Rune Full Moon posted:

Shannon is 16, Battler is 18, iirc.

mycelia posted:

The 'E' in Erika (ヱ) is an archaic version of the character エ, which is weird because the rest of her first name is in katakana, which indicates it's a transliterated foreign name. As for why that is, your guess is as good as mine. Probably Bern being an rear end in a top hat.

BurningStone posted:

Bravely ignoring that update to try and focus:


So, two big puzzles that probably can't be solved independently: what's up with the two Battlers and what is Beatrice doing. Skipping the double Battlers (his father said he wanted to talk about his parents, so maybe we'll get some more information soon), what about the sin?

In the first line, BEATRICE in all caps means the witch, which means the human version is talking. Who's that human? No, instead, how do you create a witch? It seems to be, with Maria and Ange as guides, by having a girl so unhappy she wants to escape to a fantasy land. Note the "girl;" we haven't seen a male witch, not even Kinzo, who was both occult obsessed and none too sane. There was talk of "Goldsmith," who we never saw. I'm not sure if it was a witch who splits off, or more of a nickname.

Trying to narrow down the possibilities leaves a depressingly long list. It had to be somebody who was around six years ago, to be sinned against, and still around now, to kill people. It needs to always be the same person (maybe not, but this is hard enough).

Gohda and Kanon weren't around six years ago (I'm trying to keep it simple, so ignore the "Kanon is family" speculation). Kinzo is dead now. Maria was only three, and has a different witch. Eva had a different witch too.

This isn't going to work; there are too many possibilities. It could be Shannon, or Jessica, or Kyrie, or even Rudolf! I'm going to jump to the top suspect, based on what's going on in this update: Natsuhi. She's having conversations with Beatrice, who Kinzo told her about, but she also has all the furniture running around: stakes, Gaap, and Ronove. She seems to feel trapped and at the end of her rope. However, I have no idea what the sin could be.

Graylien posted:

Come to think of it, how did Yasu find all this out? I assume there's a big revelation coming, but the step from 'I am a servant who is treated a bit weird' to 'I am the illegitimate heir and know all the awful details as to how I got here' is a pretty big one. Maybe it has something to do with Battler, things do seem to keep coming back to him, and if he's also illegitimate, as in the stillborn switch theory, there could be something there as to why Yasu feels such a connection with him.

PetraCore posted:

Umineko: Everyone has reasons for acting the way they act, no matter how vile, and most people are just trying to do the best with the cards they've been dealt, no matter how poorly they cope.
Also Umineko: gently caress Kinzo though.

alcharagia posted:

Like I said, Kinzo's a real motherdaughterfucker.

KataraniSword posted:

It's worth noting that unlike Umineko, there's no smoke and mirrors deployed - poo poo gets supernatural. Much like Umineko, though, it also lacks its back half on Steam, though there are (to my knowledge) official translations of the second set of VNs.

Like stated, though, aside from Quality DEEN Animation, Higurashi's anime isn't too harsh of a diversion from the source material. It's definitely an option if you don't want to sit through a manga or VN dumping at you.

Cyouni posted:

That I can actually explain. Hideyoshi was paid off in some way, shape, or form. There was no need for Shannon to escape the padlocked shed (through an alternate key Genji held, for example) because there was no one there. It actually wraps up that one pretty neatly.

ZiegeDame posted:

Battler sees dead Shannon's face in episodes 2-4. Very intimately in episode 2. The only reported sightings of dead Kanon are from World's Worst Doctor Nanjo, or dead Kanon walking around and killing people.

But all that other stuff pales in comparison on the "Something weird is going on with Shannon and Kanon" scale next to Episode 5's parlor scene and Episode 6's Furudo Erika, Rokkenjima's 18th Human

tiistai posted:

Reminder to everyone to source your claims. I can think of a couple of arguments here that could have been resolved if the people actually checked the text.

ZiegeDame posted:

My best guess, based on how everyone has been characterized thus far, is that it was Kinzo's idea, and either Rudolf was threatened with disinheritance if he didn't play along or he just outright wasn't told about it until after the deed was already done. Stealing Kyrie's baby to preserve the honor of the Ushiromiya family doesn't sound like something Rudolf would be capable of, but Kinzo could do it without breaking a sweat.

resurgam40 posted:

Oh, god. No. No no no no no... I sense the other shoe dropping, and through the power of magic, it has turned into a meteor hurtling toward earth. How happy it starts, how dignified and refined, everyone working together instead of sniping at each other and separating to die... but if this were a happy story, who is the teller? And why are Lion and Ange brought together to hear it? And why the chains?

The heart is a queer and contradictory thing isn't it? The logical voice within it knows that this is a story, digital ink on a screen that was written years before my eyes have read it, and it assures me in its infuriatingly calm and placid tone that I could not change the direction of this story or what happens in it even if I wished to-which I don't, really; it's a great story. And yet... there is the emotional voice, nearly seizing my monitor and shaking it, demanding that Ange run, break her chains, stare at Lion and hold their gaze, do anything at all besides watch this screen and what is about to happen- even as there is a cold dread beneath that energy that is almost certain that even if she tore off her ears and put out her eyes... she would still see.

There is cruelty coming. It has to come, because we were told that this was a story about love, and I believe it is... but it is also a story about cruelty- the cruelty that is shown to us and that we show to others in turn by the things we do and leave undone, without even meaning to... and how a lifetime of such cruelty can nestle in the heart, and bleed it dry of anything good or prosperous- how it can taint everything one might otherwise do. Pursue the golden witch as you may and think them the ultimate villain of this piece... but for all the monstrosity she shows, there is a blue-haired sadist waiting in the wings... and by god, I think I hear her music...

tiistai posted:

We weren't seriously going to do it, but for a minute in witchchat we were talking about joking in the thread how being under the pressure of impending death of him and his family is how Kinzo gets all his business planning done, to see how many people would take it as just a joke

ProfessorProf posted:

ZiegeDame posted:

Rosa, Hideyoshi, and Eva looks like multiple to me. Not to mention if they blamed her for Natsushi and Krauss, too. But I guess I phrased that poorly. What I meant was she didn't necessarily go into this planning to murder a bunch of people to take the gold, but once she entered murder town she didn't look back. Which now that I say it suggests that the only thing holding her back from doing murders in the past (Asumu being the big example) was the threat of being caught and punished more than any sense of morality. So hey, Kyrie might be a psychopath. Good to know.

Still worth bearing in mind that if Kyrie at any point did have any hesitation here Bernkastel for sure would elect not to show that part.

ProfessorProf posted:

"That's... insane... It's... That's right, probability! Just like Lion can be born from Clair thanks to a rare miracle, Aunt Kyrie only commits murder with a tiny probability, close to zero! That must be it! Aren't you the witch who specializes in finding extremely improbable worlds?!!"
"That is correct. I had to find one Fragment out of 2,578,917 in order to discover the miracle that is you. However, it was very, very easy to find this result for your world. After all, probability isn't a factor. I'm a witch who can find any miracle, no matter how unlikely it is. But I can't find things that don't exist. If the Witch of Certainty really guarantees that something is certain, even I can't win against her."
"But... then... I..."
"With a 2,578,916 out of 2,578,917 probability, you live in the world as Clair, are toyed with by an inescapable fate, and reach a tragic end. And, with a 1 out of 2,578,917 probability, you live as Ushiromiya Lion... and are killed by Kyrie tonight."
"...In other words, your fate... no, the fate the two of you share, traps you in an inescapable dead end, a hell of fate, with a 2,578,917 out of 2,578,917 probability, To put it another way, it's a certain fate, with absolutely no chance for a miracle!"
"*giggle*, eheheheheheheheheheh!! Sucks for you, Clair. No, Beatrice."

"However, you had a dream. You dreamed of Ushiromiya Lion. You consoled yourself with the thought of a miracle world, where you could have lived in happiness and would never have become Clair!"
"...I had to work hard to find Lion. As Beato dreamed, Lion's existence is a true miracle. And, at the end of your funeral, I wanted to show you. To show you that, even with that miracle, you couldn't have escaped this tragedy!!"

ProfessorProf posted:

"There you have it. We'll keep struggling on, Bernkastel."
"We won't give up on the chance of a miracle...!"
"You're saying that? When the Witch of Miracles has promised with certainty that there will be no miracles? *giggle*giggle*, ehhehehehehahahahahahahahaha!! So long, you two. Go collect dust in the depths of oblivion, unable even to die, and disappear!!"
"Come, my kitties. I won't tell you to kill them. Just clean up the two pieces whose role has ended."

resurgam40 posted:

Wh

What

...

WHAT THE gently caress IS THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS!?

I mean Ange going to the island is one thing, yes... and Ange imagining that her family is happy is another, and if you want a "vision of heaven" for a lonely girl, that's a pretty good way to go. But why... is... he... here? Why is the Coward part of any vision of happiness, after all that he has done, and why are his abbetors here? No, I don't care if Ange couldn't have known what we learned; she remembers all of the abuse she was part of, she even says so in this update! What the gently caress is even-


NO!! NO, you keep back from her, you shut up and you back away! You go to another room! You are a rapist! You go back to your room! Further! You climb up the roof and you jump off, you monstrous, cowardly...

I need to go shopping now. I need to... I need to do something, before I break something I care about.

ProfessorProf posted:

And here it is! The gimmick of this section. I hope your little grey cells are ready for a little quiz tournament!

For each of these mini-updates, I will allow 24 hours. During that time, the thread must deliberate and determine the answer to the question. We're starting with an easy one here, but things are going to get harder as we go. I'll give this hint to you for free: Knowledge of Japanese is NOT required for any of these puzzles. They have been thoroughly localized by the good folks at Witch Hunt for your enjoyment.

When you think you know the answer, put the letter of the answer in your post in bold text - in this case, A or B. You will be graded collectively based on your performance, so try to see how many medals you can get!

Starting now, vote for your answer to Kinzo's puzzle. Is it possible, or impossible? Can you keep pace with the world's smartest six-year-old?

Danaru posted:

A - Grapefruit Considering the last riddle from a book they gave us was that bullshit cheese slicing one, they're really easing us into these

ArashiKurobara posted:

Ah! This one's a classic. B - a very cold place - the South Pole.

Confused Llama posted:

I'm going to go with A, the stew is lying, because it says "I made some stew for you," but a thing can't make itself; moreover, all of the other food items refer to themselves as "me."

ZiegeDame posted:

See the cooking talk got me thinking of the letters as ingredients and obviously when you're cooking you mix up the ingredients.

The more I think about it the more I think the answer is gonna be C because whoops Kumasawa switched the words around and accidentally asked a completely different question and we're expected to answer the question she meant to ask and not the question she actually asked.

The dessert desert trick could work verbally if you said the whole thing in a silly foppish accent. Or in Japanese.

edit: Ok fine, switching to C because it does say 'desert' where it clearly means 'dessert' so we're supposed to assume a similar error is made later, and it's the kind of solution more in-line with the previous riddles than the Air Bud required for D. Also I could see Eva's hint being to point out that there's a spelling error, and I can't think of simple hints for changing one letter into three then moving the 'r.' Would still be easier to believe the error is intentional if mackerel were spelled correctly.

Zack Ater posted:

99+20=119
130-20=110

119-110=9, which is half of the word emergency, since it sounds like 9 said twice.

D. 20

Confused Llama posted:

No. No, it did not. Proofreading!

ZiegeDame posted:

That wordplay wasn't changed at all, Prof. It was just ruined.

Today's riddle is D. 20 and I don't know if all the stuff about police and ambulances would mean anything in Japanese or if it's just a distraction from:

code:

99 + X = a
130 - X = b
|a - b| = 9  #Or 99/2 but we're not bringing decimals into this.

And the fact it's multiple choice makes trial-and-error really easy.

RedMagus posted:

Mathmatically it goes from 50mm (5cm) -> 25mm -> 12.5mm -> 6.25mm on hour three, but are they going to pull a trick like "what about the length of the flame at the start?" or "the residual heat melted it into a puddle"?

Still, seems pretty straight forward: C

Confused Llama posted:

Yep, everyone's correct; it's the keys on a piano. Not sure I would have gotten it without Krauss and Natsuhi's comments about not getting it without the right experience, though... and if it hadn't started at C, for that matter. A. White

witchcore ricepunk posted:

D. 4!

edit: just saw everybody's posts. just blame Eva! It's funny to imagine how someone would vocalize "_th" in English. Blankth?

It's funny because in Japanese the counting word for "floor" doesn't really vary: it's just "kai." Ikkai (1), nikai (2), sankai (3), yonkai (4), gokai (5). I'm curious about how the Japanese version of this one goes.

Zack Ater posted:

I'm a chemist, how did I not....

C. 78

I was trying to do poo poo like using prime factorization to extrapolate a pattern from the differences between the prizes, or sum everything and try to see if any of those stood out. Copper, silver, and gold are all prime numbers, even, but none of the choices were (though that would have been a wonderfully misleading choice if he'd included one or two primes larger than 79.)

Ah, well. Good job Kytrarewn!

e: As an aside, Prof, thanks for doing this section this way, it's really fun.

e2: spoiler'd out stuff for the same reason

witchcore ricepunk posted:

I guess the goat killing accounts for the two extra minutes it takes to bring the gold up.

ZiegeDame posted:

So we should probably assume that "rear bank" is just a typo and not that everyone is already where they need to be. I'm inclined towards A for the following reasons:

For any n objects where one must be in the boat for it to move, the smallest number of trips required is 2n-3. One trip there and back to move two things and return one, or two trips per object until there are exactly two, at which point one trip for both of them. So without any tricks the bare minimum number of steps for 7 objects is 11. That's just math homework getting that answer, not thinking about any of the special rules for these specific objects. And since it's multiple choice for number of steps, we could give a correct answer without actually solving the riddle. That just seems wrong.

Furthermore, none of these riddles since Kumasawa have been totally straightforward with no trick, and there's a number of possible tricks: the aforementioned only caring about transporting people and not humans, something about the meaning of passenger vs. driver and the use out 'you', or not really caring if something gets eaten as it'll still get to the other side inside a stomach. Whatever trick you use, it's gonna take at least one round trip off the total, bringing it to 9 or less, which, of course, is less than 10.

I am really curious why E is "Something Else" instead of "26 steps or more". Further support for my Battler as Green Arrow theory.

Cyouni posted:

I think that having them that way is likely part of the point in Battler's game.

tiistai posted:

Like ZD said, it didn't matter to Beatrice at all. She knew about it the whole time and only brought it up when she wanted to step down from the game but wasn't allowed. As for how she knew about it, Rudolf did talk about the matter with Krauss and Natsuhi sometime after Battler left, right? Maybe Yasu, Genji or Kumasawa overheard that conversation or some other one Krauss and Natsuhi had later and then figured it out. Maybe it's some kind of meta magic. Doesn't really seem like a very important detail to know.

e: To be clear, he talked about his relationship with Kyrie, probably not that Battler was her son. Still, Yasu must have found out about it somehow after all.

ProfessorProf posted:

The deep-red curves cut by the swings bit into the goat. Its massive body was knocked into the air... became a bunch of about seven logs of flesh, and was thrown into the rose bushes. This time, the terrible force of the attack shocked the goats. They faltered, shook, stepped back.

...Finally, I understood. That red slice. It had come from a weapon that could draw red slashes... no, it also drew blue slashes just a second ago. A massive scythe that could speak both types of truth, red and blue, at will. I looked up at the sky, then let my head hang down backwards.

There was no black cat there. It was a girl... holding a large scythe...

ProfessorProf posted:

"The world you live in must be pretty savage."
"...And what about you? Wasn't it the same for you, until you understood Beato's game? An eternal game is eternal torture. Have you already completely forgotten about that pain you suffered...?"
"...There were days I did think that. But now, it's all been resolved. I won't complain about stuff that's in the past. I'm impartial, you might say."
"That... is the critical difference between you and me, I think. Your eternal torture was something you could laugh off and forget. Mine wasn't nearly so trivial. That's all there is to it."
"...I don't know your history. It sounds like you had it rough."
"Hmph. To think I'm getting sympathy from a mere former piece. I must be losing my touch."

Bernkastel, sipping the black tea that Genji had brought her, gazed up at the ceiling with a faraway look. Battler may not have known her history, but even he was able to understand a bit of how she felt.

"...Are you being tortured, by someone right now?"
"Are you kidding? I'm as free as can be. I'm not bound by anyone's shackles."
"Then that's a good thing, isn't it? At least things are better for you now."
"...True. It's much better now than it once was. Though I am on this long, endless journey to escape from boredom."
"Then, at the very least, meeting up here should have been a good thing for you."
"Indeed. Even the taste of defeat has driven boredom away from me for a time."

No, no. Battler was shaking his head and laughing.



"So...?"
"If your days are filled with nothing except running away from boredom, feel free to drop by our place every now and then. We'd love to welcome a friend. And we'll be able to set up everything needed to help a friend escape from boredom."
"You think you can prepare a welcome interesting enough to help me, the great Bernkastel, escape boredom for even a night...?"
"I do. That's what it means to be a friend."
"..."
"We won tonight's game. So, the next time you come, we'll switch sides. This time, we'll entertain you with one of our games. Of course, we don't intend to let you win easily. We'll challenge you to a devilishly twisted logic game! It won't be something you can solve in a night. It'll be good enough to make you stay for months, wracking your brains over it."
"...You would entertain me, the great Bernkastel, as a friend...?"
"Yeah, we would."
"...Hmph... After talking with you, even this dried plum tea is starting to taste sickly sweet. What a pain."
"I heard from Beato. Sounds like this dried plum tea stuff is one of your favorites. Next time, we'll toss some high-class dried plums covered in gold leaf into your tea, so make sure you come again."
"...If you really plan to do that, try finding some better tea to start with. I'll never feel like coming again if you keep serving tea like this."
"Ah, come on. Guess you drink high-grade black tea all the time. In fact, next time, why don't you invite us to somewhere we can drink some of this high-quality tea?"
"...Me... invite you? *giggle*...ahahahahaha."
"It's only fair, right? We've treated you. Now it's your turn."
"Yes, it would be only fair."
"So, let's have the game be fair too. Let's switch sides and start a new game. I'm looking forward to it. We won this time, but who knows about the next...?!"
"...That's some confidence you have there. And yet, I'm afraid you're mistaken on one point."
"What's that?"
"My game isn't over yet. I wonder who will win in the end."

After taking one more sip of her black tea, Bernkastel set her cup on the table, wearing a thin smile.

"...The tea here's far too sweet. It was a mistake to have any. Thank you, Genji. Take this away, please."
"As you wish..."

Bernkastel asked for her tea to be taken away after taking only two sips. Battler smiled, realizing that this was just Bern's way of being shy.



If you really think this final game will be nothing but a happy epilogue... Then I'll have to invite you all to a proper game for bringing this tale to a close.

Battler. You forget things too easily. Don't you remember in whose hands lie the key to this final game...?