Is that really a surprise?

Certainly wasn't expecting viking to be blue tho, gotta admit.

surprise that both our 1/2 are blue.

I concede. No need to wait for Born to confirm the obvious.

OK, based on this list, but with a completely clean slate – no previous clues – what do you guess for London – 3?

Battery
Blind
Bond
Boom
Brother
Buffalo
Drill
Dust
Ear
France
Hole
Nut
Pants
Revolution
Scarecrow
Sugar
Viking

The same ones we did guess, I imagine.

Bond
two of Revolution/Drill/Viking


France no because not England

OK. I guess London was a shitty clue. I thought it hit our last three words hard, if you take out our previous biases.

and sorry nails.. we went hard every turn...

Not your fault. I've got a write-up going, but London was just one of several shitty clues on my part. I'm sure it was frustrating for you all.

London is the home of MI6.

London is a city.

London is in Europe.

So buffalo and france?

Yep

Makes sense when you say it like that. I was pretty keen on buffalo if anybody else was on board, but London did seem like a clue away from France. Doubt there would be a better clue for those 3 words tho.

Was Buffalo also a Manhattan word and we spursed something?

Yeah, we kind of got off those unfortunately when we thought there was a good chance Buffalo could be in with the NY/Manhattan clues if it was ours, but it was brought up. And on France we eliminated that for the wrong reason.

Might have been tough for us to go both link to a US city and link to a Euro country, but it is a logical approach for those 3 nails.

Slug
Gum
Mouse
Pop
Scroll
Leprechaun
Rat
Skyscraper
Bond
Time
Cloak
Ship
Virus
Snake
Apple
Buffalo
France
Dollar
Nut
Bubble
Parade
Butterfly
Battery
Viking
Lead
Rope
Soup
Theater
Rip
Revolution
Duck
Bridge
Satellite
Ear
Blind
Ice cream
Thief
Dust
Court
Shower
Sugar
Big Ben
Wish
Car
Drill
Scarecrow
Pants
Brother
Boom
Hole

GG, blue team.

Sorry, red team. So many missteps, and a brutal ending.


vermin - 5: Mouse/Rat/Slug/Snake/Virus. You got the first four plus a harmless neutral guess, picking up Virus on the next turn.

bubble - 3: Pop/Gum, plus either Bond or Time. I briefly looked up whether Time Bubble was a thing (because it sounded familiar) and found something video-game related, so I figured I'd try to get an extra one through either that or Bond (didn't want to clue 4 since they're both stretchy). But it ended up being a bit of a rabbit hole for you guys, and D1's idea of cluing bubble - 0 later is what I should have done to stop the madness.

Manhattan - 3: Apple/Buffalo/Skyscraper. Yikes. I was originally going to clue NY - 3, but couldn't remember if that was a legal clue (you'd think I'd know by now, after a year-plus of this game). Was going to confirm with Nich, but figured Manhattan would work just as well, so I went with it. Of course, the first post after my clue was, "He didn't clue NY, so Buffalo is out," which effectively ended the game (we just didn't know it yet). I also overlooked Theatre as a blue word, which didn't help, either. And gotta admit, I never would have thought of the Manhattan - Times Square - Time connection. I mean, it was fine we spursed into a word I had previously (and poorly) clued, but that just made it harder to get you to rethink Buffalo because you thought we were done with this clue.

magical - 3: Cloak/Leprechaun/Scroll. Wish was an expected neutral guess -- just unfortunate it was first on the list -- but it was the only hiccup.

explosion - 0: This is where I should have gone bubble - 0, because it was those words that were dangerous. But the reason I tried to clue away from Boom only (an assassin) was because I mistakenly thought that the blue team had Soup prominently on their list (like they were going to guess it on their next turn), so I was thinking that might get you to take it off of our list. However, after rereading, it turns out they actually liked Viking over Soup (spoiler alert... ).

Still, I didn't mind the outcome here. With Soup out of the way, we had Apple and Scroll next on the list, and they had four tough words left, so I just needed to clue for our last three words and we'd be good.

London - 3: I thought this would get us there, but in retrospect, I probably should have just clued Bills - 1 or Sabres - 1 here, because Buffalo was firmly a never-guess and I needed to get it back on your radar. If we could knock that out of the way (along with Scroll and Apple), then we'd only have Bond and France left, and we'd just be taking the chance that blue couldn't go out the next turn.

Blech.

float was dangerous with boom as assassin. was thinking a log boom. That is why I asked us not to move soup down, because we would then have to move boom up.

But. I thought boom was theirs at first, and it seemed to be the assassin adter the 0 explosion clue.

You clued well, nails. And yeah, what can you do when we think we have all the Manhattan words but don't. Tough spot. Plus chasing our tails on bubble.

I was an advocate that bond was the bubble word..... were you thinking financially there?

Yes...occupational hazard. Not an obvious connection, though.

Oh and NY would be a legal acronym in my opinion. Seems fine, The letters represent words, just like FBI or CIA or USD

Yeah, I just couldn't remember for some reason, and didn't want to take the time to PM Nich about it. Turned out to be a bad decision...

I did have a tingly feeling that buffalo was ours and time was spursed...just not enough to put up much of a fight about it.

And sometimes things just look different when you're spymaster. Gg all, and good effort nails.

GG

Gj Nich/team

Bit of an awkward game with some tough links and both teams getting clued off an assassin.

Awkward games are always fun. Our masterplan of not guessing soup worked out in the end. GG insanity, wahoo and good clues Nich. GG reds, though spot at the end.

gg

nice job team

yes, in all that I forget to say gg reds...

AE and Born are next I believe.