Force and sign are the most straightforward to me.

It's the fastest pitch, and there's a sign for it (single finger).

As for the other possibilities:

Hit - I guess not impossible, but if it's force/hit, why bring baseball into this? If it's sign/hit, why use the fastest pitch and not changeup?

Brush - I guess a fastball could be used as a "brushback" pitch (a pitch thrown close to the body to make the batter not stand so close to the plate), but that seems really weak compared to the other stuff.

None of the other 6 even remotely make sense.

Brush for curveball sorta like it mighta brushed by, you don't fully hit it

I am absolutely not on hit/force. And I am 100% on sign. Only debate to me is if the 2nd word is force or hit.

Many of the other pitches imo could be confused with something else, like changeup we may not have immediately though to baseball/sign

It's going to take me a lot of convincing that it's not force/sign.

My first thought was wouldn't the clue for force + sign just be police? Or astrological or something like that?

The baseball wavelength just makes me think of hit much more than force, and it's possible Neil didn't think the other pitches would be needed/had other downsides

All of this said, it is not clear to me at all and the arguments for force are very valid

I imagine we can guess sign right, none of us are getting off sign?

I don't think police is strong at all for sign, plus police brings governor into the mix.

I'll let D1iab make that call. I'm fine with it.

Maybe not police but cosmic or universal seems like it would hit sign + force

Idk I just think we'd get a "bigger" word for force.

Fastball makes me think just hit a fastball. They get hit, baseball is all about getting hits. And in case we aren't familiar it should be obvious enough for us to figure out sign

sign

I'm really torn on the last one. In a vacuum, I think hit is stronger than force, but when there are other clues in the same domain he could've used that would avoid this confusion, it makes me wonder why he would choose that one. But it could also be like pregnant from last round and he just didn't think about it that much.

I was thinking something like this, where he thought "ok they'll think of the 2 words immediately first, they're the best ones" and not so much that we'll find reasons to look for other words or have a vast knowledge of baseball pitches to consider from

You don't need a vast knowledge of baseball to know what a curveball is lol. There's not even any real blockers for "baseball" either afaict, which is really the only reason I'm considering guessing force over hit here.

I mean, I think force is stronger than sign as well...it's just that this clue would be terrible for a hit/force combo.

Yea hit + force is just punch or kick or whatever like that imo

Bumping this in case it was lost in the shuffle.

sign

I think it really comes down to how much credit we want to give neil. If we think he chose the clue purposefully, then we should guess force, and if we think he just clued without really considering his options, then we should guess hit.

I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and guess force.

If I'm outvoted that's always fair, I'm still on Hit

Fastball just immediately makes my mind go to baseball and Hit. I don't want to say Neil "wasn't considering his options", I think he had Sign + Hit and thought, "hey fastball is a good word that hits these and better than anything else. And if they think about another word they should still come back to these 2 as they're the top 2".

Turn 1 we had like 5 candidates and went w top 3 which worked. I think here we just go with top 2 candidates, we're kinda finding reasons to get to force imo

And d1 you're Aussie right? Like idk I wouldn't be clueing screwballs and knuckleballs expecting anyone outside US to really know baseball....I mean I barely know those terms myself lol

Why are you bringing up terms I never mentioned? I said curveball and baseball, which are things everyone knows. And honestly, do you have any compelling reason why he wouldn't just clue baseball? That would clearly come to mind before anything else, so what are the blockers for that?

I don't think Sign is as obvious for baseball as it is for fastball.

I suppose he could have clued curveball but my thinking is Neil thought it was the same/he may have thought curveball wouldn't be as clear

I asked what the blockers are...

Sign wasn't even immediately obvious to me with the fastball clue.

There aren't blockers for baseball...I'm saying baseball - 2 we wouldn't get sign

For curveball I was saying brush could be a blocker or perhaps he thought we would start looking for other stuff if he clued something besides fastball

Idk just seems like we're thinking too much w/ it. Seems a good clue for sign + hit imo, maaaaybe curveball would be more precise but is that the reason we're not gonna go with the kinda standout top 2?

That makes 0 sense.

It's the same sport ffs. Why would fastball hit sign, but baseball wouldn't?

Pitchers have signs/signals to catcher about what pitch they're throwing. Other teams try to steal signs and figure out the pitch. A specific pitch makes me think of the word 'sign', baseball is a bit too general for me to insta think of it

And also, if we're talking about the strongest words, then that would be hit/force>sign. But that would obv never be the clue for that combo.

Yeah it hits sign better than baseball does, I'll give you that. But the argument is that if there aren't any blockers for baseball and you would get sign anyway, then why give this clue?

I don't know if we would get sign from just baseball. I definitely wouldn't think of it as much and may have pushed for something like hit + cotton with a baseball clue