The Games we played during Alex's visit, plus the answer to a 3-door riddle

Last weekend Alex, Eric, and mom and dad came down to visit us for a few days! Here are some of the games we played: 

Scythe. 

The Fox in the Forest.

Codenames. 

Caverna: The Cave Farmers. 

Red Rising. 

Chief Judge of Zarahemla. 

Dune Imperium. 

Lost Ruins of Arnak. 

TZolk'in the Mayan Calendar. 

Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition.

The Shipwreck Arcana.

Viticulture. 

Crossfire. 

Ex Libris. 

In front of you are three doors. Two lead to freedom, and one leads to death. You are allowed to point to exactly one door, and ask exactly one answerable yes or no question. If you are pointing to one of the freedom doors, the guard will answer "yes" or "no" truthfully. If you are pointing at the death door, the guard will either lie or tell the truth with "yes" or "no" completely at random. What do you do?

Answer: 

Point at door A, and ask: "Does door B lead to freedom?" If the answer is yes, then pick door B. If the answer is no, then pick door C. 

How does this work? 

Well, assume that door A is the door that leads to death. In that case, you'll need to pick door B or door C; it doesn't matter what the answer is. In our solution, we picked B or C, so even if door A is the death door, we wind up scott-free. Now assume door A leads to freedom. In that case, it will tell us the truth, so we simply act as if it's telling us the truth, and thus go with door B or C accordingly. Thus, we have all our bases covered.

Alex is home from his mission!

 And I have a condition! It's called cellulitis, and it smells like Midas. Can you tell? That I smell? What the heck? Is that Glen Beck? And everyone said, "Hey! You're writing really cray-cray!" So I continued to type; I didn't want to let down that hype. My wife is the best. She is better than the rest. And so we go on, like boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past....

Henry is six. Joy turns four years old tomorrow! This is her last day of being three. FOREVER.

We went through the Temple open house this last week. Heather is volunteering there as a tour guide. Super cool to go through all the rooms. Did they have an un-dedicate ceremony when it closed down? Or does it just happen? Kind of like getting set apart for a calling--when you're released, you aren't un-set apart.

Dune: The desert planet. He who controls the spice, controls the Universe. Eric should do a movie review on the new movie.

Spoon: The dessert planet. He who controls the syrup, controls the Universe.

Doomed: The deserted planet. He who controls the--wait, what was that!? Ahhh!! Help! We're bein-- . . . . . . .

So, you're on a gameshow, right? And before you are three doors. Behind one is a new car. Behind the other two are goats. You pick one randomly. Then the game show hosts opens one of the two doors you didn't pick, revealing a goat. The game show host now gives you the option: you can either keep your previous door, or switch to the other closed one. What should you do? 

You: Oh boy! I love goats! Me: Uh... but let's assume you want the car in this case. You: Ah, man.

So, you're in prison, right? And before you are three doors. Behind one is certain death. Behind the other two are tickets to freedom. You are allowed to point at one door and then ask one yes-or-no question. If the door you pointed at was one of the doors that lead to freedom, the guard must answer "yes" or "no" truthfully. However, if you point at the door that leads to death, the guard will say either "yes" or "no" completely at random. What question should you ask that guarantees your freedom?

You: Wait, why am I in prison? Me: Don't worry about it. You: I stole the goats, didn't I? Me: Yeah...

So, you're in front of three doors, right? And--

You: Forget it. Me: No, it's gonna be good, trust me, just stick around. You: Nope, no more of this three door stuff. I'm outta here!

Alex is coming home soon!

My youngest brother, Elder Alex Perazzo, will be done with his mission later this week. We'll get to see him at Christmas, but he will be coming down earlier, with the rest of the fam, to play games mid-November.

Right before he left on his mission, he came down with mom and dad and Eric and we played games for two straight days. Here's the post on that: The Post where we play games for 2 Straight days. I just looked back over that post, and the caption on one of the pictures says that it was my first time playing Scythe. Wow, crazy. And now I play a lot (just this last Friday I went back over again to play deluxe Scythe). Oh, also about that post, you know the picture captioned where I had 6 workers and Alex had 2, guess who won? Yeah, it was Alex that won that game.

I've been looking forward to Alex's visit for a long time now. And now it's almost here! (In less than two weeks.) 

Oh, and if you haven't yet, here's a plug to watch my latest youtube video:

My Halloween story I just wrote

Mr. Mansafield stood in the kitchen and eyed his three guests. "One of you is a murderer," he said. Then he died. Then everyone else died, too. Turns out that poison was a little stronger than Mrs. Lift has anticipated. The End.

They came! The Chief Judge games came!

 They came today! Wa-hoo! I finally got to see if the math I did months ago about how big to make the tiles to fit in the squares, cards in the slots, etc. actually worked out in the real physical world. Spoilers: they did, thankfully. Really really well too.

I sorted out everything into the three different boxes. And then I took pictures for everyone.

The boxes.

I ordered each box to come with an insert so that the pieces
can stay underneath and the board and rules can fit on top.

The board. It looks beautiful!

The coin tokens and the goods tiles.

So glad the tiles fit nicely into the boxes,
and the cards into their card slots.

Ta-da! Can't wait to play.

Henry is Pikachu, Chief Judge rules

So funny story with the above picture. I was going to post it on Facebook with the caption, "Look what I got!?" And then when people would ask me I would tell them the truth: "I got this empty PS5 box from the dumpster! Isn't that cool?" I decided against it because, well, not everyone would read the comments and then most of Facebook would go on believing I actually got a PS5. 

Yesterday my family and I went to a Halloween party. Henry dressed up as Pikachu, and Joy was Rapunzel. Heather was a unicorn and I was a ninja. A kid at the party came up to me and asked, "are you Naruto?" And I was like, ". . . Yes." Which appeased the kid and he went on his way. 

The copies of Chief Judge of Zarahemla will be here by Wednesday! And then we'll see if I uploaded the files right and if the cards and boards even come out well. Fingers crossed. Speaking of Chief Judge of Zarahemla, here's the 2-page rule book:

Art Files for Chief Judge of Zarahemla

Card fronts

Card backs

Bottom of Box

Land Tiles 1

Land Tiles 2

Player Boards

Resources

Board

Coins

Top of Box