Elementary School of Fish: Boardroom

Teams gathering vital data

Darcy of Taft on a Raft was there to greet teams when we arrived at the plaza in front of the Lawrence Hall of Science. She told us that as participants in The Apprentice, we were to go to room 119 for a board meeting with Mr Zorg. She gave us some Magic Cards which were to get us into the Hall for free--but we had arrived so late that admission was free anyhow. We made our way downstairs to room 119.

There, some gamists (teams Here Be Dragons and Coed Astronomy) were looking at thingies on a table. Someone told us that Mister Zorg wouldn't be able to make the meeting because he was taking a phone call.

The table held game pieces: a boggle cube, a mysterious paper chit with a "2" surrounded by lines, a scrabble tile, one square from a tic-tac-toe grid,... little bits from many games, including a Rock'Em Sock'Em Robot. What games were they from? And what did they mean?

We huddled in a corner a little ways away from the team coed astronomy. We wrote down game names in the order of the pieces on the table. A pattern leapt out:

Bogglecube
sUdoku?
scRabbletile
ticTactoe
bingOcard
gostoNe
...

Ha! Obviously the "board" in this "boardroom" puzzle refered to snowboarding--specifically, Burton brand snowboards! Unfortunately, this pattern did not continue:

bingocArd
chesspaWn
bingocarD
rockemsocKemrobotsrobot
bogglecube?

"AWDK?" didn't look like anything to do with snowboarding, boardrooms, and/or the universe.

Meanwhile, Coed Astronomy was identifying the pieces. They were trying to keep their voices down, but one phrase carried: "Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots" They continued their muttering. Meanwhile, Dwight was on the trail of an idea, but he didn't know the games for all of these pieces. He asked me about the robot. I said, out loud: "I'm going to say this out loud: Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots." There was a bit of snickering around the room.

The BART station lady came to visit the Game Control volunteer. She mentioned "Loki". Oh--some of these people were normally on Team LowKey. I'd seen them applying for the Justice Unlimited Game. Apparently they weren't playing in this game, but they were volunteering to help Game Control. They were a credit to the community.

I think it was Dwight who figured this one out: each of these games was played on a square board. So consider the size of the board, in squares, and map that to the letter of the alphabet:

Boggle:     4 D
Sudoku:     9 I
Scrabble:  15 O
TicTacToe:  3 C
Bingo:      5 E
Go:        19 S
Bingo:      5 E

Chess:      8 H
Bingo:      5 E
RS Robots:  1 A
Boggle:     4 D 

The Bishop!

The PDA liked that answer, and so did the Game Control volunteers waiting to meet us in the back yard.

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