This meta puzzle involves the answers to the Tabletop Island round.
We begin by identifying the emojis. Each row of emojis references a popular card game or board game, as hinted by the title and flavor text. The emojis are provided in alphabetical order by game.
| Emojis | Game | Card or board | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
⛰️🌉🌉🌉🌉⛰️ ⛰️🌉🌉🌉🌉⛰️ | Bridge | card | A depiction of a long bridge. |
🤥🐂💩 🤥🐂💩 | BS | card | A reference to the "lying face" emoji, as well as charades for bull + shit. |
🏁🏁 🏁🏁 | Checkers | board | A depiction of a checkered flag. |
🕯️🔪🔫🔧🔍 🕯️🔪🔫🔧🔍 | Clue | board | A list of weapons used in the game (candlestick, knife, revolver, wrench) as well as a magnifying glass used by detectives. |
🌙💥🔫 🌙💥🔫 | Hearts | card | In Hearts, "shooting the moon" is a special high-risk strategy that involves taking all hearts in the game. |
🤏🧱🧱🧱🧱🏗️🗼 🤏🧱🧱🧱🧱🏗️🗼 | Jenga | board | A depiction of grabbing pieces and constructing (or deconstructing) a tower. |
🔴🟡🟣🔵 ◼️◻️ 🔴🟡🟣🔵 ◼️◻️ | Mastermind | board | A depiction of the four colors used in Mastermind as well as two key pegs to indicate correctness. |
🎩🏘️🏨🅿️ 🎩🏘️🏨🅿️ | Monopoly | board | A set of common pieces or spaces associated with Monopoly (a top hat, house, hotel, and parking). |
🦋🍞💔 🦋🍞💔 | Operation | board | A reference to three ailments used in Operation: butterflies (in stomach), bread (basket), and a broken heart. |
✔️📞⬆💰 ✔️📞⬆💰 | Poker | card | A reference to the actions taken in Poker (check, call, raise), as well as a moneybag associated with gambling. |
💂🎲🎲🎲⚔️🎲🎲💂 💂🎲🎲🎲⚔️🎲🎲💂 | Risk | board | A depiction of game pieces used in Risk. Generally the attacker is given 3 dice, while the defender is given 2. |
👋 👋 🇯♣️♥️♠️♦️ 🇯♣️♥️♠️♦️ | Slapjack | card | A depiction of a hand slapping over jacks of all four suits. |
🏃💨💨💨💨 🏃💨💨💨💨 | Speed | card | A depiction of a person running at high "speed". |
🥄🥄🥄🥄 🥄🥄🥄🥄 | Spoons | card | Multiple spoon emojis. |
🤫🤬💬⏳ 🗨️😮🤔🤔 🤫🤬💬⏳ 🗨️😮🤔🤔 | Taboo | board | A depiction of two teams playing Taboo with a timer. On one side, one player gives hints while trying to avoid specific clue words, watched by a censor (shushing face). On the other side, the teammates try to guess the word. |
⚔️⚔️ ⚔️⚔️ | War | card | The crossed swords emoji, referencing war. |
We note that there are exactly 8 card games and 8 board games, as well as 8 puzzles (given in order in pictorial form). As hinted by the title, we can concatenate the names of these games in card + board order to form phrases, which can be semantically matched to answers from the round. Finally, by taking the number of emoji for each game, we can index into the answer to extract two letters per card/board combination.
Reading out the extracted letters in given order of puzzles gives the answer to the question of how to compromise: MAKE PIECE OR A DEAL.
| Card Game | Board Game | Answer | Indices | Extracted Letters | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HEARTS | MONOPOLY | WOMANIZER | 3, 4 | MA | A womanizer is a term for a man who engages in casual relationships with many women; they can be said to have a monopoly on hearts. |
| SLAPJACK | JENGA | PANCAKESTACK | 6, 7 | KE | In North American dialect, slapjack is another name for pancake. In the game of Jenga, you build a stack of blocks. |
| BRIDGE | OPERATION | RHINOPLASTY | 6, 3 | PI | Rhinoplasty is a surgical operation that often happens on the bridge of one’s nose. |
| POKER | RISK | SUPERFICIALBURN | 4, 8 | EC | When using a fireplace poker, you run the risk of a superficial (or first-degree) burn. |
| WAR | TABOO | GENEVACONVENTIONS | 2, 8 | EO | The Geneva Conventions is a body of laws that provides standards of humane treatment during wartime; in other words, they outline war taboos. |
| SPEED | CHECKERS | RADARGUNS | 5, 2 | RA | Radar guns are devices, often used by police officers, to measure the speed of moving objects: literally, speed checkers. |
| BS | CLUE | REDHERRING | 3, 5 | DE | In mystery novels and puzzlehunts, a red herring is a misleading or BS clue. |
| SPOONS | MASTERMIND | MEGAALAKAZAM | 4, 6 | AL | Mega Alakazam is a hyperintelligent Pokemon with psychic powers. It is often seen levitating 5 spoons. Its pre-evolved form has an IQ of 5,000, so it is undeniably a mastermind. |
I'm especially proud of the double pun in this answer. As this round references tabletop games, we didn't want to leave out either card games or board games. The final answer, which references both "pieces" (i.e. from a board game) and "deal" (i.e. dealing cards), is the perfect compromise to a round that touches on both types of games.
During internal testsolving, a huge debate erupted out of the outdated clue SPOONS TWISTER: ALAKAZAM. One camp adamantly maintained that the held item, Twisted Spoon, was "bent", not "twisted", while the other pointed to the English translation as hard evidence. Ultimately, we sidestepped the discussion by switching to SPOONS MASTERMIND: MEGAALAKAZAM, as no one can contest this galaxybrain Mega Evolution.
We had a lot of fun brainstorming concatenations of games. Some of the top runner-ups that did not make it into the final puzzle (due to difficulty finding matching letters/emojis) include PRESIDENT BALDERDASH: COVFEFE, RUMMY TABOO: PUBLIC URINATION, SPIDER DOMINION: FORBIDDEN FOREST, and GOFISHGO: PIKERACING.