Well done, team! It's not often you win in two rounds! 
I must say I liked this board. Our words were all over the place, but there were enough connections to take the game in a number of directions, without one obvious path, and some interesting overlap with Red in terms of HAWK/ROBIN and CROWN/HEAD.
After Red's first clue, I knew I wanted to clue HEAD last, in the hopes that Red would guess it. So I came up with:
Donut 3 - HOLE/CHOCOLATE/SATURN
Talon 3 - HAWK/DRAGON/HAND
Chancellor 2 - BERLIN/HEAD
I'm not sure I've heard of Berliners as a type of donut, and I didn't know about the link to the "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, so that was unexpected. (I may live in Europe now, but I grew up in America!) I did deliberately spell donut the American way to point you to the ring shape. SATURN was still a stretch, but I thought you might fall back on HAND! (A simple connection: You eat donuts with your hands, which are then left messy.)
HAND was the hardest word to clue. I liked Talon for it because it's an appendage, like a HAND, associated with birds of prey, not ROBINs. I went with the singular Talon, not Talons, to suggest a stronger link with HAND. It's a good thing it's not too obscure a word; Claw woudn't have worked because ROBINs, DOGs, and ROBOTs all have them!
When the team guessed BERLIN before SATURN, and Red gave us HEAD, I saw we could win in two. It wasn't really that risky: no sensible spymaster would clue HAWK/DRAGON/ROBIN with Talon instead of Winged, especially since ROBINs don't have talons! A specific clue like Talon suggests there is more at work behind the scenes. Shallow thought followed my reasoning perfectly. Though the team started to worry me when they didn't notice that CROWN had already been guessed, misidentified the number of Red words guessed (5/9, not 4/9) and even suggested using random.org!
Fortunately, sanity prevailed.
It never occured to me that the clue might be illegal, and I still don't see it. You are always permitted to give an unlimited clue instead of a numbered one, giving your team unlimited guesses in exchange for less information about the number of words intended. I still had a few alternate clues in my back pocket if the game played out differently:
Eagle 3 - HAWK/BERLIN/DRAGON
Body 3 - HAND/HEAD/SATURN
Majestic 4 - SATURN/DRAGON/BERLIN/HAWK (only after QUEEN and CROWN were removed)
Clouds 2 - SATURN/HEAD
I must say I liked this board. Our words were all over the place, but there were enough connections to take the game in a number of directions, without one obvious path, and some interesting overlap with Red in terms of HAWK/ROBIN and CROWN/HEAD.After Red's first clue, I knew I wanted to clue HEAD last, in the hopes that Red would guess it. So I came up with:
Donut 3 - HOLE/CHOCOLATE/SATURN
Talon 3 - HAWK/DRAGON/HAND
Chancellor 2 - BERLIN/HEAD
I'm not sure I've heard of Berliners as a type of donut, and I didn't know about the link to the "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, so that was unexpected. (I may live in Europe now, but I grew up in America!) I did deliberately spell donut the American way to point you to the ring shape. SATURN was still a stretch, but I thought you might fall back on HAND! (A simple connection: You eat donuts with your hands, which are then left messy.)
HAND was the hardest word to clue. I liked Talon for it because it's an appendage, like a HAND, associated with birds of prey, not ROBINs. I went with the singular Talon, not Talons, to suggest a stronger link with HAND. It's a good thing it's not too obscure a word; Claw woudn't have worked because ROBINs, DOGs, and ROBOTs all have them!
When the team guessed BERLIN before SATURN, and Red gave us HEAD, I saw we could win in two. It wasn't really that risky: no sensible spymaster would clue HAWK/DRAGON/ROBIN with Talon instead of Winged, especially since ROBINs don't have talons! A specific clue like Talon suggests there is more at work behind the scenes. Shallow thought followed my reasoning perfectly. Though the team started to worry me when they didn't notice that CROWN had already been guessed, misidentified the number of Red words guessed (5/9, not 4/9) and even suggested using random.org!
Fortunately, sanity prevailed.It never occured to me that the clue might be illegal, and I still don't see it. You are always permitted to give an unlimited clue instead of a numbered one, giving your team unlimited guesses in exchange for less information about the number of words intended. I still had a few alternate clues in my back pocket if the game played out differently:
Eagle 3 - HAWK/BERLIN/DRAGON
Body 3 - HAND/HEAD/SATURN
Majestic 4 - SATURN/DRAGON/BERLIN/HAWK (only after QUEEN and CROWN were removed)
Clouds 2 - SATURN/HEAD
![[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."
