Chain Puzzles

Bubbler

03:21

24-hour hint dropped.

Stiv

07:44

Ah, ok, so we have been overthinking this by the sound of it! So I figure from this clue we're actually looking to 'read' the grid in the sense that focussing on only the numbers which are valid Sorry clues should give us some kind of coded representation of letters. Braille, Morse and pigpen don't work on their own (they may need some augmented version), neither does focussing purely on the shapes they form. But I just feel it's going to be something like this...

Forget applying the rules of Sorry, just focus on the cards which are rules in Sorry.

jafe

08:52

that's not how i read the hint... it says "focus on individual cards' instructions"

i take that to mean that we do need to use the linked rules of the game

jafe

20:55

man this is still stumping me

bobble

You requested bright minds. I bring an average one.

Prince North Læraðr

I bring a below average mind

What is going on with the puzzle?

bobble

List the things you've tried?

jafe

the hitori solution above was confirmed correct... trying to come up with a way to use the sorry! rules in the grid

bobble

What kind of attempts have you made?

jafe

21:01

taking x steps forward around the rim of the grid starting from the corners... also trying to fit a sorry! board over the grid and starting from the start spots

Stiv

I'm here, I'm thinking, I'm still far from an answer!

jafe

also it can't be that complicated if the hint says not to overthink

bobble

It specifically says "read the rows using the rules of Sorry"

Did you try using Sorry cards for each row, starting at left?

jafe

yeah

bobble

Sorry! (game)

Sorry! is a board game that is based on the ancient Indian cross and circle game Pachisi. Players move their three or four pieces around the board, attempting to get all of their pieces "home" before any other player. Originally manufactured by W.H. Storey & Co in England and now by Hasbro, Sorry! is marketed for two to four players, ages 6 and up. The game title comes from the many ways in which a player can negate the progress of another, while issuing an apologetic "Sorry!" == Objective == The objective is to be the first player to get all four of their coloured pawns from their start space...

helpful link?

Stiv

21:03

With 4 letters in mind I've been trying everything connected to the number, even dissecting the grid into quarters and examining each of those separately. I keep coming back to 4 players in a game and needing to play something out.

bobble

Where are the starting spots for the players on this board?

jafe

if there are 4 players moving their pawns in the grid then what bothers me is that we don't have any indication where which player starts

the 7 on the second row is the first starting position

then the 4 on the penultimate column

i think... never played this game :P

the rules remind me of kimble (aka trouble), although that's played with a die instead of cards

Stiv

Trouble, Sorry, Frustration and Ludo always used to blur into one in my head!

Prince North Læraðr

Wait so jafe's hitori solve was correct

jafe

yeah

Prince North Læraðr

21:08

It says "6 and 9 are omitted from the deck to avoid confusion"

So that means that something about the 6s and 9s must be insignificant or play a big role don't it?

jafe

one of the hints says "6s and 9s can be entirely ignored after solving the Hitori part"

Stiv

That's just standard for Sorry rules, because you can't always tell 6 and 9 apart so they don't use the cards in the game

(upside down)

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Hmmm, what if instead of the detailed rules of each number, we simplify it to either move forward or move backward. Binary?

jafe

not sure whether to mark them as gray in the grid...

Stiv

I tried that, didn't show anything obvious

Anthony Ingram-Westover

21:11

Yeah, there are way more move forward options than backward, so there would probably be a ton of one number and very little of the other

bobble

What if you start from any non-gray space on the edge, and draw lines for the moves you would take if you got the card of the space you land on?

Prince North Læraðr

Hm

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Where are the sorry cards...

bobble

here

jafe

if you gray out the 6s and 9s it almost looks like a maze

Stiv

21:14

I think that's largely because of the domino nature though...

bobble

do pawns go clockwise or counterclockwise?

Stiv

When Bubbler says "Please don't overthink, and focus on the individual cards' instructions." how do you read that? To me it's "don't overthink by focussing on the individual cards' instructions" - I feel like it's purely a layout thing.

Prince North Læraðr

Um, I see it as "focus on the individual cards' actions"

@bobble Clockwise, I think

Stiv

So the exact opposite?

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Clockwise when moving forward, counter when backward

jafe

21:15

ahh, i read that as "please don't overthink; instead, focus on..."

Prince North Læraðr

@jafe Same

Anthony Ingram-Westover

And yeah, but the second half of today's clue asks "Where are the Sorry! cards"

So that indicates something on the board is a sorry card

Stiv

@AnthonyIngram-Westover I've been trying to interpret that part!

Anthony Ingram-Westover

The non-blacked out 6s and 9s are throwing me

We can ignore them, so they can't be the Sorry! cards

But if we black them out as part of ignoring them, then the blacked out spots can't be the Sorry! cards

Stiv

A normal deck only contains 44 or 45 cards (depending on edition) so we can't play it completely true to the usual game card frequencies...

Anthony Ingram-Westover

21:18

Right, I did the full frequencies yesterday, it doesn't even remotely line up, like there's only 2 2s, but 12 1s

Stiv

I've even considered dividing the whole board into dominos, but that doesn't work for the bottom of columns 3-5 if trying to keep shaded and unshaded separate.

I keep asking myself 'why dominos', but knowing Bubbler is a fan of grid-deduction puzzles it could purely be they fancied making one like this

Prince North Læraðr

What's the difference between the blacked out one and the not blacked out one that jafe posted?

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Jafe's blacks out the remaining 6s and 9s

Oh, wait

Prince North Læraðr

Oh wait no jafe blacked out to make it look like a Sorry board

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Yeah

There is a version where it's just the solved hitori, one where a Sorry Board is overlaid, and one where the extra 6s and 9s are also greyed out

Stiv

21:25

Does anyone see any significance to the shaded domino pair values, or orientation?

Hang on, theory brewing...

Prince North Læraðr

Wait you need a one or two to move out of start, right?

jafe

yeah

Prince North Læraðr

Because on the Sorry board one, there's only one starting position with a 1 in it

bobble

Unless you have a Sorry! card

Prince North Læraðr

Maybe the remaining shaded areas are where all the Sorry pawns are

jafe

21:28

the blacked-out sorry board probably isn't the way to go since the dimensions don't match with the actual game (12x12 vs 16x16)

Avi

@Stiv morse code based on orientation?

Stiv

@Avi Exactly that, but it's coming to nothing

Avi

:<

Stiv

Rotated grid 90 degrees, but first letters are PUMMGS...

(and 270 degrees, last letters are ...SWMMDP)

bobble

I am stuck and have other stuff to do... bye for now!

Anthony Ingram-Westover

21:37

The final answer is 4 letters, and there are 80 squares left over when we take out the dominos and the 6s/9s

but I don't know how to get to 4 letters for the final answer

Lukas Rotter

wait, bubbler confirmed the answer is 4 letters?

Anthony Ingram-Westover

12 rows, 10 different numbers, 80 squares (92 if including 6s and 9s)

jafe

it says in the puzzle that it's 4 letters

Anthony Ingram-Westover

It's in the riddle

"Solve the following Hitori Blocks puzzle, and apply Sorry rules to identify the four-letter name of the next game. It's up to you to find out how to apply the rules on the completed grid."

Lukas Rotter

oh. lol

Stiv

21:39

My money's still on RISK

jafe

i don't think we need to use all the squares remaining... it would be a pretty tough job to make a hitori where every white square was pre-set because of what you need in the next step

i hope it's risk, that game is awesome

Stiv

21:57

Does anyone get anything by reading the shaded numbers, excluding the 6's and 9's (i.e. focusing only on those which are valid cards from the game?)

There do seem to be an awful lot of those shaded

jafe

the rules say that shading a cell "erases" the number, though

Stiv

True. I'd not appreciated the significance of that word

jafe

i think it is an interesting question why the 6s and 9s are there, though... i mean, nothing in hitori rules says you have to have successive numbers so bubbler could have just used the numbers available in the game if they wanted

especially as like you said there are tons of them in the grid

Stiv

Shaded cells erased

jafe

i just now realized what you meant by reading the rows as morse code... i'm slow

that would have made the choice of this particular variant make perfect sense, too

Stiv

22:06

Ha! The rows aren't possible without having more than one letter represented by some lines (e.g. row 10 is ....-) but the columns looked more promising. Came to nothing though by my reckoning

Wouldn't make use of the rules of Sorry particularly either...

jafe

true

Prince North Læraðr

Maybe... the six and the nines are sorry? Idk

Oh the clue said to disregard the six and nines

but why are they there then?

Anthony Ingram-Westover

Yeah that's what throws me off the most

ThePuzzlingPlatypus

maybe the shaded spaces are the sorry cards?

just guessing

unshaded are the numbers, shaded are the literal sorry cards?

Stiv

22:31

I've exhausted all my ideas for now... Might need to wait for the next clue or somebody else's brainwave before anything strikes me. Night!

ThePuzzlingPlatypus

good night

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