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

[Telleo]

So far we have three approaches to the game:

Keirador suggests that the town do nothing, and force the insider to tip their hand. This, as per the rules, is a victory for the insider. In addition, it's playing against our victory condition, since we ALSO lose if the phrase is not guessed.

Condude suggests we shout out questions, then attack anyone who gets the right answer. Because that's the best way to find the insider. Condude, think this through. Look to your dynamite suggestion. What's to stop me from saying "Yo, Condude was suspiciously close right off the bat" should the phrase turn out to actually be "Two birds with one stone?"

And we have my approach. Ask questions that begin moving us forward. No matter the answer, we become closer to the phrase with every one. And we STILL have the option to make judgement calls about someone jumping too quickly towards the answer. It's the best path. Get on board.

As I've said repeatedly, we could find the phrase in about 6 active hours if it becomes desperate. I could do it solo with a bot that posts nonsense questions every hour to refresh my questioning ability.

PEOPLE: THE THREAT IS THE INSIDER, NOT FAILING TO FIND THE PHRASE.

This is complete disinterest in solving the core problem of the first phase of the game. Your plan is to let everyone run around with their heads cut off, giving plenty of time to find questions that could be perceived as prior knowledge, all the while knowing that we can get to the answer quickly at then end. Scum, thy name is Condude!

[Telleo]

Pretend this is a game of mafia. Look for the informed minority. Screw the phrase for now, worst case we find it very close to EOD.

Your plan gives us no path to search for ANYTHING. Your proposal is to literally just shout things about and when we find the phrase go look for questions that might hint in the right direction. There's no defense against "Hey, you talked once about exploding things and the phrase turned out to be dynamite!" This is a route to a billion false positives and zero real leads.

[Telleo]

Agree with condude that I don't love Telleo's opening of "the hard part is finding the Insider, now let's get to work solving the puzzle," but condude then you go and do the same thing, no?

We have significantly more time to find the insider than we do to find the answer to the puzzle. Prioritize properly.

All I can really say here is condude drank your milkshake on this one.

I hope not. I'd kill someone who drank my milkshake.

The priority is the Insider. The sole priority. As long as Fuddin is sufficiently active, figuring out the phrase is trivial, and if we do it in a trivial, mechanical sense, we've given ourselves no information on the Insider. We have to drag our feet a little, because if town just figures out the phrase themselves in a neat and orderly fashion, all we've done is clear the insignificant hurdle and send ourselves to the end-game with a 5/6 chance of losing to the Insider.

Right, but Condude's proposed method of finding the insider is "Lets just blame someone who figures it out at the end." He's done no planning on this at all, he just wants us to throw random questions around.

[Telleo]

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.

Blah. I mean, I guess. What are we going to do, moratorium on questions every couple of hours because player X hasn't posted in a while?

[Telleo]

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.

"Telleo proposed a bad plan, and is therefore scum."

You know better than that.

[condude1]

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.

No, I'm attacking you because you know full well that it's braindead simple to find the solution with endless questions. The 4 posts I gave above narrowed down 1, almost 2 letters. It easily, EASILY done by brute force. Except brute force misses the actual problem with which we are faced. Like I said, I bet I could do this with 1 post/hour, by myself, in under a day.

[Telleo]

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?

I'm curious what you think our odds are of actually finding the phrase in 6 questions each is.

Not throwing this out out of hand, because it's the first post from you that shows any thought at all about this game. Just curious. It's one thing to say we'll all agree to ask 6 questions each, and another to come to the end of that questioning and go "Whelp, we've got nothing."

[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.

"Telleo proposed a bad plan, and is therefore scum."

You know better than that.

This ain't mafia. Telleo proposed a plan that instantly loses us the game if anyone else adopts, and is therefore likely to be the insider. Seriously, it's a perfectly reasonable tack for the insider to take, because plans that lower the number of questions we ask severely injure the insider's chances at this. You're arguing for a pro-insider, anti-common strategy, while I'm arguing for a massively anti-insider, pro-commons strategy. It's no real surprise which one you'd expect the insider to take.

[Telleo]

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.

No, I'm attacking you because you know full well that it's braindead simple to find the solution with endless questions. The 4 posts I gave above narrowed down 1, almost 2 letters. It easily, EASILY done by brute force. Except brute force misses the actual problem with which we are faced. Like I said, I bet I could do this with 1 post/hour, by myself, in under a day.

Thank you for answering the least relevant part of that post.

[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?

I'm curious what you think our odds are of actually finding the phrase in 6 questions each is.

Not throwing this out out of hand, because it's the first post from you that shows any thought at all about this game. Just curious. It's one thing to say we'll all agree to ask 6 questions each, and another to come to the end of that questioning and go "Whelp, we've got nothing."

To turn your question back on you, you ever played 20 questions? The guesser wins most games, except for really weird items. Now, add an extra 22 questions onto the end, but allow phrases. I think we'll still get it. Especially when you throw in the fact that someone out there knows what the phrase is, and will likely throw out questions that are above average. The WHOLE point of this plan is to force the insider to do something, rather than sit back and let us solve the puzzle. I was tempted to make it a 5 question cap each, because I'm not sure whether this puts the insider's feet to the fire enough.

This game is premised around the fact that we need to blackmail the insider. If we don't, he wins 6 times out of 7. The question isn't whether we should, it's HOW we should.