The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Marc G.:

Solution to the pirate problem:

The first pirate will take 76 pieces of gold, and pirates 3,5,7,...,49 will take one each.

Explanation: Each pirate needs to offer a better deal to half of the pirates than his successor will offer, but they can offer a worse deal to the other half. So, the 48th pirate can offer 1 piece to the 50th pirate to gain his vote, and therefore the 47th pirate can offer 1 piece to the 49th pirate to gain hers, while refusing to offer the 50th pirate anything. This extrapolates up the line, with each pirate in turn offering opposing halves of the crew 1 piece each.

I have a commercial 4-player chess board that's octagonal and contains 2 boards' worth of squares. The Queen's side files advance towards the opponent on your left, and the King's side files advance towards the opponent on your left. The person across from you is your partner. One of the nifty things about the board is that at the center there are 8 squares with corners touching, so if you can enter the center diagonally you can leave in 3 different directions.

Got it in one, Andrew!

I'd thought I'd been as low as I could get, but I hadn't figured on getting a taste of the high life before I was dragged back down into the sewer. It didn't help that I got nicked by the gang's pretty boy, always dressed to the nines someone else had ditched to draw to an inside straight. To top it off, the old man's bully boy, Bill, had got it into his head I'd ratted the gang out while on the cure, and he was looking to leave me back where I'd started my career, 6 feet underground in a cold pine box.

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