Well this was a rather unique round.
2 things stuck out to me immediately after getting the board. Firstly ATLANTIS was by far the most difficult word to clue on my board with PLATYPUS assassin and multiple red words in the way, I couldn't pair it with anything and it would have to be 1 clued (remember this). Secondly I could knock out over half of my remaining words with a single clue, which helped make up for ATLANTIS. So the basic plan was clear: Save the 1-clue for last, clear out as many words as possible on the first turn, using the second clue to clean up.
My original words for Barbecue included MUG and not DRAFT (I missed that connection). There was no guarantee you'd go for PASS either so I settled for 5 words. Could I have stretched the clue to 6 or even 7? With hindsight yes, but it's hard to say for sure when giving out the clue. Keep in mind stretching to 6 words wouldn't save a turn, since I couldn't pair ATLANTIS with anything which would lead to 2 1-clues. A 7 clue would be bold indeed, but I didn't see the possibility at the time. Probably would've gone 6 if I saw DRAFT though.
Barbecue ended up being so wildly successful that you mentioned all 7 non-ATLANTIS words, so why not reclue? MUG was simple enough, but it was slightly disappointing you went with WASHER over PASS. Pro-tip: When you get a reclue, forget everything about what you think is next and go back and look at what is written down previously, since I can see everything you write. If you'd done that, you'd find the following:
pja: Didn't mention either word initially, later dismissing both
Krill: Favored WASHER
JR4: Favored PASS
shallow: Mentioned both words, and
had PASS above WASHER
shallow's initial preference was the tiebreaker I was hoping you guys would find, instead of leaving it to a guess. To be fair though, we did have 2 newcomers on the team so it wasn't entirely unexpected. Also red was leaning towards multiple grey words and it looked impossible for them to finish by turn 3 either way, so it didn't even matter that WASHER was red. The worst case scenario is that you would miss one of the remaining words forcing a reclue, which I could not afford to do due to ATLANTIS. If I went with a different clue, would you have gotten both words? (Best I could think of was Wallet 2). At least Barbecue guaranteed both words would be mentioned.
Fortunately you did note PASS as +1 and as predicted red didn't finish, so we got there in the end.
![[Image: noidea.gif]](https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/noidea.gif)
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."
