Mafia CLXIII: Insider - Game Over -- Insider Wins!

[Keirador]

Might I propose a moratorium on further question until, at the very least, our entire roster has posted? We could well have the phrase before the Insider even gets into thread.

[Keirador]

For the record, y'alls are right, I missed that rule, we can't just do nothing, and I'm no longer proposing that. I'm just proposing we do nothing until the entire roster has chimed in.

[condude1]

Might I propose a moratorium on further question until, at the very least, our entire roster has posted? We could well have the phrase before the Insider even gets into thread.

Very good point, and I was thinking the same thing myself. No more questions for now.

No more questions until we sort this out please.

[condude1]

So, I'm currently reading Keirador as a common, and Telleo as a potential insider. Telleo as the insider because her plan is extremely dangerous to us. If anyone else had joined her, we could well have the phrase already, and with it no chance of finding the insider beyond random luck.

[condude1]

Here's a decent plan:

We impose a hard 6 question maximum on everyone. That's 2 posts of questions. If everyone hits 6, we take our best guess at EOD as to what the phrase is. This way, we create a real sense of urgency for the insider, knowing that if he doesn't show some of his knowledge, he has a high likelihood of losing along with us.

This plan only works if we're serious about the maximum though. If anyone just ignores it, this plan will fail. If we're serious about it, we'll have a good shot at taking out the insider, and almost a guarantee of finding the phrase, since the insider will guide us rather than letting us all go down together.

Thoughts?

[Telleo]

We lose equally if we either don't guess the word or don't guess the Insider, right? So we have no incentive to even try to guess the phrase without the Insider's help. I'm sure we could guess it alone, which is the primary reason why we shouldn't even try. Better to play chicken and force the Insider to tip their hand at least a little.

So your plan is to do nothing?

Wonderful. I can see already that this will be a productive conversation.

If we were allowed to, doing nothing would be by FAR the optimal solution. We force the insider to take a hardline stance against it. We can't though, because ZZ foresaw this and put a rule up against it.

No it wouldn't. If the town refuses to play to its wincon, the insider has no MORE incentive than the town to come out with information than the town does to guess. Regardless, this isn't a line of thought that gets us anywhere because ZZ didn't design this game to be that breakable.

[Telleo]

The game ends in a loss if we do not discover the phrase. I would rather begin a process that actually moves us forward, rather than blindly stumbling about until we accidentally do something right. I expect, especially in the early stages of asking questions, to not be productive in finding the insider. Towards the end, perhaps we might be able to see someone who makes odd leaps of logic, or connects the dots too quickly. Claiming that a method that actively helps us find the phrase is "not a great start" is not a great start, Condude.

You said yourself that finding the phrase wasn't a problem. It's trivial to find the phrase in... 20 posts? The challenge is to do it in a way that isn't so trivial.

Assume the phrase is "Kill two birds with one stone", how many questions does it take?

Post 1:

5 words or fewer?
First word's first letter N-Z?
First word's second letter N-Z?

Answer: No, no, no

Post 2:

7 words or fewer?
First word's first letter A-H?
First word's second letter A-H?

Answer: Yes, no, no

Post 3:

6 words?
First word's first letter i, j, or k?
First word's second letter i, j, or k?

Answer: Yes, yes, yes

Post 4:

First word 5 or fewer letters?
First word first letter i or j?
First word second letter i or j?

Answer: Yes, yes, no

We now know it starts with a k. Keep going, within about 10 posts we'd have a very good idea of what the phrase is (something like "Kill tw...")

Heck, we could play 3 games of 2-player hangman to guess the first three words. That's probably even easier. The hangman idea fails because the insider blends in perfectly.

The point is, finding the phrase isn't the problem. Finding the insider is. You figured this out, and proceeded to completely ignore your own advice. That's why I view you as a likely insider right now.

You have clearly never played charades. You're also vastly overestimating the ease of brute-forcing the problem. Asking three questions at a time, limited by Fuddin's availability, with an eventual 26 different options would take forever. Brute force is not what I suggested. It's a terrible plan. More importantly, however, even if that WAS was I was suggesting, it wouldn't make me more likely the insider. Proposal of a bad plan doesn't make one scum, and yet here you are attacking me for it as though it did. You know better.

[Telleo]

I almost posted a follow-up explaining why my post is different. The way I'm asking questions is qualititative. If someone starts pinging the right questions to narrow down the phrase this way, we can get suspicious. For example, say it's a word, and the word is dynamite. If someone asks "Is it explosive?" out of the blue, that's a massive red flag. This means that the insider has to play a game of chicken, giving us as little information as possible, while making sure we solve the puzzle.

Telleo's method is so terrible because we get no information about the insider. Her questions are over/unders effectively. What do we learn if the phrase has fewer than 5 words? If it has more than 5 words? Nothing either way.

The reason we can't just do nothing to solve this and let the insider guide us is the following rule: {rules quoted here} We need to make a sufficient effort after it. That's why my method is superior to Telleo's - we don't run afoul of this rule, and we give the insider enough rope to hang themselves.

Your method is to stumble blindly in the dark and then blame the one who accidentally finds the light switch. This is beyond useless. Get better.

Do you have a better solution? Your plan is to walk up to the light switch, turn it on, and then try to figure out who knew where it was. Isn't it a bit easier to find out who didn't know where that switch is BEFORE it's on?

You have no idea what my plan was, do you?

Do you think I intended to find the question all on my own?

Do you think I NEVER intended to have a point at which guessing moved beyond numbers and letters?

Have you ever played charades?

Are you aware of the concept of Charades as a game?

[Telleo]

Do you have a better solution?

Also, yes. See my first post.

[Telleo]

FUDDIN: I would like to ask that you respond to Telleo's questions with "Maybe?", since her questions do nothing to find the insider.

Beyond unacceptable. Don't lock me out of the game because you don't like my methods.

I'm not locking you out of the game. I'm saying that your methods are extremely damaging to the town and will likely lead us to a loss.

Although, I should have been clearer. I meant the three questions that you had asked already. I just noticed that my post could be read as asking him to ignore ALL of your questions ever. The three questions you asked do nothing to help us solve the actual problem that we're faced with - finding the insider.

Are my questions alignment indicative? If not, then is there any reason that an answer to these three questions damages our ability to find the insider? You're arguing that I should be ignored, but you're doing it on bullshit reasoning, suggesting that I'm the Insider because I proposed a method to find the phrase. This is weak.