Fire-Quackers - Solution
Written by Katie Dunn and Catherine Wu
Answer: SUPERFICIAL BURN
First, we click on the links and notice that this is likely the “Quack” variant of the game Hanabi. After learning a few of the rules, and perhaps trying to start the game, it is clear the problem is underconstrained without actual cards and hands. We observe that the scrap of paper has the same letters as the cards scribbled on in the deck. From there, we can deal starting hands to the players.
The game proceeds as below:
| Instructions | What occurred | Hands at the end | Game state |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start |
| Huey 11434 Dewey 44325 Louie 51324 | Board Discard |
QUACK! The game starts off with a clue for the right-most 5, a dangerous position since cards on the right get discarded first. Dewey insta-plays, thinking it’s a 1, and draws a new card to replace it, adding it to the other side of his hand. Like all misplays, the card goes into the discard and the team loses one of their three lives. |
| Huey 11434 Dewey 14432 Louie 51324 | Board Discard 5 |
QUACK! The next player receives a clue indicating the category that would include the most cards. Following convention, he plays the left-most clued card. Success! In his excitement, Louie drops all but the left-most card. “Keep calm, Louie!” he says to himself. The cards go on the bottom of the deck in order, so that his right-most card ends up on the bottom. After thinking a bit more, he puts the remaining card on the bottom, just to be sure to avoid any fowl play. |
Louie drops his cards and draws 5 new ones; he “keeps calm” as he replaces the PANIC he began with | Huey 21434 Dewey 14432 Louie 51111 | Board 1 Discard 5 |
QUACK! The youngest plays a card. The other players groan at the predictable error as he reaches for a card, but then realize the play is fine either way, so they’re safe. |
| Huey 21434 Dewey 14432 Louie 25111 | Board 11 Discard 5 |
QUACK! In these next two turns, everything goes swimmingly. Their score goes up by one, and the eldest ducks out for a bio break. |
| Huey 21434 Dewey 31443 Louie 25111 | Board 12 Discard 5 |
QUACK! A good clue that fits the bill is given. QUACK! The exact same clue is given (oops) after Huey returns with some quackers to share. On the other hand, for the rest of the game, everyone will know at least one thing about their hand. |
| Huey 21434 Dewey 31443 Louie 25111 | Board 12 Discard 5 |
The brooder of the family doesn't want a repeat of what happened with that green 5. Pondering his next step, he decides to hold onto the clued cards for his next three turns. Waddle he do now? QUACK! The duck who just clued him receives a clue in turn. Louie tries to discard to get another hint, but accidentally says “play” instead. |
| Huey 21434 Dewey 31443 Louie 25111 | Board 12 Discard 5 2 |
QUACK! The duck who played a card most recently receives a clue that includes his middle card. The turn after the next, the player with too many vowels in their name discards a clued card, following his own norms (alas, it was playable). But on his next turn, Huey remembers the hint he got recently! He means to play, but accidentally says “discard”. |
| Huey 32434 Dewey 33143 Louie 12511 | Board 12 Discard 5 4 211 |
QUACK! They’re running a bit short on time, so an ambitious hint is given. Louie realizes that the clued card is currently unplayable, and deduces something about his own hand. (This is the only time in the game he doesn’t get right and left confused, too!) With this stellar play, the brothers get two points for the price of one hint! |
| Huey 23434 Dewey 33143 Louie 42511 | Board 122 Discard 5 4 211 |
The player with only two colors in his hand goes, and he decides the clued cards he was holding aren't important anymore. The player who has given the most hints so far reverses his hand without noticing (silly goose!), but it doesn’t affect his clued cards, so the other players don’t bother correcting him. |
Huey reverses his hand | Huey 43432 Dewey 13314 Louie 42511 | Board 122 Discard 53 4 211 |
QUACK! QUACK! All the unclued playable cards they see are clued (without repeating this time!) Dewey, no longer able to discard by his own rules, plays. Louie wings it and plays one of the two cards that have been hinted twice. Three strikes and they’re out! |
| Huey 43432 Dewey 31314 Louie 4251 | Board 123 Discard 53 41 211 |
Reading off their hands at the end of the game by using the same card-to-letter key from before, we find the phrase COLOR NAMES SITE. (Louie does not redraw at the end of the game, which can be checked by the number of cards remaining in the deck.) A quick Google search reveals colornames.org.
From there, the flavor at the end suggests looking at the discard pile. Note that misplays also go into this pile. The letters are not very meaningful, but knowing that we need an RGB value and realizing the cards themselves are RGB, we can take the RGB value of the discard (red: 211, green: 53, blue: 41) and find the corresponding color on colornames.org, SUPERFICIAL BURN.
Author's Notes
We usually spend all our puzzling time on word puzzles, so this was our first foray into a fairly different kind of puzzle (and our first foray into writing!). We knew we wanted a Hanabi puzzle, and enjoy playing Hanabi with many conventions (turns out finessing is just the start of how deep the rabbit hole goes…). The puzzle was originally inspired by the connection between Quacks and Duck Konundra. Alas, konundra are outside our domain of expertise, and the puzzle ended up being more of a logic puzzle (...which are also not our forte).
The theming of the puzzle improved significantly throughout development. Googling “duck puns” quickly yields the title of this puzzle; it was a nice coincidence that Huey Dewey and Louie also wear these colors; and Hanabi has RGB cards -- all completely unintended when we began brainstorming.
We wanted to ensure that teams who had never seen the game before could enjoy the puzzle, and still make it interesting for those who already play. This seemed to work out reasonably during testsolving, though everyone left hating Louie. (Fun fact: Louie’s quirk mirrors one of the author’s own). Opinions were fairly polarized on the childish handwriting (especially the S and triple-U), but we had a lot of fun writing it and ultimately all testsolvers were able to decipher the duck scratch unambiguously.
We were worried that the hex input would confuse some teams, as the colornames.org landing page suggests hex. We considered naming a color “Dewey hates Decimal”, but decided against that because there was no real corresponding hex to input. As a cute side effect of changing the letters so many times to avoid hex winking (some filler letters included FF), we accidentally put author initials in the first two letters of the cards and the deck order.
During the hunt, we learned that around a month ago, someone made colors for each of the ducks. These did not exist as of the writing and the testing of this puzzle:
Some other teams also named some colors along the way, such as We Too Hoped This Would Be Right (#0d1eb1) and Also Not The Answer Sadly (#311425) - the latter of which at least 4 teams submitted.
