TIG LXIX: Meeting at the House of Usher

[Nerwen]

The Saucepan Man
...Who is, appropriately, one noisy player. This took ages!

#11.
Banter, joke-suspecting everyone who has posted so far. Comments on overall set-up. This is where the "Friendly Wolf" thing first appears. He finishes by saying that it would be best to kill the Bear, but that this won't be easy since they leave few tracks.

#15.
[Replying to Greenie's question on how hard the Bear will be to catch]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

That depends how good the Bear is. No pressure, by the way, Bear.

[Replying to my comment that last time he jokingly accused everyone, he was a wolf.]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

True. But, as you know, lightning never strikes in the same place twice. Except in horror stories, of course … er ... oh …

An odd response. May just be a joke, but could also be a wolf trying to signal to the cobbler (or even vice versa). This was still in the jokey early part of the Day, however, so I wouldn't want to read too much into it. He's doing a lot of winking, though...

#20.

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

I assume that the friendly Wolf counts in the Wolves’ numbers for the purposes of determining victory, just as the Cobbler counts for the Innocents. But, he is, of course, playing for us, so it would be somewhat ungracious to kill him, if we can possibly avoid it.

I should guess that this is the comment that did most to bring him under suspicion later, as it looks very much as though he is hinting that he is the "Friendly Wolf". Could also be trying to suggest that the "Friendly Wolf" leave clues to stop us lynching him.

Repeats that killing the Bear would be good, but difficult to accomplish.

Speculates on "the dynamic between the Wolves and the Bear". Concludes that "the Innocents and the Wolves have a mutual interest in finding and killing the Bear". Asks if there is "any way that we might use these dynamics to our advantage?"

#21. [Replying to Inzil.]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

I rather got the impression that Nerwen was being flippant. In which case, your readiness to seize upon this as suspicious is, in itself, somewhat suspicious.

Which I agreed with.

#25. Relying to Morsul, who said that we would still need to kill the "Friendly Wolf".

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

But if the friendly Wolf is the last remaining Wolf, I hardly think that he is going to suddenly turn on the remaining innocents ...

#29.
Says that my comment about hoping we will not lynch the "Friendly Wolf" too soon is "worth bearing in mind".

These last two are, again, rather odd comments. I wondered at the time if he could be the "Friendly Wolf"... so again it raises the possibility that he was deliberately posing as a non-existent role. That would, though highly suspicious, also be extremely foolhardy for a wolf at that stage. At this stage I'd guess his role to be either the cobbler, or else an innocent who perhaps thought I was the FW.

#35.Accepts Inzil's demolition of the "Friendly Wolf" theory; says he misinterpreted the narration. Points out that Mira has made a mistake and given the wrong number of ordos. Comments that at least we now have an even greater chance of lynching a baddie.

#43. Is glad the mistake is cleared up; thinks we should perhaps have kept the "Friendly Wolf" idea going longer, to confuse the Wolves; doesn't like the way Roa suspects him for his mistake.

#47. Is astonished that anyone could think the "Friendly Wolf" idea was a ruse by a baddie, since that interpretation of the narrative would not occur to someone (i.e. a wolf) who knew its true meaning, and since the "ruse" would depend on most of the village also being taken in. Thinks Roa's apparent mistake about the number of wolves may have been an actual trick. Roa's quickness to jump on people makes him uneasy.

–Which is all quite reasonable.

#49. Agrees with Roa that we need to vote for someone, but is reserving judgement for now.

#99. Suspects Roa for aggression, but admits that she is always like that. Is still reserving judgement. Reiterates (replying to Nogrod, who find him suspicious) that the "Friendly Wolf" ruse would be a bad one. Defends Greenie against Nogrod's charge that her preoccupation with the Bear is itself bearish– points out that Bears are "a rare feature of WW games" so it's not surprising people are concerned about them. Says Nogrod seems "uncharacteristically aggressive", but is perhaps "too in your face" to be a wolf.

A cobbler's unwillingness to go after anyone too strongly, in case that person is a wolf? Perhaps.

Then he says this:

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

I'm glad to see that Boro, at least, caught my drift concerning the dynamics between the Bear and the Wolves. I pretty much agree with all that he says. It's not a case of trying to get one or t'other of them on our side or relying on them to side with us, but rather pointing out, so that they are clear, what it is their best interests to do.

Now he– SPM– is preoccupied with the Bear. Why? It's not unreasonable, as the bear (was!) is indeed a menace, and also not one anyone's used to. However, it is in the interests of both wolves and cobbler to locate the Bear, as well as the village. It's also in their interest to keep us thinking about the Bear instead of them. (Yeah, I did mean that part of my Day One post.)

#104. Further defends himself against Roa.

#105. Replying to Morsul, who voted him.

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

Congratulations. You have just appeared between my crosshairs.

Morsul's reason for voting him was indeed quite weird– because of the "Friendly Wolf" thing, which he also believed, and also because of what seems to be a severe case of the "Gambler's Fallacy".

#110. Defends himself against Roa, accusing her of misrepresenting his case against her. Denies he is over-defensive about the "Friendly Wolf" affair, since it has in fact brought him under suspicion.

#114. Says he needs to vote soon.

Comments that Hakon is "wrong-headed" and "unhelpful" but should not be voted for that. Is somewhat uneasy about Pitch– "He just seems to be sitting on the sidelines appearing reasonable but stirring the pot every now and then", and about Nogrod due to his aggression.

Says he is most worried about Morsul, because of the dodgy reasoning behind his vote.

#118.[Replying to Roa, who claims everyone is assuming the Bear will help the village]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

I most certainly am not. I agree that we cannot rely on the Bear do do anything vis-a-vis the Wolves. Ditto the Wolves vis-a-vis the Bear. However, I see no harm in pointing out, for the Bear's benefit, that it is in his interests to go after the Wolves.

Dislikes Pitch's vote for Boro, as his case "looks to be the flimsiest of the flim to me."

#120. Very sharp response to Nogrod's comment that he has been praising Boro for stating the obvious:

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

Have you been neglecting to take your exaggeration medication again, Noggie? First Greenie and now me. Since when does a passing mention in a single post constitute praising someone "so many times"?

Says he will probably vote for Morsul.

#123.And does. Not, I think, a particularly suspicious vote.

Comments. Probably not a wolf, as I think the FW business looked like a genuine mistake. May be the cobbler. Some of his posts look like attempts to signal to other players, and his defence of Boro could be that of a cobbler who had mistaken Bearishness for wolfishness.

Or not. An innocent might try to sound out other players too.

Overall, I'd say the evidence is inconclusive. If evil, he is more likely cobbler than wolf.

EDIT:X'd with a host; added comment on vote.

[Nerwen]

Loslote

#126. Checks in.

#129. Says Morsul looks most suspicious. "His logic has left me confused while I try to figure out what he could possibly mean, and then trying to figure out where he got it."

At this point Morsul already had a vote, so this looks a little opportunistic.

Dislikes Hakon's meta-game reasoning. Doesn't think SPM is a were of any kind, as he seems "genuine". Has no read on Roa and will look at her. (Didn't.)

#132. Asks what Morsul meant by "time limit".


#142. Votes Morsul, "because he's the most suspicious one so far."

#143. [Replying to Morsul's defence of his vote for SPM]

Originally Posted by Loslote

Okay, that's suspicious. You didn't have time to do your own analysis? Then vote who seems the most suspicious to you, but don't vote because other people give good points against them! This may be a perfectly reasonable vote, and you could even be right (although I don't think so) but that reasoning just made me even more sure of my vote.

#149. Defends SPM against Morsul's charges.

#153.[Replying to Morsul, who complained that she wanted him to put his "entire life on hold" in order to do analyses]

Originally Posted by Loslote

I didn't say that. I said you should have looked at the person you were voting for, not just what other people said about him.

*shrugs* As I said, the vote is perhaps a little opportunistic. The thing is, though, that Morsul actually had behaved quite suspiciously, so that voting him is not in itself a sign of guilt... while, at the same time, it's likely enough that the wolves took advantage of the situation. (Ditto with Hakon.)

She really goes out of her way to defend SPM. This may be simply due to exasperation with Morsul. However, it may also point to a connection.

[The Saucepan Man]

Thoughts on the votes:

Four Wolves. If I was them, I would try to spread the votes, particularly given that it looked from a reasonably early stage in the voting (roughly the time of Hakon’s vote) like Morsul would most likely be lynched.

Morsul voters – If I am right about spreading the votes, I would guess that there is no more than one Wolf here, if that. Two Morsul voters are dead, leaving me, Loslote and Fea. Fea’s vote was unreasoned, although Morsul was one of the few that she expressed suspicion of earlier in the Day. Also, I am doubtful whether a Wolf would want to be ‘sealing the deal’, as it were, on the lynching of an innocent Morsul. To my mind, therefore, if there was a Wolf in the Morsul bandwagon, it more likely to have been Loslote. As I think has already be noted, her vote does look to have been rather opportunistic. That said, it is quite possible that the Wolves avoided this bandwagon altogether.

Hakon voters – Lari and sally – It’s unlikely that they are both Wolves, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of them is. Hakon did rather give people an excuse to vote for him with all his Meta-reasoning stuff, and I wouldn’t put it past a Wolf to take advantage of this. A Wolf wouldn’t necessarily want to get caught in the lynching of the Seer, but it seems unlikely that the Wolves spotted him, or he would have had the pleasure of two visits last Night.

Greenie for Nogrod – Given his accusation of her, based on what I thought to be rather weak evidence, I can see why she might vote for him. That said, she does not appear to have looked very closely at many others and she may have used this thing about her frequently voting for him as cover to place an ‘easy’ vote.

Pitchwife for Boro – Given what we know now, it looks good. However, as I pointed out yesterDay, it was based on very little evidence indeed and rather came out of nowhere. Perhaps a PitchWolf had spotted the Bear and was signalling to his packmates. Not at all sure about this one.

Roa for me – Not a surprise, given our interaction yesterDay. And, as mentioned previously, this doesn’t look much like a Wolfish vote to me.

Nogrod for McCaber – Now, I know that Nogrod dislikes the quiet types. But this does rather give him an excuse to place what looks to me to be an incredibly safe vote. There was little prospect of McCaber being lynched so he was the ideal candidate for a Wolf who had to vote relatively early and didn’t want to be caught in a bandwagon. And the reasoning was poor – ‘buddying up’, based only on McCaber’s comment that Nogrod was making sense. You really need to take those anti-exagerration pills, Noggie.

Inzil for Pitchwife – Again, a rather safe vote, given that there was little prospect of Pitch being lynched at the time that it was placed. But the reasoning was sound (for a Day 1 vote). Pitch’s vote for Boro did look strange at the time.

Brinn for Loslote- I can’t fault the reasoning. Loslote’s vote did look opportunistic. But, once again, relatively safe and could even be a Wolf-on-Wolf. The prospect of Loslote being lynched was minimal and so it would have been a good opportunity for a Wolfish Brinn to vote for a Wolfish Loslote.

Non-voters – Wilwa and McCaber explained, I think, that they might not have the opportunity to vote. I am not sure that Nerwen has explained her non-vote. I don’t like non-voters, because I find people’s votes to be some of the most useful items of evidence that we have. That said, it would be quite dangerous for a Wolf deliberately not to vote on Day 1, given that a second consecutive non-vote will, I think, trigger elimination by modfire.

In summary, to my mind the most Wolfish votes are those of Loslote, Nogrod and one of the Hakon votes. Possible Wolfish votes – Fea, Inzil and Brinn. Not sure about Greenie, Pitch and the non-voters, and Roa’s vote looks to me the least Wolfish.

Note – this is based purely on votes.

[Brinniel]

We keep shooting Hakon down, but in the last three games he has now hunted a wolf, protected the seer, and dreamt a werebear. He must be doing something right. I don't think we can really put it against him if he dreamt Boro for meta-reasons. The roles here may be completely random, but on Night 1 there is absolutely nothing within the game to go off of since no one's posted yet. So the only thing a seer can do is guess or choose based off experiences from past games. His ultimate mistake was bringing that meta-reasoning into Day One, which he shouldn't have...but hopefully he's learned his lesson. I was rather surprised to discover Hakon was the seer, though seeing his posts it does add up. The reasons why he was killed seem fairly obvious now knowing who the werebear was. Hakon would've been fairly lynchable toDay, but that would've meant him revealing which would expose Boro if he had indeed dreamt of him.

From yesterDay's voting, I still suspect Loslote for being opportunistic and am still wary of Nogrod since his vote seemed to come out of thin air. I'm also not happy with Lari and Sally's votes because while Hakon was annoying everyone, I don't think it's a valid reason to vote him. Because irritating and not following the rules does not necessarily equal wolf. And anyway, if he continued to pull this crap if he were still alive, he would've been modfired.

Of course, there's much more to look at than just the voting but I'm at work now and don't really have time to thoroughly look at everyone, so it'll have to wait for later. Don't expect a whole lot from me toDay since it's another long day and I'm still lacking sleep, but I'll do my best. ToMorrow will be much better since it'll be the weekend (yay).

[Roa_Aoife]

I'm here and reading. I'll probably be off and on since I have a mammoth of a paper to write, and I think I'm getting sick, but I'll do my best to be around as much as possible. I probably won't have time for analysis until later though.

[Inziladun]

Some very brief thoughts:

If a Seer wants to use meta-reasoning to aid in choosing whom to dream of, that's fine. Otherwise, it's not an advisable tactic, especially when one tries to base votes solely on it.

I don't like Loslote's vote on Morsul. Highly band-waggonish. Same with Fea, though as I think SPM said, it would have been pretty brash of a Feawolf to brag about 'sealing the deal'.

The Hakon voters ought to be heavily scrutinised as well. I think it highly likely there's at least one wolf there. Lari still looks a little worse to me than Sally.

Nog's vote for McCaber still looks odd. Yes, I know he doesn't like submarines, but I think there were better targets than McCaber. I look forward to hearing from Nog toDay.

Pitch's vote could well have been just for safety's sake. Other than his vote, I haven't seen much suspicious about him, but he's worth keeping in mind.

More as time allows.

[Roa_Aoife]

Responding as I go, so I may be repeating some others.

#179- Pitchwife: We can't know for sure that the wolves spotted Boro for the bear. We shouldn't fall into the trap of ruling out other causes of death.

#180- SPM: Having read through yesterDay with a cooler head, I am beginning to see Pitch's point. The ironic part is that I was trying to avoid getting stuck on that with Nogrod and ended up falling into it with you instead. I still think you were harsh to jump on me for an early, admittedly weak suspicion, given that's what everyone was doing at the time, though. You aren't off my radar- I'm just broadening my range of attention so I don't miss anyone else.

#182- SPM: Isn't not reading the rules properly what caused all the confusion on Day 1?

#184- Nerwen: SPM as the cobbler? It's possible, but as we saw last game, pretending to be the cobbler works for a wolf, and SPM saw that too. Still we aren't at a point yet where the cobbler is a huge concern, so cobbler spotting isn't going to help right now.

#186- SPM: I see your point about the possible wolf in the Hakon voters. I don't agree with your assessment of Loslote's vote, however. Loslote's vote, to me, looked the same as yours, and after voting, she continued to argue against Morsul. Morsul's vote almost changed my mind, and we know how amazing that is. It's not terribly surprising that someone who just arrived to find his vote highly suspicious. I would think that the people who voted after Morsul's defense, which to my mind was very reasonable, look more suspicious. And we know one baddie was involved there.

Also, I have always held to the belief that you should vote whoever you feel is that most suspicious, rather than limiting yourself to those who have a possibility of getting lynched. So I don't agree with you in that anyone who voted for someone you didn't have a high chance of getting lynched is suspicious necessarily. At least it would take more than that to convince me.

Of the Morsul voters, I think Fea looks the most suspicious. Why? Because if anything was an easy vote, it was that. And because no one would suspect a wolf of being so obvious, so she could certainly get away with it. I wouldn't put it past Fea at all to pull a move like that, and her vote was the least reasoned, aside from Boro's and Hakon's, and one of them was evil, while the other I've yet to see give a well-reasoned vote. We had a lot of material to go on yesterDay, but her reason for voting Morsul was because he made her do a probability lesson. And this vote came well after his defense.


Lastly, Inzil, you basically just gave us the cliff notes of SPM's #186.

Also, my slightly fevered brain tells me I should take a nap before I tackle the ethics surrounding the Hiroshima bombings. I'll be back later.