"Superdeath seems to have acquired a rep for aggression somehow. In this game that's going to help us because he's going to go to the negotiating table with twitchy eyes and slightly too wide a grin and terrify the neighbors into favorable border agreements, one-sided tech deals and staggered NAPs."
-Old Harry. PB48.
AMBULANCE and STRING, I think. Can't see much more than that. Perhaps SLUG, as in, if you get shot, you need stitches.
So, those 2 + STATE? I guess a 2 clue kind of leans in that direction, that we were right with the last guess. This makes me wonder why superdeath didn't clue SAVE 4, for the 3 we thought about + Ambulance... Well, perhaps we lucked out into a guess, or he figured he could clue the last words in a different way.
Anyway, I guess is better not to overthink things. Whatever strategy superdeath had got to have changed after UNICORN left the board. I don't have any idea how to planned to clue that with what he seems to be clueing now. Things really went our way with that blue guess.
STRING and AMBULANCE, I think? BED is also possible: if you need stitches, you might be recovering in bed.
Still, I prefer STRING + AMBULANCE + STATE. Maybe AMBULANCE was the intended third Save word, but reclueing it now suggests we should continue with our STATE guess. Of course, those three words could also have been clued by something like Yarn unlimited. (AMBULANCE and STATE were the only words we were actively considering for Save; an unlimited clue would have told us to guess both.)
But I don't like any other combination of words! STRING + AMBULANCE + BED would have been clued by Stitches 3. STRING + BED + STATE? No, you wouldn't use a clue like Stitches if you wanted to avoid AMBULANCE.
After reading spoilers: SLUG as in a bullet never occurred to me. And there are obvious ways to clue SLUG + UNICORN. But, you're right, we shouldn't overthink this. Let's see what the others say.
STRING, certainly.
I can't imagine one could actually administer stitches in a moving AMBULANCE, but it seems like the next most likely word by far.
AIR care is a helicopter that brings critical cases to the hospital, might involve stitches.
Since we had three out of four votes for STATE and we need three words to win, that ought to be our third word.
So, STRING > STATE > AMBULANCE for me.
After reading spoilers: as Ichabod said, we don't want to overthink this. Stitches = string + medical word; AMBULANCE is the best candidate.
My initial reaction on seeing the clue before checking the board was that it might have something to do with sewing. A stitch in time saves nine, and all that. Mattresses have a lot of stitching, so BED? On the other hand, a waterbed mattress wants to stay as far as possible from a needle, and a foam mattress doesn't really need stitching either, and you put a bag over your head the last time we said mattress. I still like AMBULANCE better than BED, although I'm not sure it fits the clue on a strict reading.
But as T-hawk said earlier, the goal of the spymaster isn't to provide a technically correct clue, but one that makes a connection between words that the team will understand.
We should certainly go for STATE as Superdeath didn`t warn us against it.
I agree that STRING and AMBULANCE make most sense next. As Ichabod pointed out, there is probably a better way of cluing STRING and BED. I like AMBULANCE over STATE.
I really misread this situation, Origami leading to UNICORN never even occurred to me with PAPER+ROSE on board, which I thought was as ironclad as follow-up Midlands 2 for CENTER + ENGLAND, so I didn't think too much about the order I gave. As Ichabod correctly noted, that combined with the REVOLUTION guess let superdeath finish a turn early with two solid clues. I do think the 5th guess was a bit ambitious, in spite of the convention we've adopted where more guesses are better than passing. In this case, if you're right it's win-more (superdeath would've needed to hit 7 words against my two pairs over two rounds) and if you're wrong it can turn things right back around.
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In this game that's going to help us because he's going to go to the negotiating table with twitchy eyes and slightly too wide a grin and terrify the neighbors into favorable border agreements, one-sided tech deals and staggered NAPs."
