Equinox 72: Fairy Tales

The 72nd Equinox Word Games Party was held in Berkeley on September 9, 2023.

Theme: Fairy Tales

Name tags: Fairy Tale Names by Stephen Ng and Hilary Somers
Wall games:
    Out of Left Field cryptics - by Henri Picciotto and Joshua Kosman (Hot and Trazom)
    Acrostic - clues (PDF) and grid (PDF) - by Pam Hampton
Mixer: by Debbie Goldstein and the Tivols
Creative Game: Fakelore by NeilFred Picciotto and Lisa Eckstein (Renfield and Mooncalf)
Paper-and-pencil puzzle: Opposites Puzzle by Colin Tivol
Whole-room game: Animal Planet by Stephen Ng
Performance game: Chocolate Milk by Kid Beyond (Murdoch)
Megagame: Two Sides to Every Story by Rick Rubenstein and Joshua Kosman (Rubrick and Trazom)

Two Sides to Every Story

A puzzle suite (a.k.a. “megagame” in Equinox parlance) by Rick Rubenstein (Rubrick) and Joshua Kosman (Trazom).

Intro (PDF) and Meta (PDF) are each a single page; obviously don't look at the meta until you've solved the puzzles.

Puzzles (PDF) must be printed double-sided, with page 1&2 on opposite sides, likewise 3&4 and 5&6. If your printer doesn't do double-sided automatically and you have to feed the same sheet through twice, make sure the opposite sides have the same orientation (so that the title on page 2 sits behind the title on page 1, etc).

For the meta, you'll need scotch tape, though a stapler might work in a pinch. Also, before you start the meta, make sure you've circled all your answer letters, as mentioned in the puzzle instructions.

Animal Planet

A whole-room game by Stephen Ng.

Animals remake classic TV shows so they are centered around animals, not humans. Can you figure out the titles of the new shows?

In each round, there are three phases. Guess the title sooner for more points.

1. Just the information printed on the sheet – 4 points.
2. After the audio hint – 2 points.
3. After the visual hint – 1 point.

Handout (PDF), and the audio and visual Hints (Google Slides).

Alternatively, if the audio doesn't work for you in the Slides or you need something that will work offline, you can download this 170MB Zip file containing all of the individual audio files and image files.

Opposites Puzzle

 A paper-and-pencil puzzle by Colin Tivol. Solve the puzzle (PDF) to derive its title.

Fakelore

A Fictionary variant using lesser-known folk tales from around the world, by NeilFred Picciotto (Renfield) and Lisa Eckstein (Mooncalf).

Each page of Summary Cards (PDF) is to be cut into six cards for one round of play. In each round, the title of a real folk tale is printed at the top of each card; one card has the real summary for that title. Twenty different folk tales are provided, one on each page.

Instructions (PDF) to be printed one per person.