Game Night logs for May 2003

Ray, Steve, Prich and I started off late because we had to wait for Steve, but we had some time to spare, so it was no big deal. When Steve walked in we told he we needed a few more minutes, just to piss him off, it worked! After stealing a slice of pizza from Jen, we hit the road. We had everything except a phone book, we lucked out because the people running the rally had an extra and they said we could have it. Our first mistake was not remembering the clue, and anyone who has played "You Don't Know Jack", will know this is very important!

The first clue stopped us cold, it shouldn't have, in retrospect it was an easy clue, but someplace in the front of the van we lost a Mike & Ike. This was, in my opinion, our downfall. Ray, being the clue hog, opened the clue, it was zip-locks of candy. As Ray wrote the names on the sheet he threw the bags behind him into his briefcase (in true Ray style). I retrieved them and started to look a little closer. I quickly discovered that the Mike & Ikes had letters on them, it looked like they spelled "MIKE AND IKE" but I noticed they had too many letters so I told Prich to write them down. I handed the bag ,this is what Prich wrote the letters, on to Ray, Ray, being Ray, only half listens to anything but himself, so he did not hear any of the conversation about the letters, and says "was this writing ours or was it on the bag", I told him it was Prich writing the letters from the Mike & Ike's, he threw the bag back in the briefcase. Steve and Ray discovered the letters on the Mike & Ikes a while later, gee, wish I would have noticed that! After they played with the candy getting the letters off them AGAIN someone lost, at least, the Y, this was crucial to the clue. It turns out we had TAKEAWAYMIKEAND, if you do this to "MIKE AND IKE", you get Ike, look up Ike in the yellow pages and we found Ikes Family Dinning (or something like that). We would have never found this out if another car had not came over and talked about the clue. We figured we may have been OK, at this point, we knew we had others behind us. Little did we know, the car that helped us, only got to clue #2.

Off to Clue #2, after an hour working on Clue #1, this is only a four hour rally, you do the math! It took us a lot less time to finish #2-5 but it was about 10PM at this point and the rules said if we didn't finish by 10:45 to open the panic envelope. Clue #6 stopped us dead in our tracks. If we had remembered that this rally was Hail to the Chief, we may have gotten it, but we got sidetracked. We learned latter that it's better to open the last clue and work it out before resorting to the panic clue (-5 points). Live and learn! The Rally ended at a Firehouse themed restaurant/bar, the food was ok, but defeat was still on our taste buds! Sorry if I am a bit bitter about the loss, I do blame Ray for not listening on clue 1 but that still would not have gotten us that much closer to finishing. We learned a lot on this rally, I hope it helps us out next week on the Emanon Rally!

Ray and Jen had a wedding this weekend, Jen's sister was getting married. We had a small impromptu game night at my house.

First up, Settlers again. The game dragged out a bit but we had a good time. Hey, anything to get my brother away from his computer for a few hours! This is was a close game, everyone was worried about me but Prich and John had all the resources, so they had an easy win going, Prich had the resource machine going but John edged him out. Prich and I ended the game with 9 points but Prich would have won if John didn't, I might have if Prich didn't if I had at least one roll before my turn.

We had not played Attila for a while so we game it a try. Nice smooth game, but I kicked ass!

We needed a no brainier for a closer, so it was Candyland for pirates! I got everything on the board early but failed to get many on the boat, Ashley got stuck with two piece by themselves and one card, this is a lock, you can't win.

The Emanon ("noname" backwards) rally was this past Saturday, and we had a blast. For those of you not familiar with road rallies, it is a race around town to various locations. Each car has a set of envelopes corresponding to each stop. For each clue, there is a question about the location such as "how many awnings are there?". The answer tells you which side of the envelope to open. Solve the clue (1pt), travel to the location, answer the questions about the location, and open the next envelope correctly (1pt) = 2 points. There are usually about 10 stops ending at a restaurant. They typically last 4 hours (7pm - 11pm is standard). Sometimes, the clues have a partial phone number in the corner so you can tell if you get the clue right (as the phone number for the business will match the supplied digits i.e. 9xx-x88x). It costs $8-$10 to enter per person and the first prize is about $350.

Our team is comprised of Ed, Steve and myself with a rotating 4th person. Last time it was "alias Johnny", this time our special guest star was Jeffy.

There is a driver (me), a navigator (Steve), a clue cataloger and answer sheet owner (Ed), and a phone book/world almanac operator (Jeffy).

This time, we understood the theme was transportation. At 6:55 we stood in line and received our starting envelope. At 7pm, we ran to our cars and opened them...

The first clue took us about 10 minutes to solve, which put us firmly in the middle of the pack. MANY of the clues are basic letter substitutions disguised as other things. One is often a word search with the remaining letters spelling a destination. One, for some unknown reason, is always a bingo clue where after calling out all the combinations, your left with something of use. This rally was no exception. The bingo clues are lame.

We blew clue two. We sat for 20 minutes trying to figure out which letters to unscramble. Even though we had the right letters, we kept coming up with an answer different than the correct one. The answer was "Bumpers Bar", but we ended up at UPS. That cost us 2 points (one for not solving the clue, one for not going to the location). Clue 8 tripped us up because the clue maker picked a location that must be spotted on a local map. We did not have the same map, and thus could not find "Ford Athletic Field" in Livonia. We lost a third point there. (we got the point for solving it). So, we missed 3 points and finished at about 10:30pm.

The winners all came in within 10 minutes of each other around 9pm. They each had all the points (no mistakes). Steve was incredulous because that pace was 10 minutes a clue including travel time! There was much grousing about this, but the clues are getting more cliché' each time we go on a rally. Despite our collapse on clue two, overall the clues were too easy. (Still, the envelopes were not stamped or special in anyway, and there have been many stories of teams traveling with their own blank envelopes to forge replacements.)

We are kicking ourselves for not having the correct map and not having some anagram software for the pocket pc!! We will not repeat those mistakes. Still, we finished FAR better than we did last time and Steve made sure we bailed out when we needed to when stuck. Ed has some complaints about my driving while he is trying to write, but that can't be helped. It is amazing how fast the 4 hours go by. Jeff saves us a couple of minutes by dividing up substitutions by row and by properly identifying the solutions to the "bingo clue.

Apparently the rally season is spring and fall, with this being the last of the spring rallies. So, we anxiously await the fall season. An interesting note is the "Nor West rally" that has not run in two years. You see, if you win a rally, you have to throw it next. The people reneged and thus the rally went dead. We offered to revive it.

If you are interested in participating, we rotate seat #4. Plus, you could always enter your own car and we can play against each other!

Well, as we didn't have a game night on Saturday, we thought we would try Mystery of the Abbey again. This is what Clue should have been, Don is coming around to liking the game. I think everyone likes this one so far.

Mystery of the Abbey Winner John P. 4 - Ed 2 - Ashley 0 - Don W. 0 - John M. 0
Mystery of the Abbey Winner John M. 6 - John P. 1 - Ed 0 - Ashley -2 - Don W. -4

Edel Stein & Reich Winner Ed 58 - Don B. 53 - John P. 49 - Don W. 45 - Ray 33

Ashley	Don W.	Ed
John M.	John P.

Ashley	Don B.	Don W.
Ed	John M.	John P.
Mike M.	Ray

Ashley	Don W.	Ed
John M.	John P.

Ashley	Don B.	Don W.
Ed	John P.	Ray