Ragtime 1
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Codenames 2
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![[Image: khan.gif]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/9pn6phndjxci7s5/khan.gif)  just kidding - you haven't seen how bad my clues are going to be yet...
Completed: RB Demogame - Gillette, PBEM46, Pitboss 13, Pitboss 18, Pitboss 30, Pitboss 31, Pitboss 38, Pitboss 42, Pitboss 46, Pitboss 52 (Pindicator's game), Pitboss 57
In progress: Rimworld 
This is what the grid looked like:
We, Blue, were missing the word "FLUTE". Again, congratulations to Red Team on winning Round 2. We'll get our revenge in Round 3! I will write a breakdown of the clues I gave (and why they sucked) shortly, but I do apologise to my team.
First Clue: STATE 4.
This is where the entire round was lost. The game started and it was just as I was getting into bed. I took a quick look and thought I had found a great clue! STATE works well with Washington, the Queen (head of state), Gas (state of matter! This one I was shocked that it wasn't higher in your lists to be picked as for me personally this was the most obvious one) and Moscow (STATE Circus). I think one thing that being Spymaster has really brought home is that we have really different backgrounds and what is obvious to one of us, certainly isn't obvious to another. For example, swing state... it literally did not occur to me at all. Even when you mentioned it, it rang a vague bell in my head but no more. I know absolutely zilch about American politics except that Trump is a dickhead. I considered that Greece might get chosen (though I thought it was a nation, not a nation state) but it was grey and I did not see it as that likely. I did not make the link that Old Harry did between Ruler and Queen- although I totally see why that was made. I suppose I am just biased as a Queen loving Brit. Obviously, this clue was an absolute disaster and it was immediately obvious to me, as you were all discussing it, that we were in big trouble. Regrettably, this is one downside to Codenames (or perhaps, not a downside, but a quirk). Once a mistake has been made, there is no stopping it. Brick mentioned at the end of the last round that we got hung up on FAIRY TALE and he could not get us to stop guessing for it. This was exactly my problem, I was very aware that you had a bunch of guesses and they were all bloody RED! I was trying to think of how to divert attention away from this clue and this thinking affected everything else that I did for the rest of the game. Second clue: SNOW 3 (Moscow, Queen, Racket (fly)) This was actually intended to be SNOW 4, but the other team gave us FLY. Brick stated in this thread that his plan to get us to stop guessing FAIRY TALE was to give us a new, massive clue to guess at with the logic that we would realise that there must be overlap and to keep you busy away from state words. Unfortunately, nobody, not even Brick picked up on this (perhaps because it was only a 3 clue rather than a 4). Ichabod at this point started being my one pillar of hope. From here on out, every word he wrote was basically 100% correct. He correctly predicted the correct words to match every clue. Unfortunately, Ichabod is perhaps the friendliest most easy going member of this forum and he ended his conclusions each time with a sentence along the lines of "but I'm happy to go with whatever you guys want". Old Harry and I must have very different backgrounds because we repeatedly looked at words from totally different angles. That, coupled with him being very persuasive, did not bode well for us. The team agreed on these 3 words as our most likely, but weren't confident enough on RACKET so chose to go for a STATE word instead. It's hard because I appreciate SWING must have seemed so obvious to you guys. To me, it was obscure as hell. Ipecac to his credit did try and look from my perspective (and also tried to push GAS), but again he backed down each time. Sorry State was so bad guys, *I* did not look from your perspective and it really was a most terrible clue. Old Harry introduced the idea of HOOD here which baffled me. He mentioned about Snow Hoods being a thing but he's not sure what. Unfortunately, I think that's a case of misremembering. I have googled it since to see if I made another big error, but nope, it's not a thing. That being said, neither he nor anyone else strongly pushed for this and the team, wisely, decided to leave this alone as it was possibly a RED word. From here, I considered RACKET as a lock. There was no other word that was considered so I had it in my mind that you would mop up RACKET later as the only remaining suitable snow word. Third Clue: Lighting 2 (Gas, Night) This clue was picked entirely for GAS. I needed to complete the State clue so that you would not guess Ruler. I had hoped that if you had four state words (all of which had been acknowledged as possibilities initially), you would not give them a freebie on Ruler. This thinking warped my decision making to such an extent that I changed my word from LAMP to LIGHTING because Gaslighting has two seperate meanings and one of you was bound to catch it as the clear word. I did anticipate STADIUM as a possible guess but it seemed much more unlikely to me than NIGHT and, as it was grey, I took this risk. We took STADIUM but NIGHT was the only other consideration at this stage. Therefore, I considered this also as locked in. Fourth Clue: Birdsong Unlimited (Flute. Kiwi) This was my Hail Mary play. The other team had two words that I believe could have been clued together so I thought I would need to go for the win. In my head, you guys had two words already decided (RACKET and NIGHT) so there is no need to clue these. I just needed to clue for FLUTE and KIWI successfully and you would then mop up. It was REALLLLLLY hard to think of a word that could hit Kiwi and Flute without touching on Piano. Birdsong was my best attempt and, in retrospect, it worked as FLUTE was immediately thought of. Ichabod for the third clue in a row proposed the perfect answer and Bricks response was good too. I went to bed in dread just knowing that Harry was going to push Ruler because of the QUEEN/RULER connection he'd made. I understand why he made this connection, it's logical, but I could not stop it. I gave all the State clues, Red were even considering RULER but I couldn't shake this guess. What occurs to me now is we perhaps still could have won if I had clued BIRDSONG 3. Unfortunately, I did not even consider RACKET. RACKET was already a lock, there was no need to clue for it. Ok, that was very long. Short version: STATE was worst clue ever. Being a spymaster is stressful. We need to make sure the less forceful team members are listened to just as much. Sorry chaps!
Wow, that was close. I was sweating while the blue team debated between flute and ruler.
Part of my strategy was to leave the bad guesses for the blue team, so I wanted to give clues for other words than Ruler and Swing. I figured the Crossbred clue would either work spectacularly or fall completely flat. Obviously it was the latter. I thought it was worth spending a second clue to clarify and steer the team away from Kiwi. I would have been stuck if the blue team hadn't guessed Ruler for me. The best I could come up with for Ruler and Piano was Meter, which isn't very good. Good game, looking forward to the rubber match. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
