TWG CXX: Lynch the Grynch Game Thread

[davy]

Another thing that's weird about davy's list is that it has only one townlean. Townies will usually try to find at least one more townlean, and davy's list suggests that they want to be open to any potential lynch. Their one townlean is the player who townleaned them, meaning it can be read as pocketing. However, given the self-vote when a wolf would have many options to vote after that post, makes me think that that post looking suspicious is kind of the point

I find the idea that townies will avoid a specific number of people on either lean side weird. Why wouldn't a towny put players on their lean list where they actually feel they belong?

[davy]

So BDS made a post about THC's point looking worse from BDS's perspective when looking at only the non-opener non-TWC posts, and about being suspicious of me backpedalling from my suspicion on him. I'm not really interested in discussing the first part, because we're just not going to agree on that and feel like I've adressed the second part in my reply to Oricorio two posts up, so I'm moving on.

"Slight wolflean" on TZP, "he just agreed with what was said earlier" doesn't that kind of describe you at the beginning of the game?

I can see the similarity, but for me the difference is that I brought a clear plan to the table with my first post that considered all the possible seering result (I had not seen TZP post anything similar to that at that point), had a wolf lean on you that was not mentioned by anyone before and it was earlier on in the game, where there is fewer going on to base your thoughts on.

[davy]

N1 Posts:This is a meaningful contribution for how early it is. My instinct is that a wolf would agree with this as a best strategy, but probably not be the first one to push it. I think wolves on NSM tend to contribute to but not drive aggressively strategy discussion, although of course Davy's seniority typically prompts him to take an early leading role.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that I (nearly) always start the game with mechanical discussion. It's kinda my thing (along with big plays with high payoffs, that never seem to actually pay off).

I've already stated I disagree with the reasoning against Grandma!Oricorio. Oricorio said something to the effect that I didn't make an argument based on this, and that's true: I don't find it to be alignment-indicative. I understand why he said it and I think it's faulty reasoning, that's it.
GTH reasoning on BDS on the basis of mostly-agreeing posts that he will later walk back. I don't find this to be suspicious.

D1 posts:
His suspicion list pushes me and Math as present but substance-free players, but still has Oricorio ahead of us on the list as a top Grandma suspicion, while not even responding to the critique I had of his argument. This more than anything else is the biggest piece of evidence toward Grandma!Davy in my opinion.

It seems I've missed the 'I'd still lean town' in your post that you are referring to (capitalizing 'Grynch' and 'Grandma' but not 'town' must have thrown me off) and thought you were agreeing with my statement that Oricorio was acting suspicious rather than critiquing me. My bad.

As for my response to the critique, I never read Oricorio's posts in Lantern game as pro- or anti-Strange Man, just thought he was putting the spotlight on the Lantern's too much. Just like how he has been putting the spotlight on Grandma too much this game for my liking. The fact that Oricorio self-meta'd it as pro-Strange Man propaganda doesn't really mean much to me wrt forming my argument.

[davy]

I think with that I've addressed all the points made against me since my last post, but please do notify me if I missed any.

As said, I'm going to sleep now and formulate my thoughts on the other players tomorrow before the phase update.

[ThatHiddenCharacter]

At work again, but I just wanted to say one thing. I am 100% confident in my assertion that BDS is the Grinch, so I'm saying this now so no one can claim it comes out of nowhere. My first post in the day phase is going to be a vote on BDS. You can not convince me otherwise, unless someone does a major slip-up. That is all, I'll see you guys after work.

[Oricorio]

Just gonna spend this night responding to people, actual thoughts will come tomorrow when I'm less sleepy (but still before the phase change.

Like in lantern game, the early game was kinda drowning in your posts. Your other posts didn't have anything that caught my eye immediately and I haven't taken the time to comb through everyone's posts like you have. I'm sorry if I offended you by putting you at the top of my suspicion list before combing through everyone's posts like that.

At that point TZP had made an intro post; a post where he laid out a third lynch wasn't guaranteed, asked two questions and made a read list consisting of mostly agreeing with consensus; a post about missing the Grynch seer; and a reply to math wolfreading him. I'm used to TZP being more active in mechanics discussion and in formulating his own thoughts on other players, so this felt off to me.

Math had made an intro post with a question; a post with a defense after being called out by you; a post calling out TZP on missing the grynch seering ability; and an explanation of the list being cummulative. While it has a little bit of everything, I was expecting math to use his posts to contribute more, most notibly is a missing reads list, which is why I felt his posts were lacking content.

As for why a lack of content is wolf-indicative: wolves have to make sure they don't slip up lest they get lynched. The more you post, the more likely it is you slip up somewhere, so wolves prefer to lay low. However, laying too low will draw suspicion, so wolves do need to post something. That is my reasoning why I feel players that are posting but not adding much to the discussion are wolf leans.

You're twisting my words here by changing my comparative to a positive. I do not find it characteristic for math to do this, just more so than for TZP, which is why math is a wolf lean but lower on the list than TZP. Perhaps I would have better gotten my point across if I had said 'less uncharacteristic', but that means the exact same and has an ugly double negative.

If BDS is posting more content, he's taking more risk of slipping up somewhere if he is a wolf, basically the opposite of my explanation in point 2. I am willing to let an earlier lean go when I see a player play differently than what my lean was based on.

In my experience, genuine inactivity often has more to do with factors outside the game than being alignment indicative, with Toby as a nice example, seeing how he was reluctant to even sign up for the game. When players do find the time to engage with the game, yet still don't provide much content, it is less likely to have to do with factors outside the game, which is why I wolfread those players.

Agree with the first part of his post; second part is explanation for what felt to me like a genuine question to me; third part: not a fan of GTH terminology because ambiguity like this. 'davy GTH wolf' could mean 'davy seems more like a wolf than any other role' or 'davy seems more like a wolf than any other player'.

I have safetied myself multiple times previously, so it's not like this is comming out of nowhere (though it has been a while since I last safetied, so I get why this is not known meta).

Whenever I safety, I prefer to do so on myself. There is precedent for safety votes being the tiebreaker, and I'd rather be the victim of my one not well thought out vote than anybody else.

As for why I safetied at all, I felt all three of my wolf leans were weak, and was in a pretty unique situation for me where the entire following 24 hours I ended up being unable to make another vote. I was expecting players to add more content to the game in the meantime, and prefered if the players that actually read those contributions made the decision who to lynch. Since I had previous experience of being the tiebreaker vote on a vote made early (Lantern game, as I said in my previous post) I felt me voting any of my wolf leans would carry too much risk of repeating that.

I agree with you that it's the least optimal vote, but this is an instance where I prefer playing suboptimally to potentially ruining another player's fun.

A lot of this just seems to be "inactive = wolfy active = towny" but with a twist. Is the amount of "content" really more important than what the "content" really is? The funny thing is that I don't consider that to be a substantial point in and of itself, since it ignores what they are actually saying in favor of how much they are saying. This is especially shown when asked what you liked about BDS's content, you just said that they had more content instead of actually analyzing any of it. It seems like a shallow way to look at the game.

[Oricorio]

I find the idea that townies will avoid a specific number of people on either lean side weird. Why wouldn't a towny put players on their lean list where they actually feel they belong?

Maybe it comes more from meta on other sites, where "townhunting" is a popular thing especially D1 and it's not uncommon to see people with five or more townreads and no wolfreads or even leans. Still, it's odd that your one and only townlean at the time was a player that townleaned you, that kind of thing will always look convenient.

[BlackDragonSlayer]

Let's get suspicious.

Suspicious Tier:
- davy: I've gone back and forth on which of THC/Davy I think is the Grinch versus Grandma. After how last phase turned out, I'm starting to go back more to the idea that Davy might be the Grinch. He's been extremely involved with the game overall (so he can dodge accusations of laying low), yet didn't have much, if any, influence on the final outcome of yesterday's lynch (likely because he was aware that he wouldn't be in danger of being lynched, especially since my contemporary take was leaning toward the idea that Davy might be Grandma—and I explicitly said I wanted to hold off on lynching one of THC/Davy because of the idea that one of them might be Grandma). It definitely feels like he could be the wolf fishing for a Grandma lynch and overall knowing when to dip in and out of the shadows at the right time (which reminds me of TZP's wolf performance in both TWG CXIV and especially TWG CXV). Also, since I feel like I should probably touch on this, I never saw Davy's self-vote as weird or suspicious so I'm not sure why that was as talked about as it was.
- ThatHiddenCharacter: As mentioned above, I've been going back and forth over who of the THC/Davy pair I think is more likely to be the Grinch vs. Grandma. This post referring back to his gut feeling from the Assassin game is... certainly interesting, but I don't feel like it comes from a wolf perspective. Likewise, with his reference to how, if he were Grandma, he would genuinely try to help town win even if it might harm his wincon, makes me feel like that is the way he's playing. If THC isn't Grandma, then I'm not quite as certain who it could be.

True Neutral:
- Xiao: Has made one (1) post this entire game.

Lil' Less Human Tier:
- Oricorio: I still maintain my human lean on Oricorio from earlier in the game, but I've gradually gotten a bit more hesitant, mostly because I don't want to unintentionally get tunnel vision that causes me to ignore something I shouldn't be. A lot of the suggestions and mechanic discussion he's brought up has certainly been helpful for the humans, but at the same time he could be playing the "try and help the humans and hope they don't catch on before they run out of lynches" game. After all, as he's pointed out several times, we may only have two lynches to work with here, so genuinely helping the humans try to lynch the Grinch might not ever reach a point where it has enough time to backfire on him at all. In addition, I feel like some of his answers to my earlier pressing of him weren't entirely satisfactory, though I'm willing to ascribe the parroting accusation down to coincidence for the moment. Overall, if the Grinch isn't between Davy and THC, then I think Oricorio is the next most likely candidate (I don't think he's Grandma—and if he is, he's definitely been going for a weird reverse psychology strategy of "being as human as possible and hope people think it's strange").
- Toby: His reasons for being inactive seem genuine (and not a deliberate attempt to lay low), and overall, his biggest post thus far seems fair enough. Though I don't quite get why he thinks a Davy/THC Grinch/Grandma pairing is "odd."

Human Tier:
TheZeldaPianist: My lean on him hasn't changed from earlier; but since then, I think his reasons for voting Math were reasonable, even if that didn't turn out to be the right lynch. His takes on other players also seemed fairly reasonable and not forced (contrast with Davy's backing up THC's early suspicion on me, which to me felt especially forced). Does seem a bit distracted overall, but this time around it just sort of feels more human to me. In addition, it feels genuine rather than forced, and I don't think wolf!TZP would intentionally fake missing stuff (like my Math vote) to try and earn human points.


Sorry for being relatively quiet this phase; I have an interview tomorrow so I've been busy preparing that. I've also been doing a lot of writing and have passed 70,000 words for a novel I'm writing!!!

[Toby]

At work again, but I just wanted to say one thing. I am 100% confident in my assertion that BDS is the Grinch, so I'm saying this now so no one can claim it comes out of nowhere. My first post in the day phase is going to be a vote on BDS. You can not convince me otherwise, unless someone does a major slip-up. That is all, I'll see you guys after work.

How can you be 100% certain of anything? This feels like a double down by grinch to act like grandma to not be lynched. I want to believe if THC is grinch he would be trying to act less sus than he does naturally as a human. But it's possible he's playing up to try look like grandma.

I'd be interested to see if THC survives past day 2

[ThatHiddenCharacter]

How can you be 100% certain of anything?

As I said before, it's a gut feeling. I fully trust my gut. It's never wrong, except for when it is. Like I said, only a major blunder from someone else could convince me not to vote for BDS. I am stubborn as a mule and prepared to die on this hill.

[TheZeldaPianist275]

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?

[Oricorio]

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?And what are you referring to here?

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.

[Toby]

I think BDS mentioned it too but I do find it strange that Davy who was so active at the beginning of the game, didn't even cast a real vote and missed the last 24 hours of day 1.

[SpecsFlyer17]

Phase update in about 2 hours.

[TheZeldaPianist275]

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?