The Daily Worker Placement

Sunday, December 8, 2024

Halfway Day Contest

by | published Monday, July 1, 2019

Immediately after we announced the winners of our Totally Awesome Non-Denominational Winter Holiday Contest, I started thinking about what I would do for the next one. Once again I got inspired by an old chestnut from GAMES Magazine, and after conferring amongst ourselves we decided to go ahead and run it now. We’ve made it through half the year and can’t wait. Sure we could call it our Canada Day contest, but then there’s the whole piece to unpack around celebrating the “birthday” of “a” nation which was built on top of hundreds of other nations which had been around for centuries…why invite distraction from the contest when we can just call it Halfway Day? 

Anyway, the contest is called “Pic-Tac-Toe” and, like our first one, is in two parts. Below you will see a 3 x 3 grid of closeups of games. The top row are images 1-3, the second are images 4-6, and the bottom are images 7-9. The first part is to identify the games from their pictures: 

The next (and more difficult step) is to figure out what links the games in each row, column, and long diagonal. Each set of three games has something in common. That thing has nothing to do with the letters or words in their name this time, nor does it have to do with specific colours or objects in the pictures.  

Enter the contest here by filling out the form. We will draw one winner from all the correct entries and that person will receive an amazing bundle of five games and other bonuses. Unfortunately, for cost reasons we can only send the prize to an address North America–but you are welcome to enter just for the bragging rights! Contest closes July 7th, 2019. We’ll announce the answers and winner July 8th.

UPDATE, July 9: Welp, this one was definitely a bit harder than our Holiday Contest: we only received twelve completed entries, and of those just half were correct. They all correctly identified the nine games in the Tic-Tac-Toe grid:

1. The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game

2. Star Trek Expeditions

3. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

4. KeyForge: Call of the Archons

5. Lord of the Rings

6. A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (Second Edition)

7. Android: Netrunner

8. Lost Cities

9. Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation

The trickier part, like I said, were the themes. Some of the answers weren’t exactly the same as mine, but were still accurate, so they were accepted as correct entries–just goes to show how durned hard it is to set a puzzle like this. The intended answers were as follows:

1, 2, 3: Co-operative games

4, 5, 6: Games published by Fantasy Flight Games

7, 8, 9: Two-player games

1, 4, 7: Collectible/Living Card Games

2, 5, 8: Designed by Reiner Knizia

3, 6, 9; All based on book franchises

1, 5, 9: Lord of the Rings-themed games

3, 5, 7: Asymmetric or variable player powers. 

Using a handy-dandy random-number generator (you might know it as a “d6”) the winner of our Halfway Day contest is Chris S! Congratulations! You will receive our Fun Pack of Games! And let’s have a warm hand for our five runners-up – you may not have won anything tangible, but our admiration for your puzzling prowess will last at least a few days.

And now, to start thinking about the next Holiday contest. Maybe a cryptogram? A logic puzzle? ((wanders off muttering to self))

Author

  • David W.

    David is the Managing Editor of the DWP. He learned chess at the age of five and has been playing tabletop games ever since. His collection currently consists of about 600 games, which take up way too much space. His game "Odd Lots" won the inaugural TABS Game Design Contest in 2008. He is currently Managing Editor of The Daily Worker Placement. All in all he's pretty smug about his knowledge of games and game design.

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2 thoughts on “Halfway Day Contest

  1. Nick says:

    When does this contest close?

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