"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.
WALL - Literally the first thing I thought on seeing the clue, even before I'd looked at the board.
And then ... it's early morning and I've not absorbed the caffeine yet, but my lack of thought is disappointing.
You might get WAILING at a WAKE.
I can see a whole mass of events (tripping, assault and battery) or items (knife, spike, nail) that could lead to wailing, but nothing that distinguishes any from another, so probably not what is being aimed for here.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
First thought is WALL, although I'm second guessing myself that maybe it's the weeping wall? The famous one in Jerusalem - pretty sure it's wailing, though, and the most common everyday use of the word.
Aside from that I have a bunch of possibles, none that seem obvious:
TRIPping can cause a toddler to wail
a WAKE is like a funeral, except usually it's supposed to be happier and hence I don't know I'd see the wailing - but it does come to mind directly from the clue, no intermediate steps. And honestly happier is relative, I bet there is some real wailing anyway.
ATLANTIS probably provoked some wailing when it sunk
When you are cut with a KNIFE, as part of a BATTERY, you may wail, and the criminal may wail when he is LOCKed up.
An old-timey teenager may have wailed when punished with a SWITCH (although admittedly most stories with this also have the kid trying to be stoic)
Looking at spoilers now: well, I'm reassured that shallow thought and I were on the same page for first reactions. I agree that the third one is more tangential. I want to try to guess something anyway, though - waiting for the spymaster to reclue never seems to work out. I would vote for first WALL, then WAKE, then something random off the secondary association list - unless Azoth sees something I don't.
Will aim to revisit this in a few hours, maybe letting it marinate will help. Although I'm happy for someone to point at least WALL and WAKE already if they agree.
For the third, I like LITTER. As in, a litter of newborn kittens. BATTERY is probably the safer guess.
I think it's too difficult to distinguish between NAIL/KNIFE/SPIKE/TRIP, so we're probably meant to avoid those. We couldn't get through all of them with our +1s anyway!
I have no further insight. Less keen on the idea of guessing something random from our third guess proposals, mostly because I count at least six with some sort of connection and that's starting to seem too likely we hit red or assassin. But if someone else points to a word I won't complain. All of the proposed words fit at least partially, none that I want to argue against.
The more I think about it, the more I like BATTERY. Not only might you wail in response to battery, but committing battery can also be described as wailing on someone. I don't think El Grillo could have possibly missed that connection - Wailing is an uncommon word - so BATTERY will at worst be grey.
I think we should definitely make a third guess - as Mardoc says, waiting rarely seems to work out - and I think that guess should be BATTERY.
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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."
