Camp Merryweather · Notice to all campers
How To Play
One outrage a day
Each morning the camp suffers exactly one gentle outrage — a pinched trophy, a flattened sandcastle, a raffle tin that has walked off. A handful of campers and crimson-blazered camp hosts were about the place; each of them was in exactly one spot, carrying exactly one thing.
The Committee will tell you one fact about the culprit, and no more. Everything else is on the noticeboard.
Pencil it in
- Tap once for a cross — that pairing is ruled out.
- Tap again for a tick — that pairing is confirmed. The board rules out the rest of that row and column for you, because life is short.
- Tap once more to rub it out. Rubbing out a tick takes the crosses it drew with it, and leaves your own marks exactly where they were.
- Tap a clue to strike it through once you have wrung it dry. Purely for your own peace of mind — it is saved with your board, and it never affects your score.
Three blocks make up the board: who was where, who had what, and what was where. They agree with each other, so a fact in one is a fact in all three — which is where most of the fun lives.
One go
When you are ready, name the culprit, the place and the thing, and the tannoy does the rest. There is one scored attempt a day — closing the tab resumes the same half-marked board, but there is no second accusation, and no starting again.
You do not have to fill the whole board first. A full, correct board is simply the flex.
Smudges, not speed
- The verdict is the headline: right or wrong. A wrong accusation still gets the truth read out — the day is spent either way.
- Smudges are marks of yours that contradicted the truth, counted by the camp office when the verdict is read. Each square counts once, however many times you scribbled over it, and the crosses the board drew for you never count against you. Zero smudges is a Clean Sheet.
- Time is taken off the camp clock, for bragging and tiebreaks. It is never the main event, so take your time and be right.
- Streaks. Playing keeps your Full Board streak, whether you are right or wrong. Being right keeps your Clean Record.
The week
| Monday & Tuesday | A small board. A gentle start to the week. |
|---|---|
| Wednesday & Thursday | The standard board. |
| Friday | The special: a bigger board, or a witness telling porkies. You will be told which. |
| Saturday & Sunday | Mid-difficulty, for a leisurely weekend. |
A new case goes up at midnight, camp time. Yesterday's cases stay in the filing cabinet for ever — unranked, untimed, and available to anybody you send a link to.
— The Entertainments Committee