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@SpecsFlyer17 , can the Grynch change his color by guessing Santa's identity after Santa is dead?

[Xiao]

Points in Oricorio's favor: zero panic upon being checked red. Kinda just like "well, that sucks for me, but might as well keep wolf-hunting." I feel like a normal wolf reaction after being checked red would be to try to mount a significant case against me or BDS by pulling a narrative out of our posts. The decision to land on Xiao because of inactivity seems clear-headed and honest, and Oricorio doesn't seem desperate to convince any of us?

Points against Oricorio: checked red lol. I'm with BDS that this is a very hard thing to ignore--although in fairness, for both wolf!TZP and wolf!BDS the probable best play is to mount a halfhearted case against Oricorio for it and just trust the inertia in that direction since the humans don't have a better lead.

Xiao for now. I am considering Oricorio strongly as well, though. And if THC wants to articulate the BDS suspicion, I'm still ready to listen.

I mean, if TZP is the Grinch, I would see him pushing me a bit harder for being red-checked. Then again, maybe he thinks he doesn't need to? It'd still be weird

Saying something like this makes me more, not less, suspicious of you. If you push a player with a red check that makes you more likely to be the Grynch? What? This reads like trying to strong-arm me off of voting you.

I am sorry I've kind of disappeared, have a busy day today. I'll continue to monitor leading up to phase end.

And good luck surviving this, BDS!

Wait, what is this in reference to? THC's gut feeling on BDS or something else?

Glad to have that cleared up. Sorry Davy, that's kind of a sucky way to go out.

With Xiao's public and Davy's private claim, I'm pretty confident in THC at this point, and the question for me is whether a red check on Oricorio is enough to lynch. I'll now answer Oricorio's question from earlier about my check-free reads on people.

Davy: QED

Math: unfortunate

THC: In addition to being the uncc'd seer, the "message player (n) 'if I die, it was player (n+1)'" strategy feels like a very human play. It's not laying groundwork for a manipulation, it's trying to scare up information by seeing how people react.

BDS: Even though I trust THC right now, I don't share his feelings on BDS, at least not to the same extent. In particular, BDS bringing up the most tinfoily interpretations of events possible--which I believe he's done twice now--feels like human behavior to me, because it assumes the absolute worst-possible outcome in such a way discourages people from taking things at face value. This seems to me to be reminiscent of the paranoid BDS of yesteryear, always on the lookout for wool being pulled over his eyes. That said, BDS is able enough to blend in, and the "know when to move in and out of the shadows" wolf strategy he described earlier could, I think, apply to him this game as well. Short answer: I don't know, and I'm not casting my vote based on THC's spidey-sense.

Oricorio: As I said on D1, Oricorio is the player putting in the most work, and as I said on D1, this isn't a guarantee of humanity. I'm going to go back through your posts a bit later today to try to discern any unexplainable pushes. Also, I don't think refusing to go along with Davy's dead man's hand play gives human points--wolf!Oricorio has far more to gain from revealing that message than from going along with it. Short answer: I don't know on Oricorio either.

Toby: Probably Santa. If you're reading this Toby please make your last nicelisting count!

Xiao: I really have no idea where the two-post level of activity has come from. It's plausible, I suppose, that Xiao wants to switch up the meta and play inactive as a wolf. If I recall correctly, Xiao has expressed frustration in postgames before about a) losing every game and b) being read incorrectly by people every single game. So perhaps this is the game where he throws up his hands and says "screw it, I'm hiding the whole game." This theory always has the weakness that it's just not fun, for either team. Why play if you're not going to, you know, play?

So right now I think the Grynch is between BDS and Oricorio, and the red check on Oricorio makes me think that we should probably lynch him. I'm not married to this plan, though, and I suppose most of all I want to hear from THC why he's still rock-solid confident that BDS is the Grynch and Oricorio is Scrooge. Also, despite being a confirmed 3rd-party, Davy often has very good reads, and the fact that he threw a hailmary banking on Oricorio being the Grynch carries some weight with me.

And I didn't seer BDS because I didn't want to prove myself wrong.

THC what does this mean. Why would you not want to prove yourself right?

Davy, why are you voting me? Even before THC claimed, I made it pretty clear that I was just passing along information.

Oricorio, my updated suspicion list for living players:

6. TZP (me tier)
5. THC (as-yet uncc'd seer)
4. Xiao (see last sus list)
3. BDS (uncc'd seer has unqualifiable obsession ??)
2. Oricorio (red check by uncc'd seer)
1. davy (seered as Grandma by uncc'd seer)

I'd be happy for Xiao to pop in here and claim Santa, as everyone else has posted, but I kinda doubt that Xiao will claim blue. I think that the Toby wolfing was in all likelihood the result of the Grynch getting a lucky blue seering and removing him--why else pick a fairly inactive player who totally could have been lynched yesterday?

If THC is the Grynch and seered Toby as blue N1 and then wolfed Toby N2 to remove a blue and then claim blue in that player's stead, without knowing which blue Toby was, he's betting the game on a coin flip--if Toby was seer and THC claims seer, he probably wins; if Toby was Santa and THC claims seer, he gets thunderdomed with the real seer and probably loses. Jury's out on whether that is a risk that THC would take, I suppose.

This was a pleasant surprise to wake up to--I love this one, hearing it slowly fade in in-game was unforgettable. This is a really elegant arrangement Latios.

It's very important that we get everyone on the same page early on in this phase so we can coordinate an intelligent vote. Even if you're not comfortable claiming blue/notblue yet, please at least post your thoughts on BDS' suggestion as soon as possible!

Although there is one hole in this story: why did the Seer trust you if they didn't check you?

The only player the seer had checked at that point was Grandma. I'd imagine he was afraid that the Grynch had seered him and wanted to make sure he passed along his knowledge in case he died in the night, and felt that an unconfirmed instinct was a better gamble than possibly dying without telling anyone.

I don't think BDS's idea is a bad one. I will leave it up to the seer whether he wants to divulge his identity--and I'm not Santa either lol.

Aw, good guy Grynch letting Toby leave the game early.

Anyway, I've got news to share. I got a PM ~20 secs before the phase end from someone who claimed to be the seer, and said he trusted me and wanted to pass info along in case he died in the night. He said he seered Davy as Grandma Night 1, dead to rights.

Now that the phase has rolled over and he *didn't* die, he's asking me to be his mouthpiece so he can stay anonymous in case we go to N3. He got a red check on Oricorio last night.

This goes without saying, but if you're the real seer, now would be a good time to speak up.

Mainly because I was suspecting you for your weak early game posts that were somewhat similar to last game but I saw a lot of genuine effort in the later posts. As for the audacity, a wolf saying they don't know they have a Seer ability after the phase update is pretty audacious for a wolf, even if it is a case of WIFOM.

This makes sense, I suppose, although I disagree that a wolf would be unlikely to feign ignorance of the rules and roles for human points. If I recall correctly there were wolves who used that strategy to great effect back in NSM's Golden Age. I don't think it's impossible that it's what THC is doing now.

Also, is this another "Davy says he will show up before phase end but doesn't" episode?

THC I get having a gut feeling but it would be really helpful if you could at least tell us what's giving you that gut feeling. Give us something to work with here. Why BDS?

Oricorio, I want to ask you about last day phase. Obv I'm happy you pulled you vote off me when you did, but I don't understand why. What convinced you I wasn't a good vote?

Come to think of it, their earlier attitude was a bit audacious for a wolf anyway

And what are you referring to here?

Well, you were the last on the wagon. Just sayin'

Still, 5 people got votes, which would have been reckless if it got to KiTB. As I said before, there are ways to get some information about who is on the naughty list, but such methods are very strategically questionable when we have such little margin for error

Yeah I agree with this, and even if we were to triangulate who is on the list, that only tells us so much about who the Grynch might be. And a 5-way KitB is definitely irresponsible lol.

So, with math being town (as the game would have ended if he was the Grinch or someone else would have also died if he was Grandma) we're at 1-5-1. A successful wolfing (more likely than last phase, since the Grinch is unlikely to target the same person they did N1) would bring it to 1-4-1, and as we are guaranteed to lose two players tomorrow it would bring it at 1-3, which the Grinch can just wolf one and Naughty List the other. Even if Santa is still alive at that point, it would be an incredible WIFOM to predict who the Grinch would naughty list: typically you'd want to Nice List the towniest players, but at the end the Grinch can Naughty List the wolfiest town player, and if Santa tries to prevent that they could end up Nice Listing the Grinch.

That's not what concerns me most, though. After tonight, the Grinch will have had two chances to put people on the naughty list. With six players alive D2, if Santa didn't remove anyone from the Naughty List, a wolf-Grandma alliance would result in a KitB at best for town. We have to proceed carefully.

This is a perfectly reasonable observation, but it could also be a good bit more hopeful than that. The chances that the Grynch hits the players that Santa has nice-listed also go up over time. If Santa has played his cards right (i.e.: not nice-listing Math) he may well counter the Grynch.

Death post:

Fraud math guy out

The elites don't want you to know this, but the real TZP/Specs/Math lore is that Math is the least real math guy of all of us.

Damn, I'm sorry Math. Hope we can still be friends.

I don't know, BDS. That did kinda feel like a last-minute vote shuffle to me. Also, there's definitely a small part of me that was hoping for a naughty list surprise in the vote count with the attendant deduction opportunities, but the three votes Math got is past the margin of what the naughty list could possibly have done, so there's no way to know for sure. (taking up the math guy mantle now that the previous one is dead)