Well! Quite a surprise this challenge turned out to be, what with the
unexpected flurry of screencaps from my PMs. Truly I have tasted the storm of your honesty this day. And it paid off pretty handsomely for the team! As handsomely as it could have, though? Let's review the results:
- Ninety's Pouch A contained 2 EP. Pouch AA contained 0 EP. I was hoping to trick the Pouch A holder into swapping since they'd probably assume the other pouch must contain more, but Ninety was not fooled. He quite rightly kept Pouch A, for a total of 2 EP so far.
- Elliot's Pouch B contained 3 EP. Pouch BB contained 7 EP. He kept Pouch B. Which, um, is a little surprising given Ninety had posted his screencap. Let's... Let's talk about that. Anyway, that makes 5 EP so far.
- Belle's Pouch C contained 4 EP. Pouch CC contained............. 4 EP. Thanks to Elliot's screencap, she kept her pouch, not that it made any difference. Sucker. 9 EP so far.
- Biscuit's Pouch D contained 5 EP. Pouch DD contained 9 EP. Taking a cue from Belle's screencap, he made the swap, bringing the total up to 18 EP so far.
- Bulbs' Pouch E contained 6 EP. Pouch EE contained 5 EP. By failing to post here, he reverted to the default action of holding onto his pouch -- a stroke of luck, as it turns out, not that that extra 1 EP was really gonna change anyone's lives. 24 EP so far.
- Sem's Pouch F contained 7 EP. Pouch FF contained 3 EP. Like the best of chumps, he went for it anyway, swapping his pouch and costing the team 4 EP. 27 EP so far.
- Testbug's Pouch G contained 8 EP. Pouch GG contained 12 EP. Again, I was trying to fake the Pouch G player out by leading them to think their secondary pouch must be lower in value, but Sem's screencap put the lie to that notion, and Testbug hastily added an extra 12 EP to the pot.
All told: a
pretty good 39 EP. "What oh come on Pohatu," I hear you groan already, "give us a break already that is a huge payout for one game and we did very well." I'm afraid the results may surprise you. Let's do the math.
The combined value of all the primary pouches was
35 EP (2+3+4+5+6+7+8). The combined value of all the secondary pouches was
40 EP (0+7+4+9+5+3+12). The minimum possible payout of this challenge, if everyone had gone with their worse pouch, was
28 EP (0+3+4+5+5+3+8). The maximum possible payout was
47 EP (2+7+4+9+6+7+12).
So at the end of the day, you only scraped together
4 EP more than you'd started with, and you actually ended up with
less than if everyone had just joined hands, closed their eyes, and taken the leap of faith by swapping all the pouches. All that honesty and you guys still fell
8 EP short of perfection, and we can't even blame the absent
Bulbs since his default move of holding the pouch was the right one!
Actually, that's not quite true. We do have
some legitimate grounds for blaming
Bulbs, and that concerns not his own play but
Sem's. By failing to provide a screencap of his PM in this topic,
Bulbs may have ensured
Sem's downfall, since the latter had no apparent evidence on which to make his decision wisely. It came down to a coin toss which
Sem lost, dropping
4 EP out of the takings. Shame on
Bulbs and condolences to
Sem... unless, of course, there was an exchange here we didn't see. Perhaps
Bulbs PMed
Sem instead and told him the truth about his pouch contents? Then the blame would lie with
Sem for deliberately bucking that advice and picking the less valuable pouch... On the other hand, maybe
Bulbs PMed him but
lied, and
Sem made the mistake of trusting him? Well,
someone looks suspicious here. Oh, hell, I bet they're both guilty. I don't like the look of either of 'em.
And speaking of guilty faces, what on earth was
Elliot thinking? Here
Ninety goes ahead and posts a screencap detailing exactly what
Elliot's pouch contents are, making it crystal-clear that the correct move for
Elliot would be to swap pouches... and what does our man do? He keeps the pouch. Another
4 EP oot the windie. That's a strange move, folks. Just about the only good-faith interpretation I can come up with is that
Elliot might have decided he didn't trust
Ninety's word
or picture, assumed he'd shopped the screencap to make Pouch BB look more attractive, and rejected the bait, only to find out that
Ninety had acted in dead earnest. Well, it's possible. But that sounds like a bit of a stretch to me, don't you think? Occam's razor suggests that
Elliot was really just going for the open sabotage on this one. Either he's a contestant who's trying to get your attention, or he's a Mole who decided the time had come to cast subtlety to the rocks.
Any other observations? Well... shit. I guess I can't close this without coming back to those screencaps, huh? Man! What conclusions are we ever to draw from those. I think it is very safe to say that because
Ninety,
Elliot,
Sem and
Belle were able to share screencaps of the PMs I'd sent them, they are clearly innocent contestants and you need not worry that any of them might prove to be the Mole. Meanwhile,
Biscuit,
Bulbs and
Testbug, who conspicuously failed to share such screencaps, now represent our shortlist. It is plain to see that one of them is the Mole. How lucky the other two are, the ones who know themselves to be innocent contestants! Each of them has only two players left they need to focus on!
Boy, I cannot
wait to see what the next round of quiz results looks like!!!!!!!!
But alas and alackaday. One more mission remains in Episode Four before that exciting time arrives, and it's going to be a bit of a doozy in terms of the complexity of its setup. I'd really like to get it up before Thursday, my travel day, but please bear with me if I don't find time to.
In the meanwhile, that's
39 EP to the team and the remaining eight -- out of the
47 possible -- to the Mole.
THE TEAM POT: 192 EP
THE MOLE'S POCKET: 145 EP