The Sphinx's Lair

6:01 AM

@GarethMcCaughan Yes!

(When I read the first comments, I feared that I had made it too obscure. The def. was rather loose and I thought about saying "you get $200 there in passing".)

6:23 AM

i think the def is totally fine

that said, i was never getting that because in the only version that i have played you get $4000 when you pass go

Yes, that was a problem. I also played a version where you got 4000 M for passing go. (That's M for marks, I suppose, not that new-fangled "Monopole" currency that's apparently used today.) I based to $200 on what the Wikipedia page calls the Standard US edition of 2008.

(I wonder why the game board we had didn't use DM. The overall production quality of the game makes me suspect that it was an East German version, but that raises the question why a Socialist state would produce a Monopoly game. Well, I never really liked Monopoly, so if the plan was to put people off capitalism, Socialism has won. At least this round.)

7:11 AM

i get why the number amounts are different, of course... it sort of breaks the illusion of playing rich successful businesspeople if the amounts in play are less than what you spend on groceries

I wonder what the Italian Monopoly used ...

The "Monopole" currency was probably introduced to avoid that incongruence. The M symbol somehow suggests millions, at least to me.

yeah

John Dvorak

The Czech socialist version of Monopoly was called "privatisation" and looked something like this: aukro.cz/…

There's also a version where you buy race horses: deskovehry.com/recenze-dostihy-a-sazky-kone-hazard-penize

7:29 AM

Nice! But that's a different game, no? Or maybe the same game at the core, but with a different board. Ours was a noticeably a Monopoly, correct street names and all.

John Dvorak

It's a rebrand, same mechanics

Rubio

7:55 AM

Privatisation has 11 spaces to a side. That’s wrong ;)

The horse one seems to be the same board and positioning of special squares etc, just a different presentation

John Dvorak

Hey, privatisation is a board game of my youth

2 hours later…

9:59 AM

I was ~90% sure "you get $200 there" was going to yield GO from when I first read the clue, but couldn't think of any way to make it work. Then I ran across someone shouting "Bingo!" in a book I was reading, and I was enlightened :-).

10:12 AM

Okay, so it wasn't that obscure after all. But now I wonder what the book is you were reading and where people shout "Bingo!". Somehow, I imagine you as someone who would read books where people shout "Eureka!". :)

10:23 AM

Heh. In the book in question, they were shouting "Bingo!" because they were ... playing bingo :-).

Fair enough.

The book is a very strange one. It's a sort of a cult classic. I'm finding it less hilarious than I had hoped to.

10:37 AM

Oh, that one. I didn't get very far in. I remember that I found it to be more of an "old men's fantasy" than the romp through conspiracy theories that I wanted to read. The book may still be somewhere in my basement. Or in Oxfam's basement.

I doubt that getting to the Bingo scene would have changed my opinion.

1 hour later…

11:40 AM

Yup. I wouldn't particularly recommend it. (I am going to finish it, though; it's an enjoyable enough read and occasionally the authors do do something genuinely funny.)

The people playing bingo in the book, by the way, aren't old men. They're Jesus and his disciples. (Maybe best not to ask why.)

11:55 AM

"Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me." (Judas from the other end of the table) "Bingo!"