Written by Morpheus Kitami
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| The cover to the original 1981 edition of the board game. |
Now that we've seen all the cases the computer game has to offer, it's time to see how they played out in the original board game. I say original compared to the reissued board game, released about a decade ago. I'm sure the differences are minor, but still, it should be interesting. And of course, after that there's the final case, untouched by the computer games for reasons that I once knew but have since forgotten.
To recap, in the board game, you are not playing as Holmes, but rather as one of Holmes' Irregulars. The game is played with a board and several little books. The case book containing the introductions and endings, a clue book containing all the places you go to, newspapers much like the ones in the game, a quiz book replacing the judge, the London Directory and a board representing London. There are more Regulars, like Mycroft Holmes, and Sam Parsons as well as the ability to go to 221B Baker Street. Oh, and the game actually bothers to tell you the date each case takes place on.
THE CASE OF THE SOLICITOUS SOLICITOR
The introductory text plays out quite the same as the video, except that Holmes doesn't seem to be ill and you know, the player is the one the case is being explained too. It goes over in more detail what the game itself seems to have touched on a bit too briefly, like what Tuttle had in his desk. And descriptions of the room which the game doesn't quite do a good job of imitating. Information that was in the game's newspaper is instead in the introduction, like the names of the secretaries. I do feel reading this that a considerable amount was lost in the translation to video, though sometimes the loss was not always bad. The introduction mentions some locations which are undoubtedly red herrings, like Lydell's Bakery, 345 Macklin Street. The last part is relevant in some cases, but not when we have the name of the place and the London directory.
We discover that Tuttle gave a locket to Miss Spring, of obviously inferior quality to the one he would give Virginia Monroe, and that Spring gave it back. Oddly, in a lot of cases there are things which better connect the threads together. There are also jokes that make more sense in the board game, like Dr. Murray not knowing who we are. It won't affect the rating, but I do feel like the video game is inferior to the board game. However, I will say that the board game makes it way too easy to cheat by just glancing at another location. Not helped by how the board game groups a lot of important characters together in the clue book.
The context of Mr. Cartwright's stay in the Criterion Club is slightly altered, as he asked for food, and more worryingly, had a revolver. He's still innocent and decides to resolve things peacefully with his wife, but it does bring up a question of what would have happened.
Diggs has a lot more reason to be angry in this version, as his work was not, in fact, mediocre, it was very good. Everyone except Swathmore says so, including the people at his new firm. It's Tuttle's that was quite mediocre, and Tuttle's sudden rise resulted in quite nasty things said unfairly towards Diggs' work. There's a weak red herring thrown in by having weedkiller delivered to him as we approach, but this seems like one area that the game was wise to excise.
There's a further bit in the chain to finding Ms. Monroe; Seems you don't need to guess as was the case with the computer game, albeit an educated guess, but instead there's a chain where you can just naturally fall into the course by going to the residence of the Goodes, where Tuttle sent his letters to Monroe owing to her father's disapproval.
Once we get on the chain with the corrupt business dealings, some amusing changes happen with Mr. Heathcliff. The fellow makes his distaste of us quite plain, and oddly enough, we discover that Holmes is working on the case concurrently, as he already has the envelope by the time we arrive. And to end our situation there:
"'Do come again," says [the butler] Maitland, with all the sincerity of Henry VIII speaking the marriage vows."
The board game has two sets of questions, one directly about the case, and one about the side information that we obtained. The first four are directly used in the game, with a fifth about who Tuttle was engaged to, which by now you should know the answer. That leaves the four side questions:
Why did Cartwright leave the office suddenly?
Because he received a note, or as the booklet tells me, a note written by Swathmore. I don't actually know how you could figure this one out without reading this afterwards, so I'm not entirely surprised that the video game removed that bit. I'm not really sure how they could have figured that out with the information we've been given.
Why did Miss Spring see Tuttle on the morning of his murder?
I have no idea, but the answer is that she returned his locket to him. My bad, I didn't really care about the deep details of Tuttle's escapades.
What is Diggs' hobby?
Horticulture. (checks answer) Gardening? I'm counting that as a win.
In what case in the Canon did Holmes say, "Come Watson, come, the game is afoot"?
Er...The Hound of the Baskervilles? Wrong, Abbey Grange. I don't think I remember Abbey Grange. In my defense, I've mostly just watched the two '80s TV adaptations. (Granada and Soviet)
After this, you can return to the case book to see Holmes' summation. It's basically the same as the computer game, accounting for the text's lack of need to worry about video file size.
The Case of the Banker's Quietus
Or in the computer game, The Banker's Final Debt. As I'm not aware of what quietus means, that's probably not an unwise change, although it does sound less mysterious. To start with, some information about the embezzlement that Mason was working on is shifted around, Mycroft tells us the information that would fall to a minor character in the computer game. It's also apparently related to South American business dealings that went bad. Which feels more Poirot than Holmes, but I guess Holmes did it sometimes too. There was that vampire one, but we don't talk about the vampire one.
The poorly written joke in the game about David killing Mason is slightly better here, instead it's The Man with the Broken Nose, a Rodin statue copy. Mabel Brown, meanwhile, is now married to a merchant seaman, and no longer do shopkeepers joke about her being Mason's mistress. There's a red herring about a Michael Kempfield, an old school chum of Mason's.
Tying the case into The Thames Murders, we discover that the barrister of Bacon and Company is Charles Attard. I wonder why they changed it in the computer game? A desire to not make it seem like Moriarty was connected to this crime?
Johnny Small may actually have been poisoned, as here we actually get evidence that he had arsenic in his system before his fatal encounter with a wagon. More people have heard of his role in the Drummond's Bank robbery. What's more interesting is Small's personal effects, a suit, a Roman coin and a letter from Nat [Cook] telling him to either hold onto "them" or to sell "them" to "him".
What's the interesting bit? The Roman coin. Turns out that Quintin Hogg is keeping tabs on Moriarty, not because he's crazy, but because this version of Holmes is ranting and raving about Moriarty and his organization which covers London like a spider's web. He's got himself some deep fingers into everything, including the justice system. Why is this relevant? Because a wagon driver was murdered two years ago with a bag of Roman coins around his neck, and every now and then more appear with coins on their bodies. Holmes takes it as a sign that they're people that crossed Moriarty. Adding evidence to this is that they were petty criminals before mysterious starting on some major robberies.
Here, we actually meet with Sandra Gamble, who explicitly connected Blue to Hawk. I don't really think there's anything outside of the dreaded newspaper fishing expedition I keep mentioning to finding Blue to begin with though. It does seem like it's less of a fishing expedition thanks to the board game making the connection between Hawk and the disappearance of the statues more obvious. Though I guess once you figure out Hawk, it shouldn't be too hard to connect her newspaper article to him, then the later one telling you who she is.
The questions in the board game are more mixed compared to the computer game. The ones I remember seem to be between ones relating to the Five Sisters, the jewels that were stolen from De Vries, and a bonus one in which we mention who were embezzling the money. Oh, and the link of the board case to The Six Napoleons is an actual question here.
Unlike the computer game, Holmes and Lestrade catch Hawk and Blue before they escape London. Otherwise it pretty much happened as was said in the computer game. It seems that the Moriarty connection is one that we simply never see the results of.
The Thames' Murders
Jaquard's backstory is explained a bit more. Like how his father was killed during the Indian Mutiny, or how he spent his time at the Bagatelle Club. That last bit caused me to stop, load up the game to see if it was in there. Oh, damn it, that serves me right. In my defense, Bagatelle, when spoken, sounds a bit non-sense to my unenlightened, American ears. I didn't even write down the other insult they said about Jaquard, either.
As weird as it sounds, the game actually cut it down considerably. There is a lot more here. Considering that I said that the case was already the longest, that's not surprising. To start with, what Lestrade says about Revell causes me to check the computer game. He points out that he was also at the Bagatelle Club, just hidden behind an Irregulars action in the computer game. I must admit, I'm annoyed at this being the one case to actually take advantage of that feature for anything besides earning less points. On the other hand, meeting with Mr. Ivory, not Mrs. Ivory, requires you to search nearby addresses on the map.
The strange choice of ammo and firearm is actually the board game's fault. There in clear text are Mauser 11mm shells and a Webley revolver. As I read through the clue book, I wonder if I missed something in the game about reading up on the gun. There's a whole chain of events where you can find out who purchased the Mauser T11, where it turns out to have been stolen from one of them. I suppose it's the game's own fault for making the act of reading a file on something cost you points.
Escobedo's boss has another employee here, a 16-year-old named Billy, who informs us about the rug instead of the boss. As strange as it sounds, it feels like it works better than the solo arrangement the computer game had. He's slumped over his bed and gives up his brother in three sentences. Marco comes off as more defensive but still as obviously criminal as before. And awake, for one.
Leticia, I guess that's how you spell it, is clearly more broken up about Jaquard's death than she was in the computer game. Then again, you can't show bloodshot eyes when you have, what, 80p of video space? Then again, some of the blame seems to be on the actress for playing what's clearly supposed to be someone in despair over it as just somewhat coldly denying it.
Twiggs' apartment has a Chinese stereotype as a landlord, complete with broken English. I'll give the writers one thing, it manages to make a figure I thought was shady into someone worse. From this we discover the wallets of Attard, Revell, a Wilfrid Robarts and a Rory Winslow. Who are not terribly relevant.
In general, the board game is doing a better job of connecting together the giant web of intrigue.
There's also a bizarre red herring plot. Kicking it off by seeing Pike, we discover the ladies Jaquard was involved with, Linda Randolph, Kathleen Lindsay and we can't forget Alexandra Pokrovsky. She and Jaquard were such an item last year that there was talk of her leaving her husband for him. Nothing comes of it.
Then there's a longer one. involves where a fellow named Jacob Epstein, a Russian who has been in England since he was 10, joins up with a group of Russian revolutionaries, led by a Michael Botkin and his wife Natalie, who then engage in a fight with suffragettes. Possibly instigated by a known German assassin named Reinhart Lutz who was paid by an unknown person for the princely sum of £2000. It didn't help him very much considering that we find him in the morgue, dead, wearing a blue dress.
As we explore this plot, we find ourselves tracking down Count Nikolai Pokrovsky. A figure who is the head of the Czar's secret police in Europe. And by that, I mean we find him moments after he's been murdered. We quickly find out that he had a detective follow the movements of the revolutionaries in order to see if they were connected to a previous murder. Unfortunately, owing to the fact that this is a red herring, we never really find out what exactly happened.
The board version now has 18 questions for the player to answer, yikes. The first 10 are the ones I already answered, with the 11th's being if they were all related. No. Now for the new ones.
In what story in the Canon is Ronald Adair murdered?
I don't know, but it was The Case of the Empty House. The one in which Holmes returns from being dead. This is where this game got Moran's fondness of Whist, as he was cheated at cards by Adair.
By whom?
Sebastian Moran, though I obviously didn't get it.
What was the dog's name that traced Jaquard's and Attard's path?
I didn't even mention this, and I also didn't remember it. It's Toby.
Who murdered Nikolai Pokrovsky?
I would have guessed Reinhart Lutz, but he's been dead for a long time. By process of elimination, Jacob Epstein? I don't have any idea of how they were connected beyond the revolutionaries getting the heck out of any place I go to. And it's one that I didn't even remember, Konstantine Jastrow.
Why was the body of Reinhart Lutz found in a woman's dress?
Because he disguised himself as a suffragette in order to take out the revolutionaries. Which is basically correct.
Who was responsible for Lutz's death?
One of the revolutionaries? Epstein again? We don't know which one, revolutionaries was enough.
Are there grouse in Scotland?
Do I care? I think Jaquard's stepfather mentioned hunting in Scotland, but that didn't seem worth thinking about. The answer is yes.
The ending is slightly different, as instead of considering Revell his friend, Attard goes after Twiggs just to get back the securities. Otherwise it happened as stated in the computer game. Now, for the main event.
The Case of the Cryptic Corpse
March 5th 1889
The Irregulars arrive at the morgue to discover a mysterious corpse, arriving at Holmes' request. Meeks is performing his autopsy, telling us that the man was killed in one knife strike. Pierced the brain, death was instantaneous. Explaining why, at the Elephant and Castle Theatre that the man was found in, nobody heard his death. His appearance there was not unheard of, as the usher noticed him there, alone, every night for the past week. The victim is a wholly average gentleman, with his only red hair standing out. Holmes of course, notices that his hands are well-manicured. We know nothing about him, but let's see if his possessions reveal anything.
His clothing was made by Poole & Son. Wiggins, the head of the Irregulars, says that he was a bit of a dandy. Watson, agrees, picking up a derby hat like the one Wiggins is wearing. In the pockets there were a bill from the Bridge House Hotel, dated March 3rd. £60 in notes, indicating that this was not a robbery. A cigar in a Simpson's wrapper. The ticket stub for the performance. A diamond stickpin. A slip of paper with the following written on it.
L Borough High - R Borough R - St Geo C - R Waterloo - X Bridge - L Vic Emb - R Villiers
Directions? That's the only option I can think of. At this point, Wiggins examines the derby and finds a piece of paper, which reads as follows:
March 5th
E ormji ErkiP geQi nYwx sr Wtmvtx oMww cSy
e FpeHi woMpp oItx oiiR iRkekiH e uymH ompp
wLi ehzErgiw Alivi ormkLx mr niwX tpec xeK
e vEtmIv er ehdi eFnyvi teWx teMh TpiewYviw
mj hMvo sr ekiRx oiIt fshomr Riev
xlswi wiiO Als viehc OrsA
I apologize to anyone using a screenreader. Obviously, this is our cryptic corpse...a cryptogram! I have some experience with these, so let's start off with this before going around on other things. There might be other methods of doing this, but I'm going to stick to the brute force method of just substituting letters until I hit the right words. Figuring out some bizarre cypher is no fun to me.
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| Me, now trying to figure out how to read this message. |
I look over the text for a word starting and ending with the same letter. Because that could be..."that". Alas, I didn't see one. I then notice two (and later a third, the capitalization is annoying) words with "ii" in the middle, meaning those are probably ee or oo based on common English wording...which if my R is N theory is correct, means that they're both "EE". Spotting Riev, that gives us either Nei_ or Nea_. I can't think of an English word that goes with the former, so near it is.
This is starting to look like...well, something. Something that caught my eye at this point was a _een en_a_e_, with two identical letters surrounding that A. I guess that it must be "been engaged", as that's what people say in classy British environments. Nobody ever says hired or about to be married. Except it isn't "been", because the letter there would make a word with bn__e, which is non-sense. Putting in everything for engaged, however, gets us two interesting further options. Agen_ and read_. Agent and ready seem like obvious next points, but this gets me no new things I can reasonably infer.
Still, I have an ad_e, so I can get something out of it...only, there isn't a word that can be constructed from that. So somewhere along the line I screwed up. What if "engaged" is "engages"? Well, as_e isn't any better, so let's start over and try again. What if it's Nei_? Neil...? No, I think the mistake I made must have been in assuming it was engaged. Moving back a step, I notice that I have a __e a__an_e_ __ere where the second letter of the first and last words are the same. What if it's "the a__an_et where"? No, that's not it. Going still odder, I notice that the _een I had trouble with before starts with the same letter as the end of another EE word. In fact, this may just be the pivot point I should be focusing on. Even better, I notice the one that the letter is also connected to two of the words ending on double consonents. Ergo, this is what I should focus on.
I narrow that down to five options, well, six, but the sixth isn't appropriate for Sherlock Holmes. He doesn't do that. I'll start with the one I was leaning towards to begin with kill/kiss. Before I determine fully which is which, let's see if we get any clues from the completed word, and there's a ra_ier as well as one of the kee_, so, maybe T is P? Seems like this might just be it, as this reveals that the second word is kni_e, or knife. I also figure out that S is O and M is I.
At this point I have a pai_, but the last letter is the same as the last one in engaged from earlier, so I double check that I don't have other options. Pain is there, but not an option. Maybe I just went wrong after getting engaged? We're not going to assume that's engaged, maybe I'm wrong. We still have ready, and more importantly, that connects to my previous correct guess of O, putting CSY as YOU. This gets me just enough to get p_ea_ure_, which of course connects into the kill/kiss thing, ergo I now have those correct.
I gradually make more and more of the final deductions, pausing for a couple of moments to wonder if I did something wrong, only to realize that this cryptogram is fudged. No seriously, I looked up to see if "spirpt" was a word only to discover that this problem is known, and presumably fixed in the edition I'm not playing right now. Here is the cryptogram as I am able to reconstruct it. Note, that in the case of adze and quid I checked to make sure those were valid English words. I know quid is Latin, but adze is not something I'm familiar enough with to say it's a word in a cryptogram.
a knife angel came just on spirpt kiss you
a blade skill kept keen engaged a quid kill
she advances where knight in jest play tag
a rapier an adze abjure past paid pleasures
if dirk on agent keep bodkin near
those seek who ready know
Let's say that spirpt is supposed to be spirit. This is some sort of bizarre sword poem, and I feel like I wasted several hours on this. I'm ticked off because this cryptogram is annoying because I was on the right track, but I thought I was wrong because there were no words rather than ones I didn't even know! This is a bad case, even without the misspelling. Assuming Joe bought the newer copy and roped us in. That's probably four of us, whose day will be shot over this which is incredibly easy to assume you screwed up somewhere along the line, and we might not have even started the damn case yet! If the developers were to put this case into the computer game, they would have been wise to take out the cryptogram aspect of it.
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| It's a lot of ground to cover. |
The clerk at the hotel was the one who checked in the man, who came in with a woman. They registered under the name of Mr. & Mrs. Donald. He describes Mrs. Donald as a young, attractive woman with a playful personality. She drew the attention of the clerk to a pendant she was wearing and asked if it wasn't the loveliest thing he had ever seen. Curious. That doesn't really help us though, so let's explore where the trail ends.
I start with the Tivoli Music Hall, nothing. Charing Cross House? Station? What? Nothing? Let's try that mystery place then. It's Simpson's Cigar Divan. Okay, I'm starting to wonder if the map is truly necessary for this one. The manager there played chess with him, and found out that he has a strange accent, which the man said was Scottish, and that part of his family line migrated to there...a family name which is shared with one of Napoleon's marshals. He left their game at 4:45 every day for a pressing appointment.
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| This is why Mycroft stays at the Diogenes Club. |
Firstly, Watson got married on the 1st, good for him. There's a mysterious missive from A. to J.V., which may or may not be significant. Recent butter shipments from Ireland have caused a rash of stomach complaints, something I'm sure certain butter companies would prefer remain hidden. Oh, and a high pressure, low reward position for a clerk. Some things never change. Fat lot of good that does me.
Let's meet with some of the Regulars. Meeks isn't going to tell me anything new, so let's keep that at the back of the line. Going to Disraeli O'Brian tells us that I was a bit premature in doing this, because we tell him to look for someone with the name of Charlie or Charles. Seems that inadvertantly tells us that his name is Charlie MacDonald. Definitely not the guy in the directory. Porky Shinwell has nothing.
Sam Parsons, an informant who wasn't in the computer game, hands us a minature safe with a working tumbler lock and a note. "Have to get down under to crack it." F.P. We were asking O'Brian about an M.P. Charlie. Ho, ho, ho, I think this may be quite revealing. I'm not going on a fishing expedition just yet, because there are a lot of F.P.s in the directory. The two newspaper men I deemed relevant to the case had nothing to say. The rest I deemed irrelevant to the case or just didn't even have an entry.
I decide to just further expand upon areas I've determined to be on interest in regards to the directions. I hit something at Grand Hotel, or rather Cox's Bank, since places can shift between games. You'd think that wouldn't be true for names on the board, but eh. The manager tells us that excavations have been taking place across the street, before telling us that the man was Donald P. Charles. He came in every banking day at 4:45. Okay, I see what happened. Does Charles have an entry in the directory? No.
Not having any real leads I can take, I go across the street to find out if the game will talk about the construction there. If that sounds odd, it's not unheard of for a bank to be robbed by digging a tunnel under it involving misdirection with red-headed men. That's one of the Holmes stories, The Adventure of the Red Headed League, which I will no doubt be using as an answer at the end. It is, to my surprise, a red herring. If I have too many more of these I'm going to die from mercury poisoning.
I try Scotland Yard out of desperation, nothing. Well, I still have SE 5 and SE 7, so I go there. SE 5 has nothing, but SE 7 has plenty. Mrs. Jetley's Boardinghouse, in which we discover that our guy's name is Charlie Donald. You may now be confused by this. He gave out two names and has a wife and lives in two different places? Except that her description of his arrival is odd. He arrived three weeks before, but the Donald at the other place arrived last week with a woman. Oh, and he did that trick with a coin where it has it run back and forth on the top of his fingers.
She lets us inside his room. Inside we find two well-worn suitcases with the label of Jardine, Matheson & Co. on them. There's a carpetbag with a new set of overalls and a cap with a brass plate which reads, "Supervisor, City of London". There's also a satchel with a stethoscope inside. Following this, on his dresser, we have a ticket for the steamship SS Flying Cloud to a MP Charles, that explains the talk with Disraeli completely. A receipt from A. Marx & Co. for 200 pounds. There's a stack of playbills starting the 25th and tickets for the Elephant and Castle for every day starting the 26th. On the first playbill the name Minnie Cavill is circled and the word "beautiful" is written beside it. Finally, elsewhere there's a chessboard with the pieces set up and a shaving mug with Mac on it. Once done here, we discover that Donald delivered a few letters by the Cummins and Goins Messenger Service.
To Minnie Caville, our obvious suspect for Mrs. Donald...and I'm wrong. At least, she doesn't say anything indicating that she knew him. She could be lying, as she played with a diamond pendant she was wearing. There's a photograph of her boyfriend, Roger, who is quite the burly and menacing figure. On the other hand, if she just robbed him of something, she would hardly be going back to her job.
So, Cummins and Goins, four messages were delivered to Donald, the last on the 4th. It was an older gentleman with dark and unkind eyes. I don't think it's the boyfriend. The game goes out of its way to mention they had different hats, as if that was the kind of logic I should be basing a murder investigation on, but because we would notice if the boyfriend was older.
Going after more obscure leads, I head to A. Marx, and find out it's a jewelers. Who recently sold the murdered man a diamond pendant. Minnie could be lying, but a lot of people have diamond pendants. Still, she mentioned the Globe Restaurant, which I go to next. Where we discover that she dines in the company of a Mr. Thornberry, who has dark hair. Does that mean that's his full name, Roger Thornberry? Yes, so I go to see him, only to discover that his menacing figure is something captured solely on film, he's quite the gentle soul and...are we sure about that? We have basically no other option other than the mysterious man who mailed him a letter. But all the leads I've obtained from the room are now useless.
I go through the rest of the Regulars, ending up with Langdale Pike. Who we find out about Cavill from, albeit he mostly just confirms what we've already been told. By process of elimination, since I have no other viable suspect, it must be Thornberry. He had muddy overalls, there's mud at the bank, and Donald had overalls. I'm going for the quiz.
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| To add in what we've been missing. |
I'm going to guess Charles MacDonald. The answer tells me that I'm missing the middle initial P, which I don't find at all worrying.
Who killed him?
Roger Thornberry
Why was he killed?
I think that the two were in on a robbery scheme, and MacDonald was displaying suspicious consumption and getting sweet on his lady.
Where was he from?
An accent odd enough to be noticed, but not odd enough to hamper dialog or to cause suspicion. He says he's from Scotland and France, but his accent doesn't match either of those places. I'm going to guess Quebec.
What was the message in the cipher?
See above.
Who sent the cipher?
I have no idea. Why would Thornberry send him a cipher like that? It seems like it should be some mysterious figure from his past, yet only Thornberry has the reason to send him it. So, Thornberry it is.
What was the significance of the supervisor's cap and overalls?
It's what MacDonald wore when he was engaging in his little scheme.
On what street did Holmes first live in London?
I don't know. I didn't write down what it was, so guess among yourselves for CAPs!
I took 31 moves to solve the case. Holmes took 5, including two I had no idea existed, Bar of Gold and Fred Porlock. Let's go over why. I got the first two correct and the third half correct, I prescribed more motive than Thornberry had, but I'm going to count it. The fourth I got wrong, it was Australia.
The fifth is where things go partially off the rails. I assumed it was a cryptogram whereas it was actually a word search. Read the unchanged message vertically. It's "meet roger gold noon sixth mint out cox". Which the writing helpfully tells me is short for "Meet Roger at the Bar of Gold at noon on the sixth-Royal Mint is out, Cox's Bank is target." The message was sent by Professor Moriarty, which I frankly should have seen as a possibility knowing the connection to the Red Headed League.
The 7th was "They were part of the disguise to cover the robbery"...which I would say counts even if my reasoning was wrong. Back to the cipher. The game tells me that Bar of Gold, Porlock and Cox's depend on the solving of the cipher, this is not true. Unless you count the directions as solving the cipher for Cox's. Oh, and Porlock IS LITERALLY AT A REGULAR'S ADDRESS! Now, you might expect me to say that I'm annoyed by it not being a cryptogram...but it is very in character for Moriarty to do something like that.
Before I get to the real summaries and the bits I missed, my score is 85+26*5=215, about twice Holmes score, which is always 100. Actually, the scoring seems weird, since it seems to be telling me to total up the points I got from correctly guessing the quiz then adding 5 points for every move I made over Holmes total. Except that in this case I'd be getting the best score by just opening the quizbook and not answering any of the questions correctly. I don't get it as explained to me by the game.
Anyway, the Bar of Gold is mostly useless, the barman really just tells us that MacDonald and Thornberry were meeting there, that Thornberry had a stiletto dagger, and that Thornberry is working with Moriarty. The last being the only real new bit of information.
Holmes' summary starts with Watson expressing his distaste for the cipher. Holmes finds it simple. To start with, he explains his direction journey, he saw that the only destination was Simpson's Cigar Divar. This seems odd, as Holmes also takes into account that there were multiple start points, which I discovered quite readily, but didn't take into account multiple end points. Holmes also doesn't take into account how he could have gone into a nearby building afterwards, which would be a valid search tactic since we're using the map anyway. Holmes figured out that he was Australian from his steamship ticket, which I visited but ignored as being a mere vacation. Serves me right.
After Holmes points out that he's more interested in the stethoscope and the overalls; Wiggins then starts on the cipher. He says it's a simple substitution code, the key is in the date. If you displace the alphabet by five letters, E becomes A and the rest falls into place. AKA, not doing a brute force letter subtitution. And yes, Spirpt is Spirit. The real answer is that you go through every 5 columns to get your word, and to discover the sender, check the capitals under the words. The incidental observations, the stethoscope, the coin trick and Porlock's clue all point to MacDonald being a safe cracker.
And to end it all, before Lestrade jumps out to arrest Thornberry, Holmes informs him that Moriarty probably already has dealt with him in his own way. As his plans have been foiled, he's plotting to end the person responsible for foiling them. Ironically enough, one of the men he employed. And so, Consulting Detective draws to a close...you know, unless we decide to play the expansions. If someone wanted to. Is there a rule that a missed classic has to be a video game? The answer is, I don't think anyone actually cares. But I think for the time being if I need a missed classic, I should pull out one that you guys have asked for rather than a board game.
Now, rereading Vetinari's comment about this case, I think I read more into what he was saying than he intended. Though I must admit, saying that the case was frontloaded with the cipher seems to not be something where rot13 is needed. It's very obvious that the cipher is the focus of the case, since it forces the players to grind the action to a screeching halt to figure it out.
Let us get to the topic of why this wasn't in the computer game. We have three things that the computer game does not have or doesn't do easily. Simple text for the cryptogram; A map in which you can determine where the victim went; Fred Porlock isn't in the game. Counter point, I think that could easily be done without adding anything. Send the Irregulars to Murray as per the last case; Have a character mention where the directions come from and go to; Fred Porlock doesn't need to be a Regular for him to be in the game.
Now, counter-counter point. This case would be awful in the computer game because it is quite clearly far more strict. It would be entirely true that I would have to go to the Bar of Gold to win the last case, which means solving the cipher the right way. Of course, the bank too, would be locked behind the cipher, no using the map, and the strange text at the hotel near the railroad station would be unnecessary. It doesn't play that much to the game's strengths.
Going in another direction, as a multi-person board game, this would be a terrible night. "Hey guys, instead of playing an exciting case of deductive reasoning, we're going to be solving a cipher!"
"Like The Adventure of the Dancing Men?"
"No, this isn't going to be as fun."
I cannot imagine multiple people trying to independently solve this case at one time. You'd get an hour or two of people scribbling furiously on paper before actually playing the game, and unless you suspend the usual rules of taking turns, would possibly know and have solved the case before the others have even started. In this regard, this case would be impossible to play over Zoom or something as I believe Joe intended, unless it was entirely collaborative.
I think the case is fun, but it just doesn't work as the format is supposed to work. This feels like it would be something akin to a game of Risk, it sounds fun, but by the end of the evening people aren't friends anymore. Anyway, next time, the rating of the computer game.
This case would be awful in the computer game because it is quite clearly far more strict.
ReplyDeleteThis is what I said too (back in the introduction post, maybe?), since most of the info is locked by the cryptogram.
On what street did Holmes first live in London?
In the boardgame there is always a question which is not directly related to the case at hand but instead is a general Holmesian trivia, so you didn't miss anything in your playthrough.
I think the answer is Montague Street, as in "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" Holmes says "When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner from the British Museum."