pittsburgh, PA = X‎ - United States Steel Corporation
O - Oak Brook, IL = MCD - McDonalds
C - Two Harbors, MN = MMM - 3M
K - Oakland, CA = CLX - Clorox
B - Columbus, IN = CMI - Cummins
R - New York, NY = CL - Colgate
O - Schaumburg, IL - 2001 cellphone patents = MMI - Motorola
K - San Francisco, CA = V - Visa
E - Richmond, VA = D - Dominion Resources
R - New York, NY = C - Citigroup

Call in STOCKBROKER
_________________
I hate people who try to write interesting things in their signature.

[gftt*]

Well, that was quick.

I should mention that in addition to the answers all being 11 letters long, they can't use the following letters: FJLMQXYZ

For the meta so far we have:
overwrought: row 1 or 4 (of the eight possibilities)
choreograph: row 1 or 5
schrodinger: row 2 or 3
stockbroker: must be in row 7

[LordKinbote]

STOCKBROKER is correct.

I think we have to skip the next one because it has a part that requires an in-person meeting. I'll hold that answer until the end.

Next: Sovereignty by Alex Pearson and Arthur Wright

[Scurra]

Wow, two "board game" puzzles in the same round! (I did the "wrong pieces" one during the hunt, but didn't see this one.)
Although I am not yet sure how to progress on this one, I think it's about Dominion. The [...] represents the drawn cards, since the first two rounds for each player are the same ten cards - 5 Province and 5 Money (copper.) I am guessing that we have to determine what the action cards are from the various rounds of play.
_________________
_{still Quiz Olympiad champion. Must get a life.
New definitions: COFFEE - someone who is coughed upon}

[gftt*]

[onethreeseven*]

Content balance by round is hard, because there are so many other constraints when matching answers to puzzles. But yes, all things being equal it would have been nicer not to have two board game puzzles in the same round...

For what it's worth, I think this meta is much more interesting at 7/8 answers anyway, so hopefully your missing answer won't hamper you too much.

[gftt*]

Only played it a couple times so I'll probably have some mistakes here... but clearly pile 22 (P) is Copper, so likely 21 (O) is Silver and 20 (N) is gold. The players start out with P's and M's; pile 12 (M) is thus estates, 11 (L) is duchies, and 10 (K) is provinces. A through J are the 10 action cards and the last one is curses?

the first player's first three turns:
|PPPMM|,(%P,%P,%P),[@O],,[&]
|PPPPM|,(%P,%P,%P,%P),[@I],[Sh],[&]
|PPOMI|,(%I,[tM])(%P,%P,%O),[@I],,[&]

[Sh] is shuffle. [@O] and [@I] seem to be cards being bought. The action card I is played on the third turn and allows the player to trash an estate card (M).

Not sure what nlen is supposed to measure if it "ignores whitespace"? I would say "number of cards left in the relevant pile" but that has nothing to do with whitespace.

[gftt*]

Card E is almost certainly Moneylender. Every time it is played, it is paired with a tP (trash Copper) and the third turn from player 3, he then spends 3 more coppers to buy a gold. So it's a +3 (or more) from trashing.

|PPPPE|,(%E,[tP])(%P,%P,%P),[@N],[Sh],[&]

nlen might be number of characters in the length of the card name?

[gftt]

OK, I think I need Scurra or someone who's played this more than I have.

I've put the turns in order (presumably)

[gftt*]

OK, now I'm really stumped.

After turn 2.4, player 2 has bought one silver (O). He shuffles and it appears in his hand (beginning of 2.5). After spending it in turn 2.5 he draws 5 cards and another silver is in his hand (beginning of 2.6) without an intervening shuffle. Where did the second silver come from!?

[SuperSlug]

[SuperSlug]

For the Sheila Sunshine meta :
ENGINEERING: row 1
SCHRODINGER: row 2 or 3
OVERWROUGHT: row 4
CHOREOGRAPH: row 5
STOCKBROKER: row 7

Still have to read the rules for Dominion.
~ sluggy

Edit:
The addresses for the puzzles seem to have changed; the new addresses are:
Sheila Sunshine
Investigator’s Report
Sovereignty
_________________
Some people are lost in the shuffle. I'm shuffling along with the lost.

[LordKinbote]

[SuperSlug]

[LordKinbote]

[SuperSlug]

Sovereignty

I have some ideas for some of the cards; trying:

A as Harvest - takes into account that 4 of the player's own cards are revealed (* then defined as reveal)

D as Pearl Diver -

[gftt*]

Sounds promising. Not sure how I missed Jester.

I was thinking D++ meant a base set plus two expansions, but it seems that there will be cards from at least 4 different sets.

[SuperSlug]

I wasn't limiting my card search to any particular sets, though I'm keeping the thought in my mind that those that require extra things probably are not included in our game.

I did find this sortable list that is very useful in the search for cards that fit.

I have to prep for a Brownie meeting, so won't be back to this until much later tonight.

Have possibilities of H as Torturer and G as Grand Market but haven't thoroughly checked through them yet.
_________________
Some people are lost in the shuffle. I'm shuffling along with the lost.

[gftt]

Yes, I was thinking Torturer for H as well. [^] for card D is probably "puts the bottom card on top", since it's optional.

Next question is, what is B?

[gftt]

Player 3 has a curse in 3.10 so he must have acquired it before the previous shuffle in 4.8. Either B or C is a curse-giver, then, and B seems more likely (since C must yield cards and actions as well). Both B and C cost at most 5. Simplest hypothesis would be that B is Witch? But I don't see player 2 with a curse until 2.15...

[gftt]

Starting to think C might be Market. [edit: maybe not... it does have a +1 action and a +1 card, at least, but there are a lot of cards that do.] [edit: it does also have a +1 gold and +1 buy at turn 3.17. Maybe it's City? I think City and Pearl Diver piles are out by then.]

Festival for F? It must have a +1 action (4.12) and a +1 buy (4.15) and a +$2 (4.12).

A = Harvest
B = Witch?
C = City?
D = Pearl Diver
E = Moneylender
F = Festival?
G = Grand Market?
H = Torturer
I = Trader
J = Jester
K = Province
L = Duchy
M = Estate
N = Gold
O = Silver
P = Copper
Q = Curse

If nlen means word length:

A + F - K - O = 1 = A
E + H + I - Q = 20 = T
D + E + G - M = 26 = Z
A + J - K = 5 = E
A + B + G - L = 18? = R
C+F+H-Q = 15 = O
D+I-M-P = 4 = D
A+D+F-L = 20 T
C+G+I-P= 15 O
A+E+J-O = 18 = R
D+F+H-N = 22 V
D+E-O = 15 = O
B+I+J-L=12? = L
H+I+J-L=15 = O
A+C+J-O = 11 K
B+F-Q = 8 H
B+E-L-M = 5? = E?
G+H-M-P = 7? = G

AT ZERO DT OR VOLOKH EG.

I have no idea what Zero DT is supposed to be. Volokh might refer to Volokh Conspiracy but Conspiracy is 10 letters, not 11. Buh?

Last edit: Googling ran me into a blog post about the Mystery Hunt that spoiled the answer. So someone else should take it from here.

[SuperSlug]

[LordKinbote]

Correct.

Next: Stand by Brett Stilwell

[gftt]

Those pics look like Cambridge. Do we need to be local?