LurkerBeneath's page

http://forum.q-workshop.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1576 has a discussion of the "Elven" phrases on these dice.

Somebody got their Star Wars on my Elven dice!
(d4:4 and d10:2 say "Do or do not; there is no 'try.'")

Has anyone puzzled out the d20? I get 1-5: "Winter is nature's way of saying 'Up yours.'" (a Robert Byrne quote) but I couldn't figure out the rest of it.

OK. Three questions:
Why is there no way to start a discussion of the parent product?
Why is there no link from the parent product to the print edition? The only way I've found to navigate from one listing to the other is to add the product to my cart and click the link there.
When is the "street date"? I stopped at my FLGS Thursday 1/31 and they said they were still waiting for #5.

This discussion is attached to
http://paizo.com/store/paizo/v5748btpy7xpv
but there's another listing for this product at
http://paizo.com/store/paizo/v5748btpy815p
with no discussion attached and no way that I can see to start one.
Why the two listings?
-LB

So it's a traditional elven spell, then.

Yes. I believe it's called protection from unsold inventory.

Starting near the bottom of the bag, the "protective spell" reads:
qwdice.com online shop unusual dice and accessories

No ETA for my FLGS?

Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know? podcast
-LB

I lose too.
-LB

Two more data points:

In AD&D, feeblemind was not only a 5th-level magic-user spell, but also a 6th-level druid spell. Of course break enchantment didn't exist then, but when did druids lose feeblemind?

Bestow curse can be used as a "lite" feeblemind (-6 to INT). Its entry does list break enchantment as a way to remove the bestowed curse, as well as the four spells listed under feeblemind.

-LB

I notice the title page refers to TWMPFRPG. Are you not allowed to mention it by name in OGL content?

How about a cone of silence?
-LB

Surely you could

It looks OK now. Maybe someone else fixed it while we weren't looking.
-LB

Should the line with 4/3/9 blanks be 3/3/9 instead?
Should the line with 7/9 blanks be 6/9 instead?

Any chance we could get a PDF file like we got for Puzzle #3? I tried printing the web page but the white underscores didn't print.
-LB

It's another equinox today and I don't see a new puzzle. Does this mean we have to wait for Beltane?
-LB

Is JE, BF, RB, MS, RG the correct sequence?
-LB

In retrospect I see that you're very talented at dropping subtle hints. What's your game, anyway?
-LB

I'm really a phylacterist.

Was that a hint? Because if I take the right 6 letters from "phylacterist" and arrange them just so I get the answer to the puzzle. Of course, there are 332,639 incorrect ways to do that...

Like I said... bribe this magus with soul jarring amulets.

Um, soul jar? In the SRD I see magic jar and trap the soul, but not soul jar. Is that in the Spell Compendium?

Believe it or not, I got it without having to bribe Gary (again). The game looks gorgeous, Mike.

Since you've done it before, what does it take to bribe Gary? I may need to at the rate I'm going.

If I interpret one druid of a given color in a group as indicating the number between 1-6 of the same color, two druids as 7-12, etc. and I associate A=1, B=2, etc. then I get:
NO ANIEL HER
SHIP SHE AHD
ATC HER SNOJE
I've listed the letters in color order, but it looks like you could almost make sense out of this by rearranging the letters in each group (snoje=jones, etc.).
-LB

I'm just full of observations. None of them have helped me yet.
There are 68 druids in all.
The number of druids in each group is:
06 09 06
11 07 04
06 06 13
The number of druids in each group by color is:
White ! Blue ! Green ! Yellow ! Red ! Black
0 1 0 ! 3 3 2 ! 3 2 0 ! 0 0 0 ! 0 1 1 ! 0 2 3
4 4 1 ! 2 2 2 ! 2 0 0 ! 3 0 1 ! 0 1 0 ! 0 0 0
1 0 4 ! 4 2 3 ! 1 0 3 ! 0 0 2 ! 0 1 1 ! 0 3 0
The total number of druids of each color is:
15 23 11 6 5 8
Switching axes, the color composition of each group is:
WBGYRK WBGYRK WBGYRK
033000 132012 020013
422300 420010 120100
141000 020013 433210
I've listed the colors in the order they appear on the game board. I suspect that the board itself is not relevant to the puzzle except perhaps for the color/number association.
-LB

Hmm indeed. Well, the top right group and the bottom center group both consist of two blue, one red, and three black druids. I'm assuming that the arrangement of druids within a group is not meaningful since it looks pretty haphazard to me.
-LB

Mike Selinker is a crossword puzzle constructor among his many talents. There's an unwritten rule in crosswords that the answer to a clue doesn't appear in the clue. So clue answer #2 can't be "stone".

Similarly, the clue and answer have to be the same part of speech. So clue answer #7 has to be an adjective (it's "Like a spirit", not valley-girl-speak "Like, a spirit").

The references to Stonehenge in clues 13 and 16 are misdirection. A map should help you solve #21.

Clues like #14 and #17 with more than one possible answer require that you figure out the letters for some of the arabic-numbered stones in order to determine which answer is correct.

To illustrate the general idea, the answer to clue #1 is "pagan". Stones 10, 12, 17, and 21 have the letters G, N, A, and P respectively, so the word "pagan" contributes its remaining letter (A) to the intermediate answer at stone II.

The way to figure out the letters on the (arabic) numbered stones (e.g. 10, 12, 17, 21) is to compare the four clue answers corresponding to a given stone (e.g. stone 10 appears in clues 1, 18, 22, and 26) and see what letters they all have in common.

That works in reverse too. Since I've told you that stone 10 is G, you now know that G appears somewhere in each of the clue answers 1, 18, 22, and 26. The placement of the G does not correspond to the placement of the 10. For example, 10 is the first number listed for clue #1, but G is not the first letter of clue answer #1 (which I've already told you is "pagan").

You can exclude letters that you've already assigned to one of the stones. For example, if you knew that stone 10 was G and you were trying to figure out 12, you could rule out G as a possibility for stone 12 in clue #1, so 12 would have to be P, A, or N. Then you would look at clues 7, 14, and 20 to try to rule out two of the three remaining letters.

However, if you knew that stone 17 was A, you couldn't use that to rule out A for stone 12 in clue #1 because "pagan" has two A's, and stone 17 only rules out one of them.

Once you have all the letters for a roman numeral stone answer, you'll have to rearrange them to get that answer. III was the answer that I got first. It's almost enough to solve the puzzle by itself, but the other intermediate answers help you confirm or refute your interpretation of III.

Good night and good luck,
-LB

It seems to me that an important piece of information is missing from this puzzle. I wouldn't have known what sort of final answer I was looking for if I hadn't guessed that it might be related to one of the other puzzles. I had to look up several of the clue answers using Google™; that's not a complaint, just a confession of my own ignorance.
-LB

OK, my new hypothesis is that the arabic-numeral stones correspond to a single letter, but the roman-numeral stones do not. We have to figure out which letter each arabic-numeral stone represents, then combine the leftover letters from each clue corresponding to a given roman-numeral stone to form a word. Conceivably the roman-numeral letters might be in order already, but perhaps that would be too easy.
-LB

I note that the arabic numerals to the right of each clue are listed in ascending order. I infer that we have to rearrange the letters of each clue answer to get them to match up with the arabic and roman numerals. Am I correct in thinking that each stone corresponds to a single letter?
-LB

There aren't any others.

The most wonderful thing about Tiggers is he's the only one.

Exhibit A: ... is that Tiggers are wonderful things.

Exhibit B: Hobbes

-LB

Nicolas Logue wrote:

I wish he'd name an NPC after me!!!

>)

So much for the high road...

Finally Dungeon #141 arrived at my FLGS (3 weeks late) and here I find that Mr. Logue has allowed his Pett-y rivalries to spill over into his adventure writing. "Gregor Vane" is merely "snide", whereas "Rikard Prett" has a "remarkable talent for" "pathological lying" and "deludes himself into believing his own performances". Mr. Pett could easily have named "Avner Meravanchi" something like "Nico Logavanchi", but he took the high road and I think his adventure is the better for it.
-LB

Mine is a caricature of Wil Wheaton on steroids (... and wearing a diaper?).

Well, his character's name was "Rugrat"... I mean "Rhugat".

I liked the 'take a vote' part. Subtle yet effective.

It was also intended as a reference to US election day, although my timing was a bit late.

I think Lurker was just assigning roles to the randomly placed druids in order to fuel a cleverly concealed clue about which direction to move.

That is what you were doing, right Lurk?

I didn't know whether the druids' placement was random or clever, so I thought I would assume the latter and try to come up with a reasonable interpretation.

It just occurred to me that the technique used to disguise the parts of the "question" is very appropriate because it has something in common with the answer.
-LB

I noticed that 5 of the figures face left and 2 face right (although that probably should be counted as 4 figures facing clockwise and 3 counterclockwise). If you're confused about which way to go, you could take a vote...
-LB

turned into Batman™ guano. Mixed with sulfur,

I figured out the question easily enough, but finding the answer took a lot of Google searches. Perhaps it's one of those Things I Should Have Learned in School, Had I Been Paying Attention™.
-LB

Nice puzzle guys, but holy cow, how would people have known where to start without the first clue?

I solved it a while ago, before the first clue was posted. I didn't know where to start or which direction to go, but there were only so many possibilities. I wound up writing down most of them before I got to the answer (which, as a native (US) English speaker, I immediately recognized as being correct). In hindsight I realized you could make a case that one of the stones was a natural starting point, but I wouldn't have figured that out a priori.

I wonder if the shading of the T is a clue. If you look at the shadows the light source (Sun) must be to the right.

I don't believe the 3D artist even knew what the puzzle was, so don't bother looking for hints in the rendering. All you need to know is that certain locations light up in certain colors when moused over.

A source from deep within the Druidic Order...

I think I know who that is! But maybe I shouldn't say too much...

There is no article there Mike.

That's because the message board word wrapping broke the URL. Notice the space in "res=9A06E0DC1630F93 6A15750C0A96F958260".

Also, one of the pillars underneath the blue lintel is unusually close to the edge of the circle. The pillar's top is not in shadow, unlike the other pillars near it.
-LB

There's a lot more information about Stonehenge on Wikipedia.
-LB

Blue
Indigo
I've read that what Newton called "blue" was actually closer to cyan and that what he called "indigo" was the color of indigo dye, which has been used in blue jeans.
-LB

http://titanic-games.com/equinox will have everything you need.

Now is not the time.

For the Dragonslayers abilities line: "steal one token from each ability card that is a dragon of strength-7 and lower" add the text (young or adult).

For the Fools abilities line: "Give one token to every other ability card number higher than 3" add the text (adult and old).

That should solve your problems I think.. unless there were a few I missed.

Jason Bulmahn
Managing Editor of Dragon

Those were the two mortal cards I referred to. I just realized last night that the phrase "this card" always refers to the card being resolved and never to the card mentioned in the previous sentence (i.e., "the ability card <number> cards away clockwise"), so that addresses some of my concerns about unique cards with unlisted strengths.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/ThreeAnte_rulebook.zip has a list of all 3DA cards and their strengths, so I guess I'm not revealing any secrets if I observe that all the unique cards (other than the Fool) have strengths higher than 3.

It sounds like you're trying to use a normal deck of cards instead of a 3-Dragon Ante deck. The 3DA deck has dragon cards with strengths up to 13. The strength is marked in the corners of each card. Strength 3 dragons are present in the black, bronze, copper, red, silver, and white suits. There's also a strength 3 mortal (The Fool).

Whoops. I completely missed the sidebar about using normal decks of cards. It looks like with normal cards you only get an age category instead of a strength rating. In most cases a threshold strength rating in the rules is followed by an age category in parentheses so I guess you need to use that instead. Or you could flip a coin, heads = high strength (for the age category), tails = low strength.

Of course none of this helps with mortal cards or the unique dragons, since their strengths and equivalent age categories are not listed in the article. There are two mortal cards that list strength thresholds without specifying an equivalent age category, so I don't know how you would resolve them if you're playing with regular cards.

In the Nurture section, each dragon is given a strength rating ranging from 1 to 11. Since there is no 11 in the deck, how are they calculating each dragon's strength rating? In the example layout (which I replicated, by the way), the player has a "strength-3 silver dragon". Threes are not silver dragons, nor could I find any way to correlate the number to the cards and counters in front of me. I followed the example to the letter. How are they coming up with the exact numbers involved? How do I get a strength 10-12 (Old) red dragon? I understand how to get the age category from the suite of the card, but how do you get the actual strength rating? Does it matter?

It sounds like you're trying to use a normal deck of cards instead of a 3-Dragon Ante deck. The 3DA deck has dragon cards with strengths up to 13. The strength is marked in the corners of each card. Strength 3 dragons are present in the black, bronze, copper, red, silver, and white suits. There's also a strength 3 mortal (The Fool).

Question: if the Druid is an ability card and it has the fewest tokens when it resolves, do I give tokens to the card with the next fewest tokens or do I do nothing and move on to the next ability card (if any)?