Verbose Mafia 2 - Post or Perish (Game Over)

[the silent speaker]

The silent speaker is sitting in a quiet corner, sippping a schnapps. He's been there the whole time; you just haven't seen him. At Fiasco's comment to CES he arches an eyebrow.

If you're going to bite your Netherlands at him, might I suggest you two head for the side rooms first?

Murmured quietly:

Note to self: don't let Fritzler near any pointy objects.

He raises his glass and his voice at the toast.

Cheers to the happy couple. Good to know

someone

is thinking of better things than how soon the guests can be massacred.

[the silent speaker]

Let the games begin, the silent speaker thinks.

If you can't squeeze us one way now that you're married, you'll squeeze us another, eh, Pooky? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with bidding systems much more complicated than five-card majors, but I've a deck I thought might come in useful.

Cam! Come join us -- some other partygoers and I were just getting some card games together.

[the silent speaker]

The first point coming to mind is that even if everyone who wants us dead uses their nominations to the hilt and the rest of us use only one, the only way for the nominations by our foes to outnumber the nominations by our friends is for there to be five people collaborating on wanting us all destroyed. I think panic on that account is rather less than warranted, although obviously we don't want to hand complete control to the bad guys. It looks to me like as long as the top three nominees include no more than one from any given person, we stand a reasonable chance of being all right on that score, particularly if we can engineer a tie for third. Limiting

successful

nominations by any one person will serve us better over the long run, I think, than maximizing the number of nominations all told.

My first instinct is that both Ms. Chen's Biblethumping and Mr. Fritzler's severe case of plaster are role-induced and not cause for nomination. Although the whole bit with the drawing arcane symbols on people's backs sounds a little like some kind of demonic invocation; I've never been one to pay much attention to supposed human-demon interactions, but it strikes me the people bent on destruction just might be.

I have a question for Pooky. You said, and I quote:

I think it's no surprise that we have 3 different nominations to make just as there will be 3 people going to the lynching block for the second phase of the day.

This is all but tautological, isn't it? By definition the people going to the lynching block are the nominees, so the numbers have to be the same. What are you driving at with this?

Also, later you said that if we planned to nominate everyone, we might as well just nominate the one person we plan to vote for later. That's all well and good if we only plan to vote for

one

person, but I should think most of us haven't come to any kind of firm decision as yet!

Turbovolver, your assumption that Mr. Lee and Mr. Burnfire are suspicious for grasping at straws on which to base an accusation and responding to an accusation that

you

decided was built on straw, respectively, seeems rather queer to me as well.

Mathcam, if Messrs. Fritzler and Burnfire are liable to get themselves killed anyway, why should we interfere to hasten the process? Our time would be better served working around them, I'd think.

The last thing I want to point out is that DrippingGoofball appears to have co-opted a line of petroleumjelly's as her own.

Most

curious. I'm not quite sure what to make of this -- is petroleumjelly more suspicious for feeding lines or is DrippingGoofball more suspicious for slipping up and allowing lines to be fed? -- so for the nonce I will nominate them both. I may nominate a third person later from among those I questioned above, but for now two nominations will do.

Nominate: DrippingGoofball, petroleumjelly

[the silent speaker]

To answer people's poionts on me sequentially:
Turbovolver, what I thought was strange was that you found Mikeburnfire suspect for answering the charges made against him; it was your opinion that those charges were too obviously meritless to warrant reaction, but it needn't have been his. Particularly as, as others have noticed before me, LoudmouthLee's example was being followed.

SpamWise, when I said the numbers must balance, I meant the number of nominees and the number of people on the lynch block. It seemed to me that Pooky was noting the coincidence of there being three nominees and three people among whom we decide the lynch, so I asked him to clarify why this isn't just a tautology. (Typing this out now I realize he may have meant three nominees

per person

matching three lynch prospects later.)

VitaminR, I can't agree that nominations after the first few don't count; the first few are what make a person eligible to be the nominations leader if nominations are few, but it is the subsequent nominations that actually

make

him the leader.

Finally, Turbovolver, my "overelaborate" plan amounted to little more than a suggested strategy (limit the number of leading nominees with any one person on their bandwagon, rather than limiting the number of nominations all told), with no mention at all of specific tactics. I fail to see just how that

can

be overelaborate. By way of example, and using the most recent count Mr. Grey has so kindly given us:

The leading nomination-getters are mikeburnfire, DrippingGoofball and Kelly Chen. It so happens that none of the people nominating mikeburnfire are nominating DrippingGoofball also, which I happen to think is excellent, and that three of the people nominating Kelly Chen are nominating one of the other two: Fritzler (mike), Cogito (DG) and Thok (DG). Thus out of sixteen potential nominators (given the size of the respective bandwagons) we have thirteen.

That

is the ratio we should be focused on maximizing.

[the silent speaker]

Turbovolver, you indicated mikeburnfire as suspicious for only defending himself. As you put it,

The fact that LoudmouthLee explains in such detail why such common behaviour is worthy of a vote makes me suspicious. As does MikeBurnFire trying and failing to explain such an insignificant event.

It was the insignificance of the event that made the 'trying and failing' noteworthy... but who determined that the event was significant? No one but you.

Of course you are entitled to your own suspicions. I have no problem with your characterization of LoudmouthLee as suspicious for harping on a point you felt insignificant. But

once it has been harped on

, especially by multiple people, what is mikeburnfire to do but address their apparent concerns?

So I fail to see where I dodged your complaints by playing word games. At any rate, now that you've said you no longer find mikburnfire especially suspicious, the whole discussion becomes moot. I never found you suspicious enough to warrant nomination (did you not notice that?) you've retracted the assertion I found questionable... if we're going to be playing word games, I suggest Boggle.

As for where you said, and I quote:

It sounded like you are saying we should get the people nominating one person with lots of nominations to nominate the other people with lots of nominations.

No, no, that's the exact opposite of what I'm saying. I want the people with lots of nominations to be nominated by as

wide

a scatter as possible, so as to prevent the killers among us from dictating to the town a small group of choices all of them harmful. And VitaminR, on those lines, the minimum requirement for getting on the lynch block in the first place is two, but only the three people with the most total nominations go. Any others with more than the minimum but fewer than the top three (strictly fewer, because ties go to the block jointly) have simply dodged a bullet, so to speak.

Pooky, I think I see what you're saying about people's self-preservation nominations muddying the waters, and it's a concern, but as long as we remain wise to it when studying the patterns, it oughtn't do us too much harm. I agree that such 'get off my back' nominations are suspect behavior; if you're on our side, have faith in your own ability to convince us that the other two people are better choices.

Petroleumjelly, far be it from me to refuse a lady. Let's go see what we can find.

[the silent speaker]

DrippingGoofball, we are only going to lynch one person regardless of how many nominations we have made. It therefore benefits us to have as many nominations as we can, so that our choice of

who

to lynch is as unrestricted as possible.

As far as I can determine, the following people have not nominated anyone tied for third or higher: Adele; Fiasco; PookyTheMagicalBear; Seol; Turbovolver; Werebear. My count is primarily based on the recent update Mr. Grey was good enough to provide, though, and may be out of date. What is it, gentlemen and ladies, that you six find so objectionable about putting the half dozen propounded lynchees on the block that you refuse to vote for *any* of them? (For reference purposes, Adele has nominated Fiasco, Seol, and Thok; Fiasco nominated Adele and Tamuz; Pooky nominated only Cogito, who -- to be quite fair -- might be in the gridlock tie. Seol nominated Mathcam and mathcam alone, so far as I see; Turbovolver has nominated LoudmouthLee, mathcam and myself; and Werebear appears not to have nominated anyone at all.) Why do you feel your own candidates are so much better?

DrippingGoofball, I'm curious why you felt such an imperative to declare yourself, too. One's personal information is just that, personal, and ought not be shared without very good reason. You are, after all, only one nominee out of six. I'm also troubled by an implication you seem to be making which is not supported by other evidence, but I'd prefer not to go into greater detail for fear that I'm right (and you

are

making it) but the other evidence is misleading. Your Hitler comments also fret me; why do you think such a thing must be?

Petrolumjelly, that's a very fetching starfish you have on. But doesn't it tickle?

[the silent speaker]

You no longer thrust Adele, Tamuz? That's probably just as well; I see Pooky coming and he looks anoyed.

Kelly Chen, if Jesus does so many good works, what's with the flaming afterlife?

But on a more serious note, I really do have a couple of questions for you. First: why

announce

that your vote is random? All that does is invite people to ignore it as meaningless. And second: if your vote was based on Turbovolver's being the last person to speak, it wasn't really random, now was it?

An interesting datum: Every nominee except mikeburnfire has two of the same nominations as someone else. DrippingGoofball and Kelly Chen have Fritzler and Thok; Fritzler and Turbovolver have Commodore Amazing and mathcam; Adele and Cogito have DrippingGoofball and SpamWise; and mathcam and Tamuz have Adele and VitaminR. Everyone nominated somebody now on the block except Werebear; I am interested in hearing from Werebear why he didn't.

DrippingGoofball, thank you for clarifying that. The other major thing I still would like clarified is this. Petroleumjelly, in asking you about your choice of nominees, said -- I believe her choice of words was, "My dear Goofball, you seem to imply that your nominations are somewhat random, and yet you manage to nominate only people who have been nominated." You explained that those three were already on your mind which was easier than looking up the players list, "hence my qualification of my nominations as being 'somewhat random'." But here's the thing --

you never so qualified them.

That was petroleumjelly's turn of phrase, not your own.

[the silent speaker]

Turbovolver, you wound me. Yes, technically the distinction between a random vote and an arbitrary one is semantic, but am I not allowed a pet peeve? And the notion of labeling a vote as random struck and contines to strike me as self-defeating. If you vote me, but quickly reassure me that you aren't voting out of suspicion, my name just happened to come up... well, why should I care? It appears from her reply that Ms. Chen disagrees, but this is hardly mere semantics.

Fluffing out my posts? I noted a potentially interesting correlation. I did not attempt to assert any consequences that necessarily follow; I simply observed a possible connection between various people. It is not a hundred percent guarantee for anyone, but those people seemed to have stronger correlation than most in their stated opinions. How do you expect to fid the killers among us, if not by who is thinking suspiciously alike whom?

This is made especially so by your dismissal of Fritzler's CD comments that "he just wanted to fill in space." So

his

filling in space is innocent, but mine makes me a killer? Thanks so much. And was my query of DrippingGoofball also fluff?

Meanwhile,

you

voted based on a quick agreement with someone else's reaqsoning in lieu of trying to make any of your own. You even said as much. But I'm sure

that

wasn't fluff in the least, no sir, that was enlightened participation.

And yes, my first instinct in situations like this one is to look for any pattern that stands out as more than just background noise, "cute" or otherwise. One never knows what patterns will turn out to not have been so cute after all.

Your attack on SpamWise for daring to question your omnicient judgment is also noted. And when you responded to Pooky that "we" are voting his new bride based on her choice of nominations, who is this

we

of which you speak? It doesn't include you -- you had already unvoted in Pooky's favor.

And

you seem to be playing quite the little shell game regarding which of the two you find more suspicious: first it's Adele, then it's Pooky, then you tell Pooky it's Adele (based on her

nomination pattern

-- but I suppose when you do it it's okay?) then you're using your vote on Pooky to drum up a bandwagon on Adele somehow...

As for this notion that I'm arguing with you based on race, I assure you it is piffle. All races are equal in my eyes and I have no idea what you hope to achieve by "playing the race card."

[the silent speaker]

Turbovolver has behaved bizarrely the entire voting phase, in my opinion. He has been hypocritical, irrational -- in marked contrast to his behavior in the nomination phase, during which he kept his cool throughout -- and extremely overagressive toward any who disagreed with him or he disagreed with. The whole four of spades race card issue didn't help matters, either. That said, I have a gut feeling he is who he claims to be: Malcolm X, protown. That's why I've tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and not voted him.

DrippingGoofball has been at times just as questionable, but I have the same kind of gut feeling. I don't know whether her easy concession of my point regarding "mostly random" was out of innocence or as a calculated maneuver to disarm my suspicions. I'll let her be for now.

I don't think any more people should claim whether or not they are on DrippingGoofball's list. A couple of people have already denied it, so the principle is established that it isn't exhaustive and that should suffice.

Mikeburnfire, you said, "We're undoubtedly doomed to kill an innocent today." As we have nine potential lynches, I wonder how you know this. Surely the odds of the nine most suspicious people all being protown are astronomical... unless you know who the conspirators are, and they steered the nominations.

Hypothesis: Suppose we take it as assumed that mike's comment was indeed a slipup, and he, but none of the other eight, are in fact killers. Given this, for the scum to have steered the lynches, the ones to be destroyed are mikeburnfire, obviously; the people who nominated three on the block but are not themselves nominees, to wit SpamWise and Commodore Amazing (but not LoudmouthLee, as he nominated mike himself) -- no other way can their six nominees be accounted for; and in order to include the nominations of mathcam and Tamuz, VitaminR (not seol, as he nominated Commodore Amazing).

Even if the above analysis is incorrect, which it may well be, mikeburnfire's potential "tell" is vote-worthy anyway; and if he

is

scum, the other three will jump in scumminess to my eyes. I have found my vote, methinks.

Vote: mikeburnfire.

[the silent speaker]

By "the other three" I meant "the other three people implicated by the Hypothesis" paragraph preceding. To wit, SpamWise, Commodore Amazing and VitaminR, who

if

my speculation on mikeburnfire should prove true would be indicated as his scum allies. Again, I have no proof as of yet that the Hypothesis is

right

, but without reason to think it

wrong

I will continue to follow it until it fails me or I get something better. I reiterate that I feel mikeburnfire's commment is voteworthy, whether the Hypothesis has validity or no.

Naturally there could be five scum, or only three, and then of necessity the Hypothesis is wrong, incomplete or both, but examining the nominations at end of day led me to those particular individuals. (Just two scum or as many as six seems quite unlikely, in my opinion; whatever game Mr. Grey and his associates are playing, I somehow feel sure they intend for all sides to have a fair chance at it.)

[the silent speaker]

I was mulling over various people's comments overnight, in the hope that theyy might reveal clues about how those comments might be constrained, and something of Lee's jumped out at me.

"The scum may already be on the nomination of MBF (who see MBF as a pro-town player). Or, MBF is scum and his scum buddes have already jumped on themselves to have plausable deniability.

This situation has perplexed me to a top degree. My first instinct is to be somewhat hypocritical and nominate a few more people on the MBF wagon. In both situations I have outlined, one point remains the same. In all likelyhood, there is some scum on this MBF wagon."

The logic here appears to be circular, and frames the assumption that there are scum on mike's nomination wagon as a conclusion. That sort of thing bothers me.

A lot of what DrippingGoofball has said today has seemed quite bizarre. Failure to be on the Turbovolver lynch is not a particular point in one's favor -- among other considerations, many people may have deliberately been on a lynch they thought was wrong as the lesser evil -- and I can only characterize her portrayal of it as such as strange. And I say this as another who wasn't on that lynch, and furthermore was asked why not by the deceased Kelly Chen.

I further note that you implied yesterday that you were in contact with Kelly Chen and Fritzler, which is clearly not the case. Please explain this.

As to not wasting your nominations... you have three, don't you?

Fritzler, you seem to have sneezed twice while attempting to name VitaminR. Was this intentional?

Finally, I remain suspicious of mikeburnfire for his apparent slip of the tongue yesterday. I did realize overnight that I was mistaken about Commodore Amazing's nominations pattern (I had been relying on the noon count rather than cross-checking earlier ones as well) and am no longer sure of the other thee people I had mentioned (especially with VitaminR's exceptional request), but I think on balance even adjusting for an innocent Commodore Amazing, a guilty SpamWise is still a fair cop.

Nominate: mikeburnfire, LoudmouthLee, SpamWise.

[the silent speaker]

"I am gone forever." Exit, pursued by Commodore Amazing.
"Commodore Amazing prevents a bad marriage."
"More Commodore Amazing, with less art."
I don't know exactly what this is supposed to accomplish, but there it is. I assume Commodore Amazing has his reasons. For what it's worth, he's grouped us alphabetically by pseudonym, and everyone has been given the same lines both days. Funnily enough, mikeburnfire goofed.

Tamuz, you declared that you disliked the speed of the two largest bandwagons and added your nomination to one of them in the same post? I can hardly credit that no one else has had the same wtfbbq reaction I did. (If you're wondering, it sounds kind of like a sputter.)

Lee, if you just felt that the speed of the bandwagon indicated scum, why not simply say so? It is not the fact that you changed your opinion -- I've changed one or two of my own -- but the fact that you convoluted your words that worries me. You presented the presence of scum on the mikeburnfire wagon as the outcome of your two outlined cases, when those cases themselves were only refinements of the notion that there were scum on the mikeburnfire wagon. That's circular reasoning.

Mikeburnfire, you prefaced your audition with the observation, "With so many intelligent people piling on DG, it's somewhat hard for me not to as well. Yet, I won't for now."
One, such blatant fawning creeps me the hell out.
Two, why didn't you? Because you nominated me -- only fair; turnabout is fair play and I am nominating you -- and VitaminR on request... and Commodore Amazing, for "I'm not happy about doing things that may have undesired consequences," said even as you did it. Or tried to. This was the ironclad nomination that overrode your instincts on DrippingGoofball? I for one am not buying any of it.
By the way, yes, it was an accurate prediction. The question become

how did you know

-- not that there was a risk of an innocent lynch, or even a probability, but that we were

doomed

to.

Others have wondered before me on VitaminR's failure to nominate himself, either yesterday or today, if he wanted nominations so desperately.

My primary reason for nominating SpamWise hinges on my reasoning for voting mikeburnfire yesterday: namely,

if

mike is scum and the scum were steering the nominations, the people who made three

successful

nominations and yet somehow missed mike (and were in turn never nominated by him) are likelier to be scum. Yes, I know how large a word "if" can be. Still, SpamWise is the only one of those.

Suppose the following assumptions are made (and yes, everything hinges on those assumptions; disprove one and the entire edifice collapses): One. Mikeburnfire is scum. Two. Yesterday, scum did not nominate other scum. This is a somewhat weaker set of assumptions than I as working from yesterday -- though still, I freely concede, quite strong. (I rejected the assumption that those nominated were all town, and that all nominees had at least one scum, as I felt they were much too far-reaching.) At any rate, it follows that those people who voted mike

and

ended on the lynch block are the likeliest places to look for scum; thus especially DrippingGoofball's, Fritzler's, Kelly Chen's, Turbovolver's and Tamuz's bandwagons need perusal.
--Thok voted for two of these: DrippingGoofball and Kelly Chen.
--mathcam likewise voted for two: Fritzler and Turbovolver.
--Adele and petroleumjelly voted for one each, but also voted Commodore Amazing, who missed the logjam by one nomination.
--Voting for one: SpamWise (who had two other nominees in the traffic); me; Cogito; VitaminR; Fiasco.
--Adele, by these assumptions, cannot be scum with any of petroleumjelly, SpamWise, Fiasco or mathcam
--VitaminR cannot be scum with either mathcam or Thok. Since those are the top two suspects by this way of looking at it, he looks clearer... which in turn makes Cogito and petroleumjelly look worse (for nominating him earlier).

So my revised list of suspects,

should mikeburnfire be proven scum

, is as follows: Thok; mathcam; petroleumjelly; Adele; SpamWise; Cogito. As such I will

unnominate: SpamWise

.

[the silent speaker]

Why is it that no one else finds mikeburnfire suspect enough to nominate? He has now twice made scummy comments, and furthermore his most recent comments were very overreactive. There have been any number of situations similar to our own wherein the group successfully identified the evil amongst them even on the first day. (There is an obscure Dr. Seuss book whose equally obscure sequel comes to mind as one such example.) And he overreacted to Commodore Amazing as well, especially considering he went along with the auditioning once.

Yet he says he can prove his identity. I'm not in favor of unnecessary identity revelation, but I will hold you to that. When you do identify yourself, you'd better have solid proof of your claim.

Petroleumjelly, withot looking for connections between players, how do you propose to find scum at all? Naturally this is not a tool to use to the exclusion of all others, but one who relies solely on people making slips will often find that scum can avoid making them.

[the silent speaker]

Hmm. I think Fritzler and DrippingGoofball (as stated yesterday) as well as VitaminR and Commodore Amazing are probably not the best choices for a lynch. So I am mulling my vote over from among mathcam, Adele, and LoudmouthLee. I was very interested, in light of my mikeburnfire analysis, to see that petroleumjelly seems to have found a link between Adele and Thok. But if mikeburnfire

does

have a provable role, my analysis will have to be made anew, with a different starting point. A link with Thok might not end up quite so voteworthy. Exactly the same, of course, applies to mathcam; my suspicion of Lee is not connected to the mikeburfire analysis, but I will need to consider all the attacks on him and his responses afresh before I decide whether I find his reactions to them suspicious, and if so, what other suspicions follow.

[the silent speaker]

The first thing I want to say is that I think the mimicry between Adele and Seol is just a little too blatant if they're both scum. The fact that she nominated the same people as Seol twice is interesting and possibly even significant, but to be twice the very next person to vote for Seol's candidate smacks of coincidence more than planning to me.

I'm a bit worried about the early size of the DrippingGoofball and VitaminR nomination bandwagons. I understand why people wanted them on the block, but eight people each? That's just overkill. I smell opportunistic scum. The people who nominated both are Adele, Cogito, Fritzler, LoudmouthLee, petroleumjelly, Seol and Tamuz -- in short, the entire bandwagons save for Fiasco (on Goofball) and mathcam (on VitaminR) were overlapping.

A point that may be of interest is that at one time yesterday, Adele and Fiasco were both nominating the same person (Seol) while Fiasco was nominating Adele. Later Seol and Adele voted together, too.

A possible connection that runs on a parallel track exists between SpamWise and Pooky. Both nominated Cogito at the crack of noon and SpamWise was nominating the person nominating Pooky, too.

Assuming again that scum did not nominate other scum -- which I feel, Pooky, is a reasonable place to serve as a starting point, especially for those on the lynching block, albeit no guarantee -- Adele would not be scum with cam, Fiasco, petroleumjelly, SpamWise or Tamuz, and probably not Seol or Thok, either. That leaves, after striking the people I've already said I take to be town including mikeburnfire, only Cogito, LoudmouthLee, Pooky and Werebear. The shortness of that list recommends Lee over Adele, at least, since if she is a good lynch then his odds jump dramatically too.

None of this, naturally, says anything about Lee's fitness for a lynch in and of himself one way or the other, which is why I'm not voting in this post. And quite transparently the SpamWise-Pooky link and the Adele-Fiasco-Seol link cannot exist side by side with the no-scum-conominations hypothesis. But it's a place to start. And now my time is running short, so I have to stop in the middle.

[the silent speaker]

I beg your pardon, Seol, but Commodore Amazing did not say Adele was obviously pro-town. He said

he felt

she was obviously pro-town, which is not quite the same thing. You yourself conceeded later on that his record shows this, as you named him as one of only two people to speak after she claimed to express faith in her. (I must admit I was a little surprised to hear that, but when I checked I found my last speech of the day was before the actual claim. I didn't take it on absolute faith that she was pro-town, but I found the role itself to be more plausibly pro-town than most seemed to.)

Tamuz, I rather suspect that the mysterious M is just the colleague of Mr. Grey's who sent that person hiding in the bushes, the one in the ridiculous orange garb.

[the silent speaker]

The silent speaker had just filled a coconut shell with spring water and started to drink when Thok revealed what he had noticed in Cogito's posts and his conclusions therefrom. The result is predictable: splgtbgl.

Let me get the straight of this. You are of the opinion that he is Satan, out to destroy us... and required to

tell

us this each and every day? That's absurd. I don't doubt the fact of the restriction (and didn't even before Cogito acknowledged it) but I honestly don't see how it can possibly signify what you're reading ito it. And

ten

nominations, mostly on that and that alone? Good Lord.

This does not make looking for people's restrictions a bad idea in general -- I think I know petroleumjelly's, for instance -- but they are of value primarily in constructing patterns, not revealing people's exact alignments. There would be no sport in that for Mr. Grey.

And to LoudmouthLee, who is horrified that DrippingGoofball and mikeburnfire are questionable for not pouncing on the man who cried Satan... do you honestly think you've just outed three scum?

Seol: Thank you, yes, I did mean Cogito, and "Commodore Amazing" was a slip of the tongue. But my point was, he was only being consistent in his opinion that he strongly felt Adele was pro-town, and he stated his reasons yesterday, so why were you challenging him on them now?

I have no notion of what LoudmouthLee is saying in Turbovolver's name. I didn't even nominate or vote for Turbovolver, and I have no connection that I know of to Malcolm X.

My inclination would be to nominate Lee, but Commodore Amazing's information warns me off of that. (By the way, Commodore, did you intend to contract "here is" in the first sentence of your most recent? It looked to me like you must have meant to do that but just forgotten.) Instead I will follow his lead and

nominate: SpamWise

.

[the silent speaker]

Just out of curiosity, mike, could you explain this for me? You've said that you must encode satanic messages in all your posts. But where in this quote is a message lurking?
"Yes, good day. I am very busy at the moment, but I see my name in the previous dialogues and will promise to address any points tonight. Currently, I am preoccupied trying to make a raft out of bark. However, I will talk again later. With hopefully more to say. Giggity Giggity goo!"

There are a couple of other posts that puzzle me similarly, but one was immediately followed by an obvious punishment post. I do believe you about being town, but I'd appreciate this being settled.

[the silent speaker]

I have two small points I want to make. One, I find none of the top three nominees good lynch candidates (LoudmouthLee slightly better than the other two, but in light of Commodore Amazing, this should not be his day on the block). My most suspicious candidate right now is Fiasco, and I intend to outline a case against him soon, based in part on voting patterns and in part on some things he said regarding Cogito. I'll withhold a nomination until I have time to make a better case for it than my unvarnished assertion, though.

Two, mikeburnfire, yes, I trust you quite a bit more than I did yesterday. Your claim of provability went an exceedingly long way toward that, but there are a few other things I noticed that lead me to reject the premise of your scumminess, too.

[the silent speaker]

"CES had no way of knowing that most of the guests would be verbose," Fiasco? I find that statement Very Misleading.

The juxtaposition in Commodore Amazing's now-infamous "80% clearing" post of the gratuitous information that SpamWise is

not

one of his cast roles and the nomination of same led me to believe that SpamWise's failure to be cast was indicative to Commodore Amazing that the former is scum. Clearly that is not so, as he has been unnominated since, and I will unniminate as well at the end of this post.

The following is the list of all the people still with us. Those not Commodore Amazing or on his list are starred.
Cogito Ergo Sum
Commodore Amazing
*DrippingGoofball
*Fiasco
*Fritzler
LoudmouthLee
mikeburnfire
petroleumjelly
*PookyTheMagicalBear
*Seol
SpamWise
Tamuz
the silent speaker
Thok
*VitaminR
Werebear

Thus we have all our scum but one concentrated among the following:
DrippingGoofball
Fiasco
Fritzler
Pooky
Seol
VitaminR

On the basis of her claim, I find DrippingGoofball an unlikely scum. Fritzler is slightly more probable, but does not strike me as the choice a sober man would make at this point. I had thought VitaminR had claimed, which would remove him from consideration for the nonce, but he seems not to.

At any rate, that leaves Fiasco, Pooky, Seol and VitaminR, some three of whom will be getting my nomination. Seol has the additional strike against him -- so does Fritzler -- that he was on both quick nomination wagons early yesterday, as well as both today, and those are places I would look for scum piling on someone. Though my opinion is colored by the fact that I think all of those four bandwagonees with the possible exception of LoudmouthLee are innocent victims in their own rights even without Commodore Amazing's info.

My case against specifically Fiasco rests on his actions early today. First I would like to observe that he has a bit of a tell in something he said, but there I'd sooner not elaborate for obvious reasons. But moving along to specific elaborations:

"The case for CES as a scum rests on three assumptions. One: CES's restriction is to start each day with "SATAN" as the initial letters of his posts. Two: Someone with such a post restriction would be Satan himself. Three: Satan would be anti-beach.

"I take it there is no doubt about the first assumption. I also take it there is almost no doubt about the third assumption. That leaves the second assumption."

So far so good. But he never mentions the second assumption again! Instead he goes on about how it's plausible for Satan to be among us because deceit implies verbosity, glossing over in an almost pre-emptive manner the fact that all our known identities save one have been unequivocally real people, whereas Satan's "real person credentials" are more dubious (though admittedly that may simply be because he's done a good job of his famously greatest trick). He

completely disregards

the point that the one with SATAN for a role restriction is the last person who should be suspected of being Satan, anti-beach, as typically those who are evil do not announce it every day first thing. Which is the crux of the argument in Cogito's defense, posted by me and others.

"I will keep some of yesterday's nominations. ... Actually I just noticed LML has claimed; I'm going to think about whether to believe him, and keep my nomination on for now.

"I'm not yet sure what to make of the information Commodore Amazing received from his auditions, but it looks like (assuming he's telling the truth) it could be important."

So who does he nominate? LoudmouthLee, who has just claimed, and Cogito, who has just been semi-cleared by Commodore Amazing! And Lee has got the same semi-clearance, too. He disguises this as "keeping his nomination on," but this is sheer mislead; all our nominations have reset. He is putting them on anew,

changing

their nominative status in their detriment and disguising it as status quo.

This acknowledgment and casual dismissal of major points in favor of his nominees earns him my suspicion.

Unnominate: SpamWise. Nominate: Fiasco, Seol, VitaminR.

[the silent speaker]

Fiasco you said: "You say I didn't explicitly mention my second assumption (that someone with a SATAN post restriction would be Satan) again. I never claimed to have proven it true, of course; I was just organizing our ignorance."

But by promptly nominating Cogito, were you not implicitly accepting it as true? Yet you gave no reason why it should be so.

"I did, however, give some points in favor of the assumption, by defending the idea that Satan would fit into this game. If the setup is such that Satan fits into it, then someone with a SATAN post restriction is more likely to actually be Satan; that Satan fits in is a relevant point."

Not so. This is true in the negative, in that if Satan is unlikely to be here, the odds of Mr. SATAN Post Restriction being Satan diminish even if that premise were probable otherwise; it is not true in the positive, as you claim, that given that Satan is likely to be here the odds of Mr. Post Restriction being he rise even where that is otherwise improbable. You have at best removed an ancillary objection; you have not even begun to establish the case.

"I hope you were just exaggerating for effect."

Well, I was exaggerating in the sense that having him be strictly last presents us with wine goblets and iocaine powder, so to speak. But to consider it as positive indication one way or the other I consider absurd. He could (in theory, though I believe his mason claim) be evil and not Satan, with the "Satan" referencing some side matter, or even Satan but for our purposes here not our enemy. As to your protestation that he isn't doing so by choice... that's exactly why I think the most transparent reading shouldn't be true! Mr. Grey is bound to have anticipated that at least some here would try to discern patterns in everyone's speech, and having anyone encoe just what they do in a

relatively

obvious way would seem to spoil his game where that person is concerned.

"So not only did I completely disregard your argument, I did so pre-emptively. Churlish of me, huh?"

This is piffle. It may not have been mentioned in exactly the words I used, but the fact that you raised the question at all shows that you were aware of the potential problem. And how much did you put into dispatching it in non-handwaving ways? Zippo.

Meanwhile you continue to push for the lynch of one of the people I consider the most probably pro-town of all those not on Commodore Amazing's bad-bet list -- and the only person whose nominees are all nonlistees. (I consider Commodore Amazing himself a listee for this purpose, as if his information is accurate then he's a bad bet to lynch by definition.) This association with the good bets to lynch is not by itself conclusive by any stretch -- for one thing, you nominated your nominees first, so they could easily have latched onto you -- but, in my opinion, neither is it irrelevant.

Until it can be better deterimed whether VitaminR and Seol are ganging up on Pooky because he is one of them, because he isn't, or by coincidence, I will cast my vote for Seol. It may be worth noting, though, that Seol nominated Pooky, Pooky nominated VitaminR, and

both

Seol and Pooky nominated DrippingGoofball (who I maintain is innocent, indeed possibly the only inocent of the four).

Vote: Seol.

[the silent speaker]

Wow. That's big, Goofball, and I for one see it as a crushing blow to LoudmouthLee. Of coure, he's also named me by way of Turbovolver so I have that bias, but that cuts both ways as well: from your standpoints I have reason to cast aspersions, but from mine I have good reason to doubt his claim as whole cloth anyway.

As an aside, I think "testing" Lee is a poor idea, for two reasons: first, for aught I can tell he's

been

tested and failed twice -- once when he linked me and Turbovolver, which makes no sense to me from any angle, and once when he mangled who Adele told him about; second, to test him the lynchee needs to declare, in thread, what message he's going to send in a way that's decipherable to one person and one person ONLY. Without we lynch a mason, I don't believe that can be done. If the lynchee's 'target' can divine the message without secret communication, why should Lee be unable to? Yet he has to, since the one who sent the message is perforce dead.

Where does that leave Cogito? Given Commodore Amazing as an accurate source of information, which I do, there are four possibilities: 1. Both are scum, and one is a godfather-type role. 2. Only Lee is scum, and CES is a mason. 3. Only Cogito is scum, and Lee is a liar on our side. 4. Neither is scum.

I lean toward either 1 or 2. He has done a lot of pushing for Lee; on the other hand, Commodore Amazing himself backed away from Lee surprisingly quickly, and I don't see any reasonable way

he

could be scum. Incidentally, CA, unless I missed something Seol hasn't promised confirmability; but as this is the same post in which you addressed SpamWise as "Fiasco," I put it down to mere slip.

I will say this for Cogito Ergo Scum. If he's villainous today, he will still be villainous tomorrow. Much as I dislike outright claims, he's locked into his, and if only a few of the wrong people die it's curtains for him as well. One possibility -- the only one I can see -- is to have Cogito announce that he will tell Lee the restriction(s) that apply to his mason partner, and tomorrow Lee tells us the restrictions. This does risk outing the mason, and gravely, but it is the only way I can think of for someone to reveal knowledge which is both unguessable before-the-fact and verifiable after-the-fact. And at least a Cogito lynch has advantages on its own merits.

Seol, I voted for you because Fiasco isn't on the block today. I could have voted for Pooky, but I was wary of the company; VitaminR and Fritzler are a little bit secondary on my suspects list; I was opposed to a Cogito lynch or a Lee lynch on principle, though now I am not, and I was and remain opposed to the lynches of petroleumjelly or DrippingGoofball.

Here is Commodore Amazing's "bad hanging" list, as I annotate it currently.
Cogito Ergo Sum -- Either is a mason or is scum. The paucity of potential partners provides provisional protection. He can't hide as scum for long.
LoudmouthLee -- Has lied. Probably the exception to the "bad hanging" rule.
Mikeburnfire -- Very likely town. I would be quite surprised at this point to learn he is evil.
petroleumjelly -- See

mikeburnfire

.
SpamWise -- No especial read.
Tamuz -- No especial read.
Werebear -- No especial read.
the silent speaker -- DEFINITELY a bad hanging.
Thok -- No especial read.

IF Cogito AND LML are evil, with one of them the godfather, there are only two or three among DrippingGoofball (and I think she's not one); Fiasco (and I think he

is

one); Fritzler (probably not, but maybe); Pooky (who has promised verifiability); Seol; VitaminR. If there is no godfather among the bad hangings, there must be three or four in this group.

LML is pushing to lynch Seol. Seol is pushing to lynch LML. Werebear is pushing to lynch CES and finds Seol suspicious; Fritzler agrees. Goofball, whom I trust, does not think Seol suspicious. What a mess.

For now I have to go with lynching all liars. I think CES bears watching but will keep. I think Seol is probably scum. I am willing to take Pooky's word on verifiability for now, though I note that we have at least three people promising it and will want to see some money where mouths are by a couple of days hence.

Unvote: Seol

with misgivings. [/b]Vote: LoudmouthLee[/b].

[the silent speaker]

Let me rephrase that so you don't need to try to pronounce "[/b]". Also, CES, it's more than a vague "specific way" those posts need to be interpreted, if Lee is to be believed. He said Adele didn't mention Goofball, then that she did. Plus his "result" on me makes no sense. There is just zero connection between me and Malcolm X, I quite assure you.

vote: LoudmouthLee

[the silent speaker]

Why can't he just make something up? The person who made the message is dead and can't contradict him. How do

we

prove that it isn't what the now-deceased cryptographer intended?

Besides, I can't wrap my brain around the messages he claimed to have received already. Adele was adamant -- his word -- that Seol, Goofball and Cogito are scum. Based on what? She didn't exactly have an investigative role. Her suspicions were already stated during the day, and why would she misrepresent them now as facts? Again, Turbovolver was "steamed" at me. This is based on no role thing, and no investigative power either; Malcolm Shabazz was a "token character", i.e. townie. Shame that he's angry, but if it has no consequences for the game,

why transmit the message?

He is presenting dead people's ostensible last suspicions as facts. If one of the rest of us did that we would be leapt on for illogic, and rightly.

And oh-by-the-way, I checked Turbovolver's posts. Almost his last mention of me AT ALL was his thirtieth post overall (out of 42) and in it he said I was going

down

his suspicions list, not up. (A couple of posts later he referenced me to say that he disagreed with a tell I thought I saw but not with my voting based on it.) His late suspicions were Pooky and mathcam, not me. So there is even less reason for Turbovolver's "last message."

Fiasco, the answer to your question is partly that if Lee and Cogito are both scum then Lee was attacking Cogito too (probably to make them both look innocent) so your own attack doesn't clear you, but mostly that I'm finding people suspicious from different angles, which need not necessarily all mesh perfectly with each other. Regardless, I think it's rather more likely that Lee is scum (and so are you) and Cogito is town. I got a scummy vibe from the way you (and Lee, but he had the bad-hanging point) jumped onto the nascent Cogitowagon, and I tried to convery this in my attack on you. Plainly I did a poorish job of it, but there it lies.

[the silent speaker]

Hmmmm. We didn't get told LoudmouthLee's allegiances, unless I missed something big. I don't think I did, but hten where does that leave us? His fraudulent attack on Commodore Amazing means the latter, at least, stands to be town, as if Lee is town and CA scum Lee shouldn't have needed to resort to the measures he did. I'm stuck back on the good hangings, which point to Seol, Fiasco and VitaminR (maybe Pooky, but Vitamin strikes me as a better choice) but people's reactions to Lee yesterday are throwing me.

Why is petroleumjelly on the block? A quick glance through didn't expose any obvious restriction breakage on her part.

[the silent speaker]

Hmmmm. We didn't get told LoudmouthLee's allegiances, unless I missed something big. I don't think I did, but hten where does that leave us? His fraudulent attack on Commodore Amazing means the latter, at least, stands to be town, as if Lee is town and CA scum Lee shouldn't have needed to resort to the measures he did. I'm stuck back on the good hangings, which point to Seol, Fiasco and VitaminR (maybe Pooky, but Vitamin strikes me as a better choice) but people's reactions to Lee yesterday are throwing me.

One more thing. Why is petroleumjelly on the block? A quick glance through didn't expose any obvious restriction breakage on her part.

[the silent speaker]

I have got to stop mixing up Commodore Amazing and Cogito Ergo Sum. One of these days I even will.

Petroleumjelly, I did, in fact, cast a vote yesterday: LoudmouthLee. Also I would like to know why you feeel Commodore Amazing's list is not to be relied on. (I used the right name this time, right?)

I think I see a patttern in the people on the block automatically: misuse of tags in yesterday's posts. It looks like Mr. Grey is punishing those of us who attempt to underline their comments or use other quirks in their speech by condemning them to lynch vulnerability.

Of those on the possibly-good-hanging list, I discard DrippingGoofball and mikeburnfire as probable innocents, and Pooky as promised confirmable. Incidentally, Pooky, having revealed that you

have

information I suggest you give out one piece but not both. Seol and Fritzler are already on the block, so I am left with Fiasco and VitaminR. Before I nominate, though, I will want to look closely at what impact town-Lee would have on either of scum-Seol or scum-Fiasco or both. Lee, by the way, appears to have been one of Commodore Amazing's Caesars, for what that is worth (his "et tu?" post suggests this.)

[the silent speaker]

I think the caveat should be mentioned that we don't know with 100 percent certainty that Lee was guilty. There's a fair presumption of it, yes, but Lee may not have been the "good hanging" in Commodore Amazing's sense. Statistically the remaining group is a far better shot anyway, but this is something I feel ought to be pointed out.

Werebear, the mere fact that Lee went after CES so bizarrely shows that the latter rates to be innocent. If Lee were pro-town, the only reason to act as he did would be a special requirement for the Pope to try to destroy the Satanists... but if the Satanists are scum then he has to destroy them anyway, so why a special requirement? And if Lee was scum, that's an EXTREMELY strange gambit to try and pull. In addition it requires that one of them be a godfather type (since both are "bad hangings".)

There are seven people on the "Good Hanging List", of which three can reasonably be cleared offhand. Of the remaining four, at worst two should be scum -- that if there are four to start with, and two including a godfather are on the "wrong" list. Otherwise there must be three or even four. Fritzler claims that he can prove himself tomorrow, and there are a sufficiency of plausible lynches

today

that I really don't see why we can't just let him. Of the people who stand to be on the block as of now, Pooky should not be there, but I don't have anyone particular to reasonably replace him with. (Neither should CA, DrippingGoofball, petroleumjelly or Tamuz, but those are automatics.) There's little point in this as they're already the nomination leaders, but just so as to be on record as having nominated them,

nominate: Fiasco, VitaminR

.

[the silent speaker]

Fiasco, wouldn't multiple groups imply more scum, not fewer, and therefore make the List stronger? The number of groups just seems irrelevant (although I do agree that there's likely only one, or at least only one killing) to the implications of the List.

Commodore Amazing never said he has "no real idea" about the bear or Caesar ability. To the contrary; as I read it he knows, or thinks he does, about the bear at least, and his concern with the Caesars was more revealing too much than speculating on what their Caesardom might mean. Likewise Pooky, in failing to reveal Thok's posting requirement, said nothing about whether he knows one way or the other what it is. The only salient point was what it

isn't

, and so that was all he said.

Incidentally, I don't believe the ability is tremendously overpowered as the one-shot it appears to be. It gives lists, but we still have to work out ourselves who

on

them is scum.

Quick speculation, because Fiasco put the notion of a cult into my head. Suppose the Caesars are a cult, and Lee was a recruit? It might explain the multiplicity of CA's casting-call lines. CA, with the number of Caesars as far as you know, is this a possibility? A simple yes or no will do; anything beyond I leave to your discretion to reveal or not.

[the silent speaker]

My condolences as well to Mr. Fritzler.

It seems that Seol was adamant that LoudmouthLee not be allowed to give trial to his falsified ability, while Fiasco was just as insistent that anyone who didn't want to was probably scum. It hardly needs to be said that I strongly disagree with both positions -- I felt that trial was unlikely to help, though on rereading I am more willing to concede that with a carefully constructed message this might not have been the case, and I felt that in any event his previous purported "messages" were sufficiently nonsensical to practically qualify as "tried and faied" already; but had it been feasible (a neat trick with the time allotted, anyway) and had the target been at least as suspicious as Lee was, arranging for Lee to go second could do no harm and might explicate matters. We can, after all, lynch only one at a time anyway. A similar line of reasoning makes Fritzler definitely not the play today.

BUT, and this is the important thing to glean from the preceding paragraph, the fact that Seol and Fiasco were willing to

take

their stands, to stake out positions sight unseen, is a point in ther favor at least to the point of wine in front of me. Especially since we aren't yet sure where Lee's allegiances lay. Yes, Fiasco might have been trying to save his scum ally, or he might have been trying to protect someone he expected to come up well worth protecting and have innocence reflected back onto him. Or Seol could have been attacking an ally to look innocent, or he could have been trying to rid the town of a potential power role cheaply. For all I know they're allies themselves, and aimed at dividing the town. But they

did

take stands, and maybe risked looking bad when they came up on the wrong side. VitaminR was lukewarm all the way through. That, on top of everything else, earns VitaminR my vote.

Vote: VitaminR.

[the silent speaker]

Well, this is getting more bizarre by the hour.

Thok first. The fact that he breadcrumbed a restriction he didn't have doesn't trouble me in the slightest; it is extremely unlikely to cause the town any harm whatsoever and I can see where there might be some confusion sown in the scum to Thok's benefit. There would be more so if it weren't known that we nearly all do in fact have restrictions, but frankly I have a hunch that many of the people outraged at him are mainly jealous that they didn't think of it themselves.

No, what bothers me about Thok is this. Why,

knowing the fallibility of apparent role restriction

, was he so insistent that Cogito's SATAN must signify scum?

VitaminR's claim does not sit well with me

at all

. Strip away the flavor and he is claiming simple townie. Yet Seol said, "He is a plausible member of our gathering,

a uniquely British personality,

[emphasis mine] and totally harmless - I find the claim eminently plausible." Pffft. We no more need to all be British than we need to all be religious-themed -- and wasn't it you who claimed the decidedly American Perry Mason?

Speaking of which, that Perry Mason claim is not a whole lot better. It is more confirmable... marginally, but one investigation does little to prove one's worth as

one

investigation is incredibly easy to forge. All you have to do is say you got an innocent and you are guaranteed to not be contradicted.

VitaminR added this about his restriction etcetera: "If I am placed on the lynching block automatically, I require a vote. This happened Day 2, because I forgot about my restriction once Day 1." But he wasn't

on

the block automatically day 2 -- he had to be nominated there. So we have VitaminR

and

Seol both with shaky claims,

and

one defended the other,

and

they're both Unlisted.

But let's not jump the gun. Commodore Amazing's information has completely crashed and burned. None of the living castees knows a thing about being cast. Yet

Lee

knew. Something is very, very badly wrong, and I don't like the Occam's Razor argument that CA was lying through his teeth because he's been volunteering this information from the start. We had Turbovolver's "race card", and that proved invented; we had Lee's "seances", and those proved fraudulent; now this. Damn it, does anybody have an ability that works?

For the record, those "borne off" in the auditions (and still alive) are Cogito, Goofball, Fiasco, Fritzler, SpamWise, Tamuz, Thok, myself, VitaminR, and Werebear; of whom only Werebear is now ineligible for actual carrying off. Werebear is the Clown, who reports the death of the peron the bear actually pursues, so that has at least a certain logical coherence.
The good hanging/bad marriage line was auditioned by Cogito, mikeburnfire, petroleumjelly, SpamWise, Tamuz, myself, Thok, and Werebear; all but petroleumjelly are on the relevant list, and petroleumjelly was cast as the speaker. Unlike the former list, though, only

one

person on this list is a good hanging.
The Caesar auditions have DrippingGoofball, Fiasco, Pooky, Seol, SpamWize, Tamuz, VitaminR, and Werebear. Curiously enough, it is

everyone else

among whom the number of caesars is known. I think Commodore Amazing needs to explain exactly what the caesars represent; simply giving the name gives nothing.

I also find somewhat questionable CA's explanation that he thought yesterday that his newfound role restriction was Hamlet-related, hence his belief that the other castees could confirm him. Yesterday he indicated clearly that he recognized the restriction placed on him as coming from an outside source.

It seems that insufficient verbosity is punished with a night block. If so, Lee and Seol were blocked night 1; Seol was blocked night 2; Fritzler, Tamuz and Werebear were all blocked night 3. Fritzler's probably the best of last night's blocks to lynch, and we can't lynch him because we're testing him. Argh.

[the silent speaker]

There are posting requirement violations and then there are posting requiement violations. Automatic nomination appears to result from misuse of tags rather than violation of one's personal restrictions. Night blockage seems to be from failure to post and no other cause. If I break my personal restrictions, I am punished in other ways. By the way, Seol, what exactly does it mean that your one-shot role got blocked? That seems a rather piffling and costless penalty. How if a townie dozes off, what happens then? Is he debarred from doing nothing?

I grant you that Lee stepped forward unprovoked with his own falsehoods. That in fact is one of the things that gives me pause about jumping to the conclusion that he was scum. If he was pro-town but

had

to try (as an extra condition) to get the Satanists killed, then his volunteerism makes more sense (and incidentally clears the Satanists, as there would be no need for an

extra

condition on Lee's part if they were scum and he town; he'd have to see them off anyway. But I digress.) At any rate, Commodore Amazing's volunteering makes him less likely to be evil -- it hardly presents a certainty. It may well prove necessary for him to perform ursine pursuit within the next 24 hours.

Grant that Screaming Lord Sutch is VitaminR's true name, and the capitals and nomination requirement are his true restrictions. (I believe both of these to be the case.) What prevents him from being Screaming Sutchie, Scum?

Fritzler, you have offered to fix the lynch today to clear your own name. As you failed yesterday's posting requirements, what makes you think this will work?

[the silent speaker]

I am very angry at Commodore Amazing. No, I am incensed. He has not responded to a single one of my questions regarding his lists. His continuing silence makes it exceedingly difficult to work out what information he is providing with them.

Meanwhile the sun is setting. If we are letting VitaminR slide for the nonce -- and it looks like we are, though I still find his claim terribly, terribly suspect -- then of the remaining choices, Fiasco is the least bad. And he's the only one with even as much of a chance as the proverbial hell-bound snowball of getting lynched.

Petroleumjelly, technically mikeburnfire is not on the list, though obviously you're right that Lee and Cogito can't both be scum

and

have Commodore Amazing's list be absolutely accurate. But to me that indicates that Cogito's guilt would imply Lee's innocence, and by extension Seol would look worse for insisting on Lee's guilt. (I actually considered ordering Seol to investigate a mason for that reason, but decided that the balance of probability is that they

are

innocent masons and Seol would therefore give an answer that means nothing for the town.)

Unvote. Vote: Fiasco.

[the silent speaker]

Right then. Assuming the remaining role claims are all true and accurate in full, we have:
Cogito Ergo Sum: Sister Grace Voluble, mason. Not A Good Hanging.*
Commodore Amazing: Shakespeare, with roles cast but myteriously unknown to any of the people cast in them.
Fiasco: Galileo, investigator with results conveniently inaccessible.
mikeburnfire: Sister Gabriella Gregarious, mason.
petroleumjelly: Unknown, but NAGH.
Seol: Perry Mason, one-shot investigator; any result for us tonight, Seol?
SpamWise: NAGH.
Tamuz: NAGH.
the silent speaker: NAGH.
Thok: NAGH.
VitaminR: Screaming Lord Sutch, townie. Cannot be confirmed innocent while remaining alive.
Werebear: NAGH.

*In all cases of NAGH, there is known to have been one good-hanging exception, but this very possibly was LoudmouthLee. At any rate, not more than one of these can be a Good Hanging.

This is clearly an impossible situation. Eveyone is either alibied or claimed, and with the exception of the masons no one has claimed a viable confirmable role. We have killed no confirmed mafiosi and only one possible mafioso. There must, if Commodore Amazing is to be believed, be at least three people among the Good Hangings who have lied to us, and there may be four. This points squarely at Fiasco, Seol and VitaminR.

Tellingly, though, Commodore Amazing has

not

nominated all three. Instead he asked ideas on the absence of caesars -- apparently from a group that, precisely because they are not caesars, will have not the slightest clue what he is talking about. You, not we, have an inkling of what it means to be a caesar. It is for you, Commodore Amazing, not us, to be sharing everything you know about this "caesar" thing.

Mikeburnfire, you're quite correct that testing VitaminR by withholding nominations means he dies and we don't get a confirmed innocent. What this means is that

his claim cannot be tested.

This is a bad thing, not a good thing. It is a bad bad bad thing.

Cogito, Mike, please clarify this for me. You seem to be saying that you have a third, as yet officially undisclosed mason partner. Is this correct? You started the game as a group of three, not a group of two? I want to hear the answer to this straight out from both of you.

What it boils down to is this. At least one of the following three statements is true. Commodore Amazing is lying. Cogito and Mikeburnfire are lying. Fiasco, Seol and VitaminR are lying.

Also worth noting, we had another suicide... and the serial killer was

shot

. We haven't been plagued with shootings the whole game. What happened to start now?

[the silent speaker]

See, here's the thing. Everyone alive has nominated one of you except petroleumjelly, and she asked, "I will double Seol's request. Cogito Ergo Sum, is your Masonry made up confirmed innocent(s)?"

Mikeburnfire, perhaps you misunderstand me. I don't want to put trial to VitaminR to test him, I want to put trial to him because I think he's scum.

Commodore Amazing, how are you confirmed? Because another player announced that you are innocent? Did anyone here seriously believe he would declare a guilty? I know I didn't.

And you continue to be quiet about the caesars. START TALKING dammit!

Still, if one of Seol and CA is to be the lynch, I say Seol for preference. If he is honest then Commodore Amazing must also be -- I agree with him that given that his claimed role exists, it must be sane -- and if he's not, well then. Besides, if Commodore Amazing is honest the Seol stands a better chance of

being

not.

I don't expect it to do much at this piont, but here goes. Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Commodore Amazing!

[the silent speaker]

Commodore Amazing, what? Even more than that, wtfbbqmtv? I never said town Seol=scum CA. I said the exact opposite of that. But

scum

Seol -- which your role indicates as a probability nearing certainty -- means that you have no clearance whatever.

What this

means

is that we should lynch Seol, if it's between the two of you, and leave you alone. But I said that already.

What I want from you in the meanwhile is not ursine pursuit, as you seem to think. I enjoined you to tell all you know and suspect about the caesars. You still haven't done this.

Since the odds are vanishingly small of mike and Cogito

and

petroleumjelly all being liars,

nominate: Seol, VitaminR, Fiasco.

[the silent speaker]

VitaminR, you have one of the weakest claims. Your "I'll die if you test me" strikes me as awfully convenient. You are on Commodore Amazing's scummy list; not many others are, and I'm voting for them. There are a couple of extra points too, but those are not for this close to the ucpoming holiday. I'm just posting this to squeeze another day in under the wire.

[the silent speaker]

Commodore Amazing, it would help with the "brainstorming" if you shared what you know about the caesars, e.g. how many there are in the group of us. (You have already claimed knowledge of this number in prior speeches.) And until we've ascertained for certain whether Lee was town or otherwise, no one's voting record with it is ironclad.

Here's something. Quoth Seol, in reference to why he had been pushing for the lynch of our Cyrano de Bergerac: "I am loath to use nameclaims, or the plausibility thereof, as any sort of assessment of innocence/guilt." Fine. But funnily enough, he changed his tune for VitaminR. Oh no, Screaming Lord Sutch was "eminently plausible." There are exactly three people who are on the potentialy good hanging list, and Seol and VitaminR are two of them. Coincidence?

There were some things that hinted at other interaction among Seol, Fiasco and VitaminR, but I need a much more involved reread, which looms as an ever more daunting task, if I'm to tease out those threads. For now I will just cast a vote, but I could easily be swayed to any of the other two. I'd also appreciate some detailed synopses of the arguments for Tamuz and Werebear; right now I don't feel those bandwagons at all, though I disagree with Werebear on the mason situation, which I am inclined to take on the masons' word pending evidence to the contrary.

Vote: Seol

.

[the silent speaker]

I agree that VitaminR shouldn't get nominations -- or at least shouldn't get votes, as he

did

botch his restriction -- unless there is a majority in his favor of getting them.

If Seol turns up scum, the next place to turn will be Fiasco (unless Seol is a pope and frees up Fiasco's tongue; even then we will need to think hard) while trying VitaminR. But if Seol is the only one scum in the group, I for one will want to take a good hard look at Commodore Amazing next.

Zero

caesars in the town? The whole "Et tu" line was totally useless? I find that quite hard to believe. The "information" that an appellation you have no reason to attribute any meaning to has no referents is absurd.

Naturally, if Seol is town the absurdity of the information is irrelevant, as Commodore Amazing will be cleared.

[the silent speaker]

This is really getting absurd. The continuing and perplexing absence of nightkills makes me wonder if maybe we don't

have

any killing roles left. But if so there are only two possibilities: 1. There is a recruiting evil. 2. There is not.

The former doesn't really make a whole lot of sense from the standpint of what we're all doing here. (What form would it take, evangelizing? Let them evangelize; that hurts nobody.) But if the latter, what then? Do we nominate Mr. Grey?

Werebear's pushing for the elimination of the masons puts me in mind of LoudmouthLee's push for same. I suspect he may be Fiasco's pope -- assuming Fiasco didn't make up the whole thing. Part of me itches to ask Fiasco why he saw fit to let slip that someone might be able to block his alleged results by finding his restriction, but I do have to allow that had he said nothing and then turned up silenced anyway, that would have looked scummy too.

There may be some gain to lynching a mason wholly because there are three of them. If there were just two, lynching one would leave us with only one confirmed person, and we should not be quick to advocate that ratio, but with three, we can lynch one and have a whole group left, with something of a voting bloc still. Then we have confirmed masons, instead of only presumed ones, or else have outed two more cult scum.

Of course, for Werebear and Lee to be evil popes

or

for the Good Omens Nuns to be evil means Commodore Amazing did absolutely nothing, but so far as I know that's a paradox nobody has an answer to.

I realize these three nominations are pretty much mutually contradictory, but honestly I'm more than half tempted to try nominating Mr. Grey and his cohorts. Something is decidedly rotten in the state of our Denmark.

Nominate: Fiasco, Mikeburnfire, Werebear.

[the silent speaker]

I checked up on a suspicion I had. Sure enough, Werebear sided with LoudmouthLee in the first incarnation of the SATAN Debate. He also indirectly defended Lee mildly by implying that he found Seol suspect. (I found Seol suspect, too, but according to my reckoning Lee had some equally bad reflections on him.) This jibes with Werebear being a pope. This isn't exactly convlusive of anything, obviously, but I thought it worth a mention at least.

[the silent speaker]

So I'm on the lynching block, for the first time I think. Fiasco, mike, VitaminR, is there anything specific you want explicated, or just nebulous gut reaction?

It seems we are condemned to stay here and vote off one of our own to squelch an evil that hasn't shown up at all, if (as it seems) all our deaths are from lynches and Pooky. Anyone have an idea what we're fighting against?

I note with interest that mikeburnfire made the assumption in a recent comment
that we

will

in fact have a nightkill every night. I'd like to hear from him why he expects deaths to start now.

Anyway, here's the checklist of things it's been suggested that we do: 1. test the masons, to alleviate Werebear's concern. 2. Lynch Werebear on suspicion of being a pope, perchanceto free up Fiasco's restriction. 3. Lynch Fiasco on suspicion of having faked his claim, and as an additional test for Commodore Amazing's sadly inadequate list. A nice sequence in which each element assumes the previous one was a fraud. Bleh.

It is of PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE that EVERYONE weigh in on whether to test VitaminR by withholding votes. With no signs of anybody dying except by our hands and Pooky's, I vote yea, but if majority votes to vote him into safety I volunteer to cast it.

[the silent speaker]

But that's just it, Werebear. No hens have been disappearing. I'm not the only one to ntice this, either. It's been much much too quiet, yet we have no way off this cursed island. Are you privy to something we're not? Why do you expect we'll suddenly be blitzed with a string of massacres? What, in short, do you know?

[the silent speaker]

Fiasco, Pooky claimed one extra piece of information, not two. I'm in some doubt as to whether he could only kill with knowledge of restrictions; he'd need to take about a million fortunate guesses if that's the case, as we only were missing a kill once while he was alive. Especially if his second tidbit was no more than the identity of mathcam's role restriction; what made his first piece convincing (to me, at least) was that he knew a restriction was

faked

.

Mikebirnfire, what do you mean I've "evaded scrutiny"? People didn't find me suspicious, or at any rate didn't say so. When they did (e.g. Turbovolver), I responded forthrightly and, I hoped, to the questioner's satisfaction. Why does other people's (justified) trust reflect badly on

me

?

Commodore Amazing, I most certainly

am

role-fishing. I am fishing for scum. That, meseems, is the entire point. Really, the only thing that you can be construing as role-fishing is the doubt as to why people are completely ignoring the absence of kills. Werebar has done it, mikeburnfire has done it, Tamuz has suggested as much; why? If you don't agree that it's been too quiet around here nights, what do you point to as evidence of unquiet? I see no deaths on our island that are not self-inflicted (or Pooky-inflicted, but ironically enough, owing to the methods used even the Pooky-inflicted deaths were in a sense self-inflicted.)

Speaking of Tamuz: "Scum certainly have powers over us when they figure out restrictions. I will put it out there that mine in its entirety will result in some very unhappy things for me, but I believe I have hidden it well enough that its like unfindable." Oh really. Interesting.

I

wasn't told what would happen if my restriction should be discovered.

One final thought. If it

is

true that scum must know a player's posting restriction to kill them... and Werebear has no posting restriction... perhaps it follows that Werebear is scum? Especially since I thought him a plausible pope already.

Vote: Werebear

.

[the silent speaker]

Mike, nobody has scurtinized me, but who are you to say they forgot about me? I've hardly been trying to hide. If people want to question me, they are welcome to. But blaming me for

not

being questioned is facile; I'm not obligated to say something stupid to make you feel better.

Werebear, as Fiasco has already pointed out, you assume we'll be told whether Mikeburnfire was scum or not. We've been told a few times (Adele for instance) but we've also not been told other times (Seol). If we're told only that mike was Gabby Gregarious, what have we learned? Not a thing, says I, which makes me reconsider (and mostly retract) my earlier statement that there could be gain in lynching one to test. No one is likely to lie about their role name, as what would it get them? And the fact that you categorically stated that there are two possibilities, both involving reveal, does not make me rest easier about you.
By the way: "Does it really matter if you're a cult or a mafia group? Is there something about one or the other that would make you look innocent?" The point is

either

thing you fix them as doesn't fit the profile of what we know, suspect or have been told. If there's no kind of scum they can be, it follows they aren't scum.

Mike again, I expect that the reason people haven't been making a fuss about DrippingGoofball's death is that that seems to just be Pooky's last night action. It does fit the pattern of only those people dying whose restrictions are known, if you include mathcam's filibustering. I'm not sure that inclusion is a safe assumption to make, but as long as no one is dying we're ahead of the game.

The quasi-voting on VitaminR:
Yes, test him today: me, Tamuz
No, someone vote him: VitaminR, mikeburnfire
Maybe (apparently leaning to no): Fiasco, Werebear
No vote yet: Cogito, Commodore, petroleumjelly, SpamWise, Thok

If we don't get three more yeses in the next twelve hours or so, I will assume the masons are voting en bloc and the maybes are nos, and switch my vote. I'd rather lynch Werebear than Tamuz -- if we have another pope floating around, my guess is it's him -- but nobody's getting lynched with one vote.

[the silent speaker]

Mike, you're reaching ever farther here. You arbitrarily ruled out two people and then decided that because of your trust in them, I "need to be lynched"? Not cool. This is exacerbated by the fact that I happen not to particularly trust either of them, though I find myself taking them on somewhat more faith as the game goes on and we continue to not have kills from our hypothetical multiperson scum group.

You know, when you predict that Werebear will be killed tonight, in complete disregard of the fact that

nobody

has been killed at night other than at Pooky's hand, you don't inspire confidence in your judgment.

I'm not quite convinced of Werebear's role claim -- for one thing, no straightforward investigative roles have come forward, so who's to say there are straightforward protective roles? -- but this late in the day, I'm not about to bet the farm on my hunch. Anyway, I'll take his being John Locke on faith, since there's little reason for him to lie about

that

and Locke is famously verbose. But if anyone is any kind of pope, we really ought to hear it. If no one claims any papacy (I'll start by denying it) we should reconsider Fiasco.

Commodore Amazing, you said, "We don't even know if the scum are going to be able to get their kill off tomorrow, if Werebear can protect, or whatever." While I agree with this, didn't you immediately contradicit it with "We'll be in the same place tomorrow if we don't lynch mikeburnfire today, but with less people. I don't see any way around this"?

With Commodore's yea and Fiasco's and petroleumjelly's nays, the count goes to 4-3 for the nays with one maybeish and four abstaining. Time is getting VERY short.

[the silent speaker]

Werebear, I don't know what you're talking about with the deaths. DrippingGoofball

committed suicide by burial

. Pooky

was shot

. We do not in fact know that Pooky shot himself! It looks quite clear to me that DrippingGoofball's suicide was the result of Pooky's influence. Remember, Pooky was a hypnotist and persuade people to do outrageous things, such as, perhaps, commit suicide. I don't know what Pooky's death was the result of, though I have no reason to dispute the prevailing theory that it was the result of his games of Russian roulette. (I remind you all, though, that it

is

just that, a theory, and not likely to be proven one way or the other except by more shootings.) At any rate, your supposition that the suicide mafia killed Pooky and Pooky's targeting of DrippingGoofball just happened to take the form of a suicide is just bizarre. Especially considering that we were told specifically that Goofball's death was a suicide, but that Pooky's was we were

not

.

The blockages are the result of insufficient verbosity, right? In that case, blocks for Night One were Lee and Seol. (There may have been a pass for first offense. No one was put on the lynching block automatically Day 2 despite failure to abide by some of the other elocution requirements by multiple people including myself. I assume the reason was the same: first offense, warning.) Blocks for Night 2 were Seol alone. Day 3 saw Seol on the lynch block as well, and petroleumjelly too. I'm not sure why petroleumjelly was, actually; I had thought this effect was owed to tagging violations, but I don't see one of those for petroleumjelly. If you can shed some light on this, pj, it would be appreciated.

Blocks for Night 3 were Fritzler, Werebear and Tamuz

. And that night, no one died.
On the block the next day were Commodore Amazing, DrippingGoofball, Fritzler, petroleumjelly, Seol, and Tamuz.
Blocks for Night 4: Werebear and Commodore. Both of these and Tamuz were automatically lynchable.
Blocks for night 5: Seol, who was dead by then anyway. Another deathless night.

Regarding VitaminR:
Yes, test him today: me, Tamuz, Commodore, Cogito
No, someone vote him: VitaminR, mikeburnfire, Fiasco, petroleumjelly
Maybe (apparently leaning to no): Werebear
No vote yet: SpamWise, Thok

Four in favor, four or five opposed, two or three abstentions. *grits teeth* I have to say the nays have it. I support a Tamuz lynch, but I promised to bail out VitaminR if the nos carry the day, and anyway voting VitaminR leaves us the opportunity to test him tomorrow (and lynch Tamuz too, if that should prove necessary), while voting Tamuz denies us the option to refrain from testing VitaminR.

Unvote: Werebear, vote: VitaminR

[the silent speaker]

I would guess that Tamuz was scum after all. His role, after all, was to fool the people in the other house he was trapped in for a sick game. A scum role seems to fit. That, and Malcolm X was "the Token Character," apparently meaning ordinary person, so "the Fake Celebrity" ought to be something else.

If so, VitaminR looks somewhat better as Tamuz was one of the people pushing for his testing yesterday.

Paranoid theory: Commodore Amazing is Shakespeare, i.e. an actor, i.e. someone who also indulges in fakery of a sort. Seol was a purely fictional character and a

defense

attorney with a (supposed) one-shot investigative role; that can be stretched to fit, but defense attorneys get people acquitted rather than showing that they are guilty as charged, so it doesn't quite fit without the stretching. Might they be our pretenders?

Mikeburnfire, I thought of the screwing-with-us option, but we've already gone through a full 24 hours with no deaths (we no-lynched following a night of no kills) so I rejected it. At any rate not lynching will not get us away from here.

I will withhold a nomination until I've heard from Werebear, SpamWise and Thok, though.

[the silent speaker]

Fiasco, SpamWise, I make no assumptions. I had a thought -- one even I don't give especial credence to, certainly not yet -- so I put it out there. (And note that I labeled it a "paranoid thoery." There's a reason for that.) Cartainly any reasonable theory will have to reach at least inasmuch as we seem to have a group that is evil but doesn't recruit and doesn't kill, and for all anyone knows there are two groups out there still, maybe more. We could have papal scum, satanist scum, and deceptive scum.

I can divide the town into three groups:

1. Mikeburnfire, Cogito, petroleumjelly. Either all of these are scum or (the more likely) none are. I'm a little wary of handing them the keys to the island by letting them get an absolute voting bloc all by themselves, but that's a worry for tomorrow, not today.

2. Commodore Amazing, VitaminR. I think there is a strong likelihood that they are who they say they are; they are probably pro-town, I think, but a case could be made for their evil. I do think that Tamuz was scum, despite being unaffiliated with the Vatican, so I'm cautious about ruling these two out, but we almost certainly have better places to look than Commodore, and VitaminR is a free lynch if we decide to try him (so definitely a poor choice for the main lynch).

3. Fiasco, SpamWise, Thok, Werebear. There is a moral certainty that at least one of these is scum. Either the last three include at least one pope, who has to be lynched posthaste, or Fiasco lied about there being a pope to fiddle his results.

This much should be evident enough to everybody, especially point 3. (If people want to include me in one of the latter two categories, fair enough.) So I look very much askance at SpamWise's saying he "doesn't understand the reasoning" behind Thok's nominations of him or Fiasco. It should be as obvious to Thok that one of those two are pope-affiliated as it is to SpamWise that one of Thok and Fiasco are.

Fiasco, what can you tell us about the nature of those results? I'm not expecting that you can tell us what they were or who they were on, but can you tell us the quality of the information? For instance, were they unambiguous guilty-or-innocent results on a living player?

I can nominate three people, and all of them will come from Group 3, but there are four people there. Fiasco, Werebear, Thok and SpamWise, convince me to leave you out.

[the silent speaker]

I am the post restrictor. Night One I targeted Fritzler with the same restriction Fiasco had. Night Two it was Commodore Amazing, who had to make a sentence per post containing all words with different initial letters. Night Three was Seol and numbers, Night Four was Thok, and Night Five was Fiasco. Last night I gave Werebear a restriction not previously given by me to anybody. (Werebear's completes the set of restrictions I have available to hand out, but I have an unlimited number of all of them.) Fritzler can confirm this (if he still can post), and Fritzler is confirmed town, so that should confirm me.

This is absolutely not a scum ability. It may be irrelevant except as a nuisance or it may not, but

if

as has been hypothesized by some Pooky's kill method involved guessing post restrictions, the presence of a temporary extra one just might have some protective effect. That, incidentally, is one reason I am skeptical of Werebear's claim; I might have a quasi-doctoral role myself, making it less likely he has one too. Especially as mine (if it exists) is nowhere near as straightforward as the one he claimed. This quasi-doctorate is admittedly sheer speculation on my part, and my role may have some other game effect entirely, or be nothing more than a piece of flavor.

Thok, SpamWise, please don't wait on each other. Whoever posts next should claim. Role, choices if applicable and whether or not you're a pope, please.

[the silent speaker]

Fiasco, the point of my doctor hypothesis was not that the restriction was temporary; the point was that any guess of that player's restriction that night would necessarily be incomplete, because of the just-imposed one that no one knows about yet but me. Speaking of which, Werebear has apparently not been affected by the new restriction. How very bizarre. I

thought

I got it in in time.

Yes, I think something bad will happen if I nameclaim, unfortunately, so I'm not going to.

I targeted you because I found your claim of information stolen away on the eve of its revelation entirely too convenient. Yes, this means you would have to fake an extra requirement inconvenient in itself, but (especially for one day) that needn't be too onerous. I targeted Seol for much the same reason. (As of that point I still considered my role wholly nuisance.) Werebear I targeted because if he was a doctor and I was a doctor I might do some actual good; I don't recall my specific motivation behind picking Thok; Fritzler was speaking entirely in short spurts and I wanted to see what poking him with a requirement to make sentences varying lengths would do to him. Commodore Amazing had expressed doubt the previous day about how pro-town a post restrictor such as Adele might be, so I gave him a taste.

[the silent speaker]

Okay, wow. People are believing SpamWise's claim why again? He has, to review: 1. Claimed another player's role. No one else had duplication of powers, discounting the masons who had to.
2. Claimed that role with an utterly different persona. Perry Mason and Demosthenes of Athens do the same thing? Ha. It is with amusement that I chortle.
3. Claimed not to have used a one-shot investigation for

six

nights.
4. Explained that he was reluctant to have Seol killed precisely

because

Seol claimed "his" role. Funny -- normally the ability to counterclaim is considered evidence that the first claimant is

lying scum

.

I also disgree with the notion of "testing" ScumWise tonight, for the same reason I opposed "testing" Seol. All he has to do is announce he found an innocent. All that would mean for the rest of us is that he declared another player innocent; he might have done so to protect a scum buddy or simply named a nonbuddy secure in the knowledge that the nonbuddy is not exactly about to challenge him by claiming scum.

Cogito makes a valid point about the projected efficacies of Locke and Freud, but I'd also like to observe that if Freud only protects against suicides, the role is now entirely expendable if we find ourselves still stuck here with no better ideas.

Fiasco, the "pope thing being too convenient" implies "and is therefore suspect of being forged." Ergo, I tried disrupting you, with the restriction that would interfere most with your fifty words a day. And as far as "if I'm scum, and if I faked the silencing, and there are no more popes, blah blah blah"... the point is that if you're scum then you faked the silencing to make people believe there were more popes

and simltaneously

keep your promised results at a safe arm's length. Yes yes yes, you could have come up with information that was unlikely to be proven false, but (a) wine, you, me, (b) if you promise information, and said information turns up useless, you look the worse for that too.

One final note: scrutinizing Werebear's posts more closely, I think I see how he responded to the requirement I imposed. It isn't exactly what my impression was that the restriction

is

-- what he did (if he truly did intend that postscript to be one of his strengths) is, to my understanding, insufficient -- but order is restored to that little corner of the game at least. I know what happened with the post I labeled "bizarre," and it's a simple difference of interpretation.

I think SpamWise is scum. I disbelieve his claim. Nominating him, and him alone, will put him into a third-place tie. My choice is clear.

Nominate: SpamWise

[the silent speaker]

VitaminR, that's just dumb. Why do you say that "SpamWise should be able to use his one-shot ability"? I don't believe he will be able to do any such thing, because I don't believe he has one, because I believe he made it up. What's more, we have been getting virtually no alignments, so even if he announces a guilty and we lynch that player and SpamWise, we're likely to be little the wiser for it -- that's if he reveals a

guilty

. He announces an

innocent

result as I confidently expect he will, and we learn precisely squat.

So -- and this applies to everyone who argued "what do we lose by keeping him alive?" -- what do we gain by it? We don't have anyone standing out as a better candidate for a lynch. Is it no-lnych that you're proposing? If so, okay, that's worth considering; it puts us, probably, in the same position we're in today but with Spamwise having named a player. But if that is not

specifically

what you're driving at, what makes SpamWise's claim so all-fired convincing?

SpamWise is, allegedly, a

prosecutor

. Perry Mason was, again allegedly,

defense

. Yet they are supposed to be the same exact role. This when the number of other duplicated roles (masons excepted) can be counted on the fingers of zero hands. And this when SpamWise believed that his possession of the role made it more likely, not less, that the other claim of it was truthful. Why on earth should he think, by virtue of being one-shot cop, that there ought to be two of him, and why should he think, by virtue of being

Demosthenes

the person, that

Perry Mason

the person made sense for his counterpart? I just don't see it. Nor do I see anyone else explaining any of this.

A possibly interesting tidbit from the noon vote count of Day 1: SpamWise nominated alongside a person he was also nominating. From what I can tell, only three other people did that. Know who one of those three was? LoudmouthLee.

One final thought in my own defense, as I am, after all, the vote leader until the end of this little speech. If we

do

ever get a nightkill, I will be confirmed innocent by way of provable alibi. SpamWise won't.

Vote: SpamWise.

[the silent speaker]

Regarding petroleumjelly, who complained that Fiasco has gone three days on the promise undelivered of information: THANK you. I've been trying to tell everybody this, and being ignored or ridiculed, for two days now. However, I did not "restrict Fiasco after it was very clear that he was going to give us information," as you erroneously claimed; I restricted him after it became clear he was

not

going to.

Regarding Cogito: yes, as a matter of fact, if SpamWise were to declare you innocent and then be lynched and reveraled as "Demosthenes, ancient Greek orator," as his claim is -- remember,

he

didn't claim to be the prosecutor, he only explained that the historical Demosthenes was prosecutorial -- I

don't

think that would say a great deal. We haven't been getting any alignments on death. It's not out of the question that Seol was scum, too, and we

know

that he at least had the name he claimed. All lynching SpamWise and turning up Demosthenes would tell us indisputably is that he wasn't a pope. But we don't know that our scum

are

popes; indeed, if all the name claims are valid our scum are not popes. (That would point directly at Fiascum, because it would mean he lied to us outright, but I digress.)

Regardless, I

cannot

be a pope. Cannot cannot cannot. The night Fiasco had his results snatched away I was

busy blocking someone else.

Of all the people here, I'm the only one with an actual ironclad alibi (as far as being a pope is concerned) -- yet

I

am the one getting voted, even by Fiasco, who should know better.

Fiasco, Seol's claimed one-shotness would be too coincidental for what? Seol, if he were lying scum, would not have been calculating what role would be in the game to elicit counterclaims. He would have been looking for a suitably plausible-but-not-easily-disprovable claim to get by with.

I see a claim easy for scum to forge, which inexplicably failed to counterclaim when he had no reason to believe his role was duplicated, and which inexplicably failed to put his power to use for

much

too long. As I said earlier but which bears emphasizing: His role flavor is neither a match nor a parallel for Seol's -- Seol what defense where his is prosecution-flavored oration, and Seol was explicitly an attorney where he is not; instead, he's an orator (a stuttering orator, strangely enough) who happens to also be renowned as a prosecutor. And

no other role in the game is a duplicate.

Not one. (Again, masons excepted, since their role requires duplication by definition.)

If you insist on giving him the time to announce a result before lynching him, fine. But the logical followup to that plan is

no lynch

-- not the lynching

me

that you all seem bent on.

Regarding the clamors for my role name: Which part of "something bad will happen if I nameclaim" was too hard for you? I can safely say I am not a pope, but I have reason for not giving out my actual name. (Actually, I can safely say I'm anything from John Adams to John Wayne, because the only way to be proven one way or the other is by death. No one is left who might counterclaim me anyway.)

[the silent speaker]

Fiasco, yes, one-shot cops are not all that common. As such, your conclusion -- viz. that you in SpamWise's position would assume this game has not one of this uncommon role but

two

-- makes no sense whatever.

"Of course any scumpopes aren't going to claim pope now that I'm out. That they haven't therefore doesn't count against me." Of course it doesn't. But you're making it out as if it counts

for

you, and that's just absurd! From your perspective, someone who has claimed has lied, and yet you are making NO EFFORT to find out who, preferring instead the easy lynch of me, who provably HAS NOT!

And if it turns out that all the claims of nonpope are true, that bloodydamnwell

does

count against you, because it means that YOU lied. Blatantly, demostrably and execrably.

"Even if you did have an ironclad alibi, I would still be voting for you; you could be a scum and yet not a pope."

O RLY?

"I tend to think Tamuz was protown, because I don't think Tamuz's character fits in well with Popes."

Your words, Fiascum. Your precise words at the beginning of the day.

The fact that ScumWise is being desperately protected by Fiascum is also noted. The latter even is defending the former's decision not to counterclaim Seol. Let the man speak for himself -- what's it to you?

"Well, there's the part that you somehow can't say anything else, at all, about what that something bad is or is not, and the part where you've ignored all requests for further explanation."

Oh yes, because those are questions that were, y'know,

asked.

(Please note: sarcasm.) I saw people demanding role name, nothing more -- and frankly, that won't save me, since I will wager anything that at least three people would immediately say that the changing of my mind from not wanting to give it to giving it is scummy and lynch me anyway and I will wager only slightly less that ScumWise and Fiascum would be two of them. And if giving my name will not stave off lynching, why should I bother? You'll find out soon enough, you bloodthirsty bxstxrds. After I'm gone, town, look to Fiascum and ScumWise.

But since you asked so nicely, the flavored reason I am restricted against saying my name is that a man's private information is his own. Also, all my posts have abided by one of my five restrictions -- feel free to check.

VitaminR, why vote me?

Everyone

can't be true because either we have popes (and someone who claimed nonpope has lied) or we don't have popes (and Fiascum who claimed a pope blocked him has lied). If you believe that I am what I say, as you should, what more do you want?

[the silent speaker]

I'm pretty sure Seol didn't miss out on posting numbers every post. Thok had a lot of fun with his typos. I took Fritzler's and Fiasco's keeping theirs on faith, though, since that one's the biggest pain to check for. By the way, Fiasco, the minimum word length for the initial-leter restriction is ten, and that's not nearly as trivial as you made it out to be.

"1) Purely by coincidence, someone claimed a role that exists in hardly any games, but that does exist in this one"

The frequency of the role in general has no bearing on how plausible this one in specific is or isn't. Indeed, "uncommon but plausible" is probably the ideal role claim -- it means you're likely to be neither challenged nor counterclaimed. I stand by my opinion that SpamWise is scummy, and that Fiasco is defending him scummily. But it looks like they and the masons (petroleumjelly excepted) are going to run me up for no crime other than accusing SpamWise.

Please, someone unvote. A no-lynch puts us in the same position tomorrow as today with an extra word from SpamWise. I'd rather not die and I've hardly even been given anything to defend myself against.

[the silent speaker]

Both are true, Cogito. I cannot nameclaim as a role restriction. In addition, it would get me nowhere, and given that it won't slow my death any, why should I bother?

Fiasco, until we start getting deaths, I'm going to continue to assume that we're not getting them. And while technically violation of role restriction is not worse than lynching -- the one time I failed my restriction, I had a penalty post at the start of the next day involving all five; I left one out of that, realized my error and promptly double posted -- that really doesn't seem in the spirit of the game. Mr. Grey will probably not take kindly to it.

What if there's a split motive/role kind of deal going? That might explain some of the weirdness. Just a thought.

[the silent speaker]

...so was my role anything other than flavor?

Was

SpamWise one-shot, or did he have an investigation every night?

Also, I'm curious if my putting every letter of the alphabet into every post affected anything early on. But that's more a question for Pooky than for mith.

[the silent speaker]

it's not clear whether Polly is another parrot, or Adele's got a dead bird sitting on her head.

It's not dead, it's sleeping!