I know, that’s not the most joyful subject to choose for a puzzle and games blog.
But you might be surprised to learn there’s a game out there inspired by Tax Day.
It’s called The Taxman Game, but it’s also known by the names Tax Factor, Number Shark, The Factor Game, Factor Blast, Factor Blaster, or Dr. Factor. Phew! What a list.
It was created by mathematician Diane Resek in the late 1960s or early 1970s. It’s designed to help students practice their division and factorial skills.
Your goal is to choose a number, but the tax you pay is any remaining factors on the board. So, with the example board above, if you chose 18, you’d get 18 points. But the taxman would take 1, 2, 3, 6, and 9 (since 1×18, 2×9, and 3×6 all make 18).
With those numbers gone, you can only choose from numbers with factors remaining on the board. You pick, and again, the computer taxes you by claiming any factors remaining.
This continues until there are no legal moves left. When that happens, the taxman collects ALL of the remaining numbers on the board.
(There’s a two player version as well, where players alternate turns as the taxpayer and the taxman.)
Here was my attempt:
I chose 19 first, because it was the highest value prime number. The taxman only gets 1 as a tax.
I chose 10 next, since the taxman could only collect 2 and 5 from the board, which were lower numbers compared to my other options.
Next I chose 20, because with 10, 2, and 5 off the board, the taxman would only collect 4 points.
That put me at 49 to the taxman’s 12. Pretty good so far.
I chose 9 next, because 3 was the only option for the taxman.
Then I chose 18, because 1, 2, 9, and 3 were all off the table, so the taxman only got 6.
I chose 16 next, giving the taxman 8, then closed my choices with 14, giving the taxman 7.
My final score was 106 to the taxman’s 36.
Until that final rule kicked in.
All the unclaimed numbers went to the taxman. That’s 11, 12, 13, 15, and 17. 68 points!
So the final tally was 106 to 104. I BARELY edged out the taxman.
And that was my best effort!
As challenging as the game was, I really enjoyed it. It taxed my observational and math skills to keep ALL the factors in mind when selecting numbers, and trying to be strategic about the order in which I chose numbers.
And yeah, I’d still rather play this than do my taxes. What about you, fellow puzzler?
The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament was this past weekend, and unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend. I did my best to keep up with the event through social media, enjoying everyone’s observations, jokes, highlights, victories, trials and tribulations.
One message in particular stuck out to me, though.
I can’t remember if it was posting the results after the sixth or the seventh puzzle, but they remarked that they were excited to see some new blood in the top ten.
I couldn’t help but laugh, because all the names were pretty familiar to me.
Paolo Pasco won the tournament for the second year in a row, dominating the final puzzle with a record-breaking time of 3 minutes and 45 seconds. (Solver Paul Edward did the math on Facebook and calculated that Paolo spent less than 34 minutes across the 8 puzzles that weekend. WOW.)
Will Nediger and former champ Dan Feyer duked it out for second place, with Will edging out Dan by ONE SECOND, solving the puzzle in 4 minutes and 38 seconds. What a nailbiter!
The next day, after the tournament was over, I still had that message lurking in my brainspace.
Now, anyone who reads this blog can tell that I’m a nerd for many things. I’m a nerd for puzzles, games, and RPGs. I’m a nerd for trivia.
And I am absolutely a nerd for statistics. I love numbers and analysis and compiling data.
So I read through the full results available for each tournament going back years, focusing on the top ten from this year’s tournament and reflecting on their ACPT careers. I had to see if that “new blood” message had any merit or not, and I figured this was the best way to find out.
Let’s see, shall we?
Emily O’Neill
Emily has been competing since 2005 (unless there’s a name change involved, which is possible), and has been in the top ten twice. She has been in the top 30 ten times!
Glen Ryan
Glen has been competing since 2013 (where he placed 3rd in Division B), and has been in the top ten five times. He has been in the top 30 ten times!
Al Sanders
Al has been competing since 1999 (where he placed in the top three), and has been in the top ten TWENTY times. He has been second place twice and in the top 3 seven times. He has never ranked lower than 21!
Stella Zawistowski
Stella has been competing since 2001, and has been in the top ten THIRTEEN times. She has been in the top 30 nineteen times!
Andy Kravis
Andy has been competing since 2011, and has been in the top ten six times. He has been in the top 30 ten times!
Tyler Hinman
Tyler has been competing since 2001 and is a seven-time champion! He has been in the top ten NINETEEN times (including five times in a row at second place and fourteen times in the top three). He was the Division B winner in his second appearance.
David Plotkin
David has been competing since 2010, and has been in the top ten TWELVE times. He has been in the top 3 six times and has never ranked lower than 28th!
Dan Feyer
Dan has been competing since 2008 and is a nine-time champion! He has been in the top ten SIXTEEN times (literally every time except his first tournament appearance).
[It’s not until the final two names that we really get anyone who qualifies as new blood.]
Will Nediger
Will has been competing since 2021 and has been in the top 3 twice. He has been in the top ten three times (meaning every time he’s competed).
Paolo Pasco
Paolo has been competing since 2021 and is a two-time champion! He has been in the top ten five times (every time he’s competed). He was also the Division B winner in 2022.
You have to go back to the year 1998 to find a tournament that didn’t feature one of these ten people as a solver. That’s amazing!
Originally, I was just going to focus on the top ten solvers from this year’s tournament and their many accomplishments.
But as I was going through the rankings year by year, I was struck by how many names I recognized, and how many times I got to see those names. I got to experience the tournament community as a microcosm across literal decades.
I watched the changing of the guard as some names slowly slipped out of the top ten and were replaced by others. Names like Anne Erdmann and Trip Payne and Jon Delfin and Ellen Ripstein and Douglas Hoylman. I was more familiar with some than others.
The slow evolution of solvers really struck both the puzzle nerd in me and the history nerd in me. I ventured back before my own career in puzzles started (back in 2003).
I’ve never competed at the ACPT, but I attended the event for several years, working the Penny Press / Puzzlenation table in the common area, and I grew familiar with a lot of attendees. Puzzle people are genuinely nice folks, and so many of them were happy to visit for a bit, introducing themselves, checking out our magazines, and taking advantage of our pencil sharpeners.
Everyone was so friendly, sharing their excitement for the event and letting me know their thoughts on each puzzle as the tournament went on. It really is a delight.
(Just don’t start a conversation about which pencils are the best for solving and you’ll be fine!)
New blood or not, the crossword scene is clearly thriving, and I can’t wait to see what next year’s tournament brings.
The insane stupid rodeo of tariff threats, retractions, delays, and new threats continues, and the board game industry is reeling.
Some companies are pausing Kickstarter pledge managers and rollouts until they consult with lawyers and printers. Others are cancelling projects outright.
And these companies are being incredibly honest and forthright with their audiences. I’ve seen at least a half-dozen posts from across the industry, and there are probably many others I’ve missed.
Feel free to click the link to check it out, but I’m going to post much of the text here as well, because it’s straightforward and informative. It avoids hyperbole and confronts the unpleasantness awaiting board game companies going forward. Plus it gives us real numbers to crunch.
(Meredith’s comments are in quotation marks, my comments in italics.)
“On April 5th, a 54% tariff goes into effect on a wide range of goods imported from China. For those of us who create boardgames, this is not just a policy change. It’s a seismic shift.
At Steve Jackson Games, we are actively assessing what this means for our products, our pricing, and our future plans. We do know that we can’t absorb this kind of cost increase without raising prices. We’ve done our best over the past few years to shield players and retailers from the full brunt of rising freight costs and other increases, but this new tax changes the equation entirely.”
Covering the board games industry has been a rollercoaster since COVID 19 reports in China emerged and factories began shutting down. Board game companies adapted quickly, but many suffered, and more than a few closed their doors.
I was hoping that would be the worst of it for the industry, but sadly, that’s obviously no longer the case.I can only imagine what the last five years have been like for board game creators.
“Here are the numbers: A product we might have manufactured in China for $3.00 last year could now cost $4.62 before we even ship it across the ocean. Add freight, warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution margins, and that once-$25 game quickly becomes a $40 product. That’s not a luxury upcharge; it’s survival math.”
Getting real numbers has been a revelation, and I’ve been sharing this post all over in the hopes of people realizing the genuine effect these tariffs will have on businesses.
“Some people ask, “Why not manufacture in the U.S.?” I wish we could. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn’t meaningfully exist here yet. I’ve gotten quotes. I’ve talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply aren’t.
We aren’t the only company facing this challenge. The entire board game industry is having very difficult conversations right now. For some, this might mean simplifying products or delaying launches. For others, it might mean walking away from titles that are no longer economically viable. And, for what I fear will be too many, it means closing down entirely.
Tariffs, when part of a long-term strategy to bolster domestic manufacturing, can be an effective tool. But that only works when there’s a plan to build up the industries needed to take over production. There is no national plan in place to support manufacturing for the types of products we make. This isn’t about steel and semiconductors. This is about paper goods, chipboard, wood tokens, plastic trays, and color-matched ink. These new tariffs are imposing huge costs without providing alternatives, and it’s going to cost American consumers more at every level of the supply chain.”
This is the real lesson here for anyone supporting these tariffs. You can’t just say you’re bringing manufacturing back to America. You have to DO it. You have to have the facilities, the manpower, the training, the materials, and the wherewithal. These tariffs aren’t just putting the cart before the horse, it’s pushing the cart down the hill and blaming gravity when it crashes.
“We want to be transparent with our community. This is real: Prices are going up. We’re still determining how much and where.
If you’re frustrated, you’re not alone. We are too. And if you want to help, write to your elected officials. Ask them how these new policies help American creators and small businesses. Because right now, it feels like they don’t.
We’ll keep making games. But we’ll be honest when the road gets harder, because we know you care about where your games come from – and about the people who make them.”
Hey folks, it’s your friendly neighborhood puzzle guy back again. (Just wanted to make it clear that everything you read going forward is me, not Meredith.)
It’s a rocky road ahead for board game companies.
Thankfully, we are already seeing industry leaders making moves to handle Trump’s tariffs.
The list of organizations agreeing to work on this is impressive… and inspiring. Sure, it’s a business decision. My cynical little heart sees that.
But imagine if they succeeded and made toys tariff-free across the globe. What a gift to parents and children around the world that would be! What a boon that could be to game designers.
(I reached out to the U.S. Toy Association to confirm if board games and RPGs fall under the toy umbrella, but have not heard back yet.)
So, what can you do in the meantime?
Well, if you have the means to do so, reach out to your officials. Support local game companies. Speak up, loudly and often.
When you think of the board game industry, you probably think of the big companies, the big brands… but there’s only a few of them.
The VAST majority are small businesses led by passionate designers, creative minds, and hardworking people of all ethnicities, ages, backgrounds, and gender identities. They are a chorus of voices that make gaming better, that tell us stories about ourselves through gameplay, that bring history alive and challenge our minds, our reflexes, our collaboration, and our cunning.
THAT is the board game industry I want to see succeed.
Meme culture is constantly evolving. As new memes emerge, others are updated. They mutate, they cross over with other meme styles. It’s virtually a language at this point, a hyper-dynamic vernacular where the rules change as fast as the imagery.
And yet, old memes can resurface for new audiences and make an unexpected impact, like the one I stumbled across this week.
Two years ago, an archaeology report hit internet news feeds. Archaeologists in Kazakhstan uncovered the burial mound of a young girl, somewhere between the ages of 12 and 15. The grave dated back to the Bronze Age, about 5000 years or so.
But that wasn’t what caught the Internet’s attention.
It was the sheep bones that captured everyone’s imagination.
You see, she was buried with 180 ankle bones, also known as astragalus bones, from dozens and dozens of sheep.
Researchers were unsure of the significance of these bones, attributing them to cult practices, totems for meditation, or symbols of good luck to wish the deceased well in their transition to a new world.
Internet readers came to a different conclusion. They believed this young girl was a world-class gamer and these were her trophies, the spoils of victory.
Knuckle bones, ankle bones, and other small, easily-rolled bones have been associated with gaming for centuries. For many cultures, they were the first readily-available dice. This is true in Kazakhstan as well.
In fact, there is a Kazakh game called Assyk, and it’s similar to marbles. Players take an ankle bone and try to knock other ankle bones from the game space. It requires considerable skill, since you’re tossing the assyk from a distance.
Rules vary depending on your sources, but according to some articles about this traditional Kazakh game, winners would keep the ankle bones they knock out of the circle, just like in marbles, pogs, and other games of this nature.
So, if our Bronze Age assyk master followed this rule — and based on the number of bones in her grave, it’s a distinct possibility — that means she didn’t just dabble in this game… she dominated at it, collecting dozens of victories.
Appropriately, the Internet celebrated her as a pro gamer, a tournament-level champion with the hand-eye coordination to dominate modern games as easily as she did games of assyk around her village.
And honestly, how can you not love something like that? Everybody needs a hero, gamers included. A 5000-year-old Bronze Age astragalus-hoarding game sniper is not a bad place to start.
The Puzzmo mini crossword is always accompanied by notes from the constructor and the editor. The comments from yesterday’s puzzle centered around anagrams, since the mini had not only an anagram in the theme entries — MAORI and MARIO — but actually had the word ANAGRAMMED crossing those entries.
In those comments, both Will Eisenberg and Brooke Husic discussed a really playful subset of cluing involving misdirection.
You give the solver an anagram, but present it is as a statement, rather than just saying “ABLE, to BALE.” When done properly, it takes a second for your brain to actually register the anagram, even though it’s right in front of you!
Will used the example “Ancients, for instance,” which cleverly employs the standard crossword trope of “for example / for instance / for one / e.g.” to conceal the anagram. Brooke had another banger example, offering “Anemone, to name one.”
I delved into the archives on Xwordinfo to look for other examples of this misdirection cluing style, and I found some fun ones. (Obviously, ANAGRAM isn’t an incredibly common entry, but I was genuinely surprised by the variety of options that awaited me in the archives.)
Back in 2011, Oliver Hill and Eliza Bagg gave us “Neo, for one,” which is such an effective misdirect than I can imagine writing the wrong answer more than once in the grid before realizing the trick, since this sort of clue is used so often for things like HERO or ROLE.
Other constructors phrased their anagrams as if they were slang or specialized jargon, leading solvers down the garden path while showing off their own impressive anagramming talents.
Ryan McCarty and Nelson Hardy gave us “Schoolmaster for the classroom, e.g.”
Margaret Saine offered “Illustration for an ill tourist?”
Sam Trabucco crafted “Nerd’s epithet for the president?”
Bryant White presented “Coasters for Socrates, e.g.”
Naturally, cryptic crossword or British-style crossword solvers probably suss out these clues faster, since this sort of stealthy wordplay is standard in cryptic cluing, where clues are written out like sentences, rather than the more direct cluing typically used in American crosswords. (Cryptic crossword icons Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon had one ANAGRAM clue in the Xwordinfo archives, the elegant “Broadcast of bad actors, e.g.”
Some constructors take it even further, employing the age-old trick of apropos anagrams for celebrities.
The Simpsons helped popularize knowledge of this game when Lisa learned that ALEC GUINNESS anagrams into GENUINE CLASS. Another famous one is CLINT EASTWOOD anagramming to OLD WEST ACTION. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE aptly anagrams to FLIT ON, CHEERING ANGEL.
Patrick Merrell employed this nicely with his clue for ANAGRAM, “Horrid glances from Charles Grodin?”
I could go on and on listing examples, but Patrick’s clue is hard to top.
I’m obviously a huge fan of misdirectionclues, so it was a joy to deep-dive into a different genre of cluing and watch clever people work their magic. Hopefully you enjoyed taking this puzzly stroll with me.
Hallmark movies place crime solvers in all sorts of curious situations. Police have been paired up with crossword editors, bakers, home renovation pros, literature professors, archaeologists, dancers, fashion designers… the list goes on and on.
Other times, it’s less about the unexpected pairings and more about the locale. A college campus, a morning TV show, Martha’s Vineyard… big cities and small towns alike. Nowhere is safe from a Hallmark mystery!
And now, we can add MYSTERY ISLAND to the list of settings for multiple Hallmark mystery movies.
We previously reviewed the first film in the series, and now we’re back to tackle the latest installment: Winner Takes All.
How does it compare to the original? Is MYSTERY ISLAND ever gonna run out of mysteries? We’re going to find out together!
First, though, a heads-up: I’ll recap the story below, and then give my thoughts on the whole endeavor. If you’d like to read my conclusions but skip the full recap, scroll down to the bottom of the post.
Ready? Okay, let’s dig in!
FILM RECAP
It’s a dark night on MYSTERY ISLAND, as police psychologist Dr. Emilia Priestly pans her flashlight back and forth by the pool, before creeping slowly back into the luxurious house.
There’s the clink of a glass. She’s not alone. She walks across the water feature and up a few stairs when her flashlight goes out for a second.
When it comes back on, BAM. Detective Jason Trent is there, surprising her. The two of them venture into the kitchen, and Emilia quotes a message about the trail “going cold.” So they check the freezer.
There’s a body inside, and they are weirdly casual about it.
Suddenly the Baroness is there, and we shift to a well-lit office as she, Jason, and Emilia toss ideas back and forth. They’re workshopping a new murder mystery. Fredericks, the house manager and CEO of MYSTERY ISLAND, claims he can’t find the unused mystery storylines written by John Murtaugh, the island’s creator (and the victim in the previous film).
The Baroness has a video call with Carlos, their lead investor, and it turns out he has named the Baroness COO of MYSTERY ISLAND. To generate funds and interest, she proposes a puzzle contest where the top solvers win tickets to attend a murder mystery on MYSTERY ISLAND. And if they solve the mystery that weekend, they win a cash prize. She also suggests inviting celebrity crime novelist Cassandra Cornwall to help promote the event.
They have a tight deadline to deliver a draft of the event to Carlos, and Emilia and Jason immediately start bickering about their other jobs and responsibilities.
Cut to Emilia sitting poolside, where she talks to Jason on the phone and they awkwardly discuss how awkward they are together and that they enjoy working together. Awww…kward.
We then jump-cut to the contest weekend and a shot of our eyepatch-wearing white-tuxedoed pal Fredericks, as he introduces a staff of ten employees to Emilia and Jason.
Emilia and Jason give the staff (and the viewers) a rundown of the invited guests:
NYPD detective Bobby Teller, who solved the contest puzzle in 32 minutes
Bobby’s plus one, his brother Davis, an investment banker
Alice Whatley, a whodunit podcaster who solved the puzzle in less than an hour
Alice’s plus one, her aunt Louise Baker, a hotel manager from Manhattan
Cassandra Cornwall, who is an old friend of John Murtaugh
Cassandra’s plus one, her useless husband Ted
The Baroness will also be playing, and has brought her new boyfriend James, a Texas oilman, with her. Emilia and Jason will be undercover as staff to help run the event.
Fredericks informs the guests about the murder boards in their rooms to assist in their solving, and that today’s event starts as soon as they enter their rooms. At some point, a body will drop.
(If one of the invited guests is the victim, they’ll be housed in the “deceased bungalow,” which has a jacuzzi and is adjacent to a golf course. Davis likes this idea and suggests someone kill him.)
Jason then collects everyone’s phones, and the guests discuss detective novels like those of Agatha Christie, Evelyn Murtaugh, and Cassandra Cornwall. It turns out, James and the Baroness bonded over one of CC’s books on a long flight.
Everyone scatters to their rooms, eager for the event to begin.
In the Baroness’s room, James knocks at the door and kisses her. His Texas oilman accent is an act, but apparently his affection for her is real. (They have switched rooms at his request to give her a nicer view.) Since James is an actor and employee of MYSTERY ISLAND, the Baroness is hiding their true relationship from Emilia for now.
Or so she thinks. We cut to Emilia, who suspects something is up with the Baroness and James. Emilia and Jason awkward-flirt some more and she continues offering snacks to the guests while Jason bartends.
Emilia sees Fredericks looking awfully chummy with Aunt Louise, which piques her interest. Alice talks to CC, mentioning she’s done several podcasts about CC’s books, and inquiring if CC would be a guest on her show sometime. CC is cold in response, then walks off after Fredericks.
Emilia follows and overhears CC telling Fredericks that he owes her. When they notice Emilia, Fredericks covers by saying CC is unhappy with her room, and Emilia offers to handle the problem. Ted asks about the room, but CC blows off Ted and walks away.
The happy couple…
Emilia asks Fredericks about his conversation with Aunt Louise and he similarly blows her off. Boy, Emilia has only been cosplaying as staff for like FIVE MINUTES and she’s getting the full food service experience.
Cut to dinner time, where everyone is seated except James, who arrives late, back to full cowboy accent. Fredericks informs everyone that they should all be in the game room at 9 PM sharp, but not a moment before.
During dinner, Alice asks if Bobby would go on her podcast, and he asks her in reply how she solved the puzzle so fast. (Um, didn’t he solve it faster than her?)
She admits Aunt Louise helped a bunch. Davis claims Bobby also needed help, and Bobby mentions Davis was kicked out of three colleges and downplays his achievements as an investment banker. What a jerk!
James stirs the pot by claiming Davis’s boss was his advisor, but he fired him. Then he targets CC, telling her he’s not actually a fan of her books and that bringing CC to the island is a waste of time and money. He claims it’ll be different “when he’s running things” and the Baroness tries to shut him down, saying Carlos isn’t interested in selling. James replies that he’ll just have to take the island from him, then. Oooh, heavy-handed intrigue.
Emilia and Jason slip away, pleased at how their mystery is playing out so far. She spots Fredericks standing alone by the pool and again asks him what’s going on, but gets nowhere with him.
They retreat to the game room, and we see the guests gathered around a Scrabble board. Davis and Ted are missing, though, and Aunt Louise goes to look for them. James starts making drinks while Fredericks slips out.
James focuses on Alice this time, claiming he’s going to buy the podcast network her show is on, and her crime podcast will have to be more family friendly.
Davis finally arrives, and Ted shows up not long after. James puts the tray of drinks on the Scrabble board and spins it around, mixing up the drinks. Aunt Louise returns, and everyone toasts.
James begins choking, and several guests tend to him, while CC blithely claims the game has started.
But everyone is shocked when the gazebo bursts into flame outside. James stands up, suddenly fine. But Emilia and Jason are shocked.
The explosion isn’t part of the script.
COMMERCIAL BREAK!
Jason uses a fire extinguisher and puts out the burning gazebo, and they find Fredericks on the ground nearby. Before he dies, he whispers the word “arrest” to Jason.
Bobby tries to handle the investigation, but Jason and Emilia reveal their true roles and send everyone inside. Aunt Louise is crying, while everyone else is stunned/confused.
They find a tripwire in the wreckage of the gazebo, which Fredericks must have tripped, alongside a destroyed briefcase that they believe contained the explosives.
Jason goes to the office to call the mainland while Emilia collects everyone’s passports. James reveals to the guests his true identity as an actor so there are no more secrets.
Oh James, there simply MUST be more secrets. We’re only 30 minutes in.
(Also, from this point forward, to avoid confusion, we will refer to him and his fictional counterpart as Actor James and Victim James, respectively.)
Bobby recognizes him from an improv show he did years ago on a cruise ship. The Baroness gushes about Actor James’s brilliant performance in an off-Broadway show based on the story of Orestes.
The next morning, the Baroness and Emilia find Jason going over security footage from the island. He’s managed to eliminate any of the staff members as suspects for the explosion, leaving only the guests as potential killers.
Jason uses the passports to see if any of the guests had previously come to MYSTERY ISLAND and interacted with Fredericks. They also discuss a trip the Baroness and Fredericks took to New York to find an actor (where they hired Actor James), so all that NY-centric backstory for the guests is surely going to come into play at some point.
Emilia and Jason question the Baroness first, and Emilia confronts her about her relationship with Actor James.
We get interrogation scenes next:
CC reveals that her publisher wants a MYSTERY ISLAND tie-in for her next book, and she approached Fredericks about it, but she was unhappy with the results
Ted plays dumb, claiming he was stargazing near the gazebo
Davis claims he’s the one who solved the contest puzzle, not Bobby
Davis also claims Bobby was previously in financial trouble, but “figured it out”
Aunt Louise confirmed she met with Fredericks on that New York trip
Louise claims she and Fredericks were in love years ago, but Fredericks broke it off, only to reconnect with her recently, giving her and Alice the solution to the contest puzzle so they could come to MYSTERY ISLAND
Louise says Fredericks was going to resign and no longer work for MYSTERY ISLAND, so he and Louise could be together and “live an opulent lifestyle”
(Emilia and Jason talk about Fredericks’ demotion, which is weird. He was named CEO at the end of the last film, while the Baroness is now COO, implying he’s lost some influence. But later, they mention Fredericks as CEO still… so where did the demotion happen?)
COMMERCIAL BREAK!
The title changes continue as Ray — former coroner, now police chief — arrives with several cops to help investigate.
They head to Fredericks’ room, which has clearly been searched already. Ted and Davis, as the people late to arrive to the game room that night, are the top suspects.
Ray finds a secret safe with a fingerprint lock and his team gets to work collecting DNA from the guests.
More interviews ensue:
Actor James asks if his death scene was convincing
Actor James also hands over a note he found in his room that reads “meet me at the gazebo tonight for some real fun”
They realize the note is freshly typed, so they go looking for a typewriter.
And wouldn’t you know it, Evelyn Murtaugh’s typewriter is missing from the library.
They show the Baroness the note, and she thinks Actor James was the target, not Fredericks. But she never told anyone that she and Actor James switched rooms, so Emilia and Jason believe she was the actual target.
Emilia and Jason move the Baroness to a safe room since she’s still in danger. Everyone else gets sent to their rooms while Ray heads back to the mainland with the body and the DNA samples.
Jason cooks some food for Emilia and they discuss Fredericks’ secrets before starting to profile the killer. They’re very casual about walking around a manor with a murderer lurking nearby.
Emilia goes back to the kitchen for her forgotten key and is startled by Alice, who she ABSOLUTELY DECKS by accident!
COMMERCIAL BREAK!
Alice is surprisingly cool about getting punched in the face, and offers her services as a mystery solver to Emilia.
Emilia shuts her down, saying that she’s not good at solving mysteries, she’s good at telling stories about mysteries others have solved. (Plus Fredericks provided the solution to the puzzle for her). Alice admits that she came to MYSTERY ISLAND hoping to boost the visibility of her podcast.
The next morning, Emilia is working at the murder board when Jason arrives. They ponder if the death is intended to tarnish the island’s reputation and push Carlos to sell MYSTERY ISLAND.
They check on the Baroness, who excitedly shares her conclusion… the same one Emilia and Jason just discussed. They spoil her moment, but only a tiny bit.
Outside at a lavish buffet, Bobby talks to Alice and offers to team up, but she turns him down. He asks if his brother told her he’s a lousy detective, which he denies. He then brags about deducing that the Baroness and Actor James are a real couple, but the fact that they are embracing quite openly RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM AT THIS VERY MOMENT hurts his case as a brilliant detective somewhat. (We also see something in Bobby’s ear.)
Jason mentions the investigation is ongoing and asks them all to stay. Davis suggests the group continue solving the original murder game as a distraction. Everyone but Bobby likes this idea, and he walks off.
Actor James and the Baroness retire to the deceased bungalow, since he was the game’s victim and the game has resumed. Jason asks Davis to help keep Bobby around while they’re investigating, and Davis mentions that Bobby could use the prize money, since he might have to retire early. Apparently he’s being investigated by Internal Affairs for taking bribes from a prominent crime family.
Jason tells Ray about the New York crime connection when Alice interrupts to apologize to Emilia about last night. She then asks if Actor James and the Baroness are a couple (WHY DO THEY KEEP ACTING LIKE THIS IS A BIG SECRET?!) and they ask if she figured it out. She mentions Bobby did, and they wonder who told him.
They clock the thing in Bobby’s ear, and believe he knows about Actor James and the Baroness because of a listening device planted in the library. They find the listening device and check the other rooms, in case he’s bugging them as well.
In the deceased bungalow, Actor James and the Baroness talk, and he pitches returning to the mystery as a new character. Emilia and Jason arrive, requesting their help.
They stage an emergency to lure out Bobby and prove he’s the one who planted the listening devices. Bobby arms himself with a corkscrew and heads to the beach, where he finds the Baroness confronting a man in a dark hooded jacket.
When he approaches, the man turns around and reveals himself to be… Jason. The trap is sprung!
COMMERCIAL BREAK!
While Jason takes a call from the cops on the mainland, Bobby and Emilia talk about police work and masks. He namedrops his mentor, a detective who relocated to Boston.
When he hands over the listening devices, Jason mentions that the investment group looking to buy MYSTERY ISLAND is run by the same crime family that supposedly bribed Bobby. Bobby lawyers up rather than answering any more questions.
They leave Bobby’s room and overhear an argument between Aunt Louise and CC about Louise’s relationship with Fredericks.
As Jason and Emilia await the chief’s arrival, Emilia connects that Jason’s mentor and Bobby’s mentor were the same cop, Detective Ruiz. (In the previous film, Jason mentioned Ruiz’s murder was unsolved.)
With Ray’s help, they open Fredericks’ fingerprint safe and find the missing mystery plots written by John Murtaugh, along with contracts for a $2 million dollar estate in Scotland.
Jason calls the realtor and confirms Fredericks already put down a million for the estate and planned to pay the rest in a week. Where would he get this money so quickly?
As the Baroness reads through the missing mystery plots, she recognizes one of Murtaugh’s mysteries as the plot of one of CC’s novels.
They compare all of the mystery plots to CC’s books, and each Murtaugh mystery predates the novel based on it. Every CC mystery has been stolen.
They confront CC about this, accusing her of rifling through Fredericks’ things. They believe she was upset that he was out of mystery plots for her, and her newest book is suffering delays because of it.
COMMERCIAL BREAK!
CC claims she was happy to pay Fredericks because of her publishing success, and that she didn’t kill Fredericks. She needed him alive to help her finish her next book.
Back at the deceased bungalow, the Baroness wonders if she wasn’t the target after all, but Emilia and Jason still aren’t sure. They then meet Hugh Walsh, aka Actor James’s new detective character.
As Hugh and the Baroness rejoin the game, Emilia and Jason head to the murder board, but are stumped. They’re missing something.
Jason goes to talk to Bobby about Ruiz. They discuss Ruiz’s murder (and add the detail that Ruiz was drugged before he was killed) but Bobby still refuses to talk without his lawyer present.
In the game room, Hugh is talking to Louise, Alice, and the Baroness, and they discuss the game’s murder, returning to the drinks spinning on the Scrabble board. Alice deduces that Victim James picked up the wrong glass and was killed by his own drink… meaning that he intended to kill someone else.
Emilia and Jason bring food to Bobby’s room and discover he’s hung himself.
COMMERCIAL BREAK!
As Jason throws a sheet over Bobby’s body on the bed, Emilia spots the missing typewriter in Bobby’s room. There’s a suicide note from Bobby to Jason typed on it, confessing to Fredericks’ murder. But Jason can’t read the entire note without contaminating the crime scene. (Which is weird, because someone would have had to scroll the paper back down for all the text to NOT be visible on a typewriter.)
They tell Davis about Bobby’s death and the confession, and Davis refuses to believe that Bobby would kill for money, despite his shaky ethics. They fill in Actor James and the Baroness, and then overhear cries for help.
Davis and Ted are fighting near the pool about a deal gone bad, and we finally get the truth about why Davis and Ted were late to the game room on the first night. Ted cut a deal to get Davis as his financial planner in exchange for CC taking on Bobby as a contributor to her next book. (Ted was desperate, he’d lost most of CC’s money in the stock market.)
The chief examines Bobby’s body, and determines he was strangled BEFORE he was hanged, so it was murder, not suicide. Emilia spots that part of Bobby’s murder board was wiped clean, so she suspects he’d figured something out before he died.
They read the rest of the note from the typewriter and see that the word “defence” is spelled the British way, not the American way. So Jason wants to talk to the Baroness again.
Naturally, she’s upset she’s gone from potential victim to potential suspect. Actor James is similarly upset, and goes for a walk while Emilia and the Baroness chat.
The Baroness mentions MYSTERY ISLAND’s bad luck and suggests she might tell Carlos to sell the island and she’ll just move to New York and live with James.
Jason works at the murder board when Emilia arrives, frustrated that MYSTERY ISLAND might be going away. She and Jason resolve to listen to all of the recordings Bobby made, convinced that he heard something that they missed.
COMMERCIAL BREAK!
We get a montage while Jason and Emilia eat pizza and listen to Bobby’s recordings. When a marker runs out, Emilia goes to the Baroness’s desk for more, and finds it out of order. Someone has been in the password book! (So, you know, maybe hide it better if it’s so valuable?)
They check the computer and find that Bobby was the last person who logged in. They look at the computer history and see something important. They stare importantly at it, and at each other. IMPORTANT.
Cut to the big gathering scene. But not the one we expect.
Louise and Alice have collected everyone to solve the murder of Victim James. They focus on the person who stopped the rotating Scrabble board and caused Victim James to pick the poisoned drink… the Baroness!
She dated Victim James, lured him to MYSTERY ISLAND, and then killed him to protect her beloved murder-happy game locale.
The Baroness congratulates Alice and awards her the prize money, but they’re interrupted when Jason strikes the gong in the corner of the foyer.
The cops arrive, and Jason and Emilia wheel in a murder board for their own grand reveal. They accuse Actor James of killing Bobby because Bobby recognized him from that improv show years ago.
In fact, they believe all of the misdirections (the note under James’s door, the fake suicide, the British spelling of “defence”) were the work of Actor James!
FINAL COMMERCIAL BREAK!
It turns out Actor James and Fredericks worked on the same cruise ship seven years ago, and Bobby found this out.
Fredericks and the Baroness had gone to New York to find an actor to play their Texas oilman, and they saw Actor James performing in Orestes.
And Orestes sounds an awful lot like “Arrest” when spoken by a dying man. GASP.
They ping-pong between three main topics: Fredericks, Bobby, and the cruise ship, and it’s sort of a mish-mash of random facts for a bit. They believe that Fredericks knew about a murder Actor James committed… seven years ago. Bobby didn’t know the details, but the connection between Actor James and Fredericks was enough leverage for him to try to shake down Actor James for money.
But Actor James killed Bobby instead and staged his suicide.
Emilia and Jason followed Bobby’s lead down the rabbit hole, uncovering how Actor James’s father died in prison… and how Actor James blamed the detective that put his father in jail: Detective Ruiz, Jason and Bobby’s mentor.
Actor James had discovered the offshore accounts where his father had hidden his embezzled money, and Fredericks tried to blackmail Actor James into helping him pay off his Scottish dream home with Louise.
Actor James was supposed to bring the money to the island to hand it off to Fredericks, but instead, he killed him and tried to pin it on Bobby while using the Baroness as a distraction.
Sadly, this is all conjecture. They have no hard proof of James’s involvement in Fredericks’ or Bobby’s murders. OH NO, WILL ACTOR JAMES GET AWAY WITH IT?
Well, no.
But why not?
They don’t have proof of him killing Fredericks or Bobby, it’s true. But they DO have his DNA from Ruiz’s murder, because he spat in Ruiz’s face before he killed him.
He is arrested and dragged off, still claiming he loves the Baroness. She looks around, baffled by the entire reveal.
In our closing scene, the guests have left, and Emilia, Jason, and the Baroness decompress after the long weekend. CC wants to write a book about the weekend’s events, but the Baroness would rather Emilia write it instead.
She leaves, and Emilia and Jason discuss the book and return to their flirty banter from before, a bit less awkward now.
The end.
CONCLUSION
This was a curious watch. I enjoyed the actual mystery more than the murder in the original film, but I don’t feel like the filmmakers played entirely fair with the viewers this time around.
Like many murder mystery novels of the past, crucial information was kept out of our hands, so when the big reveal rolled around, we couldn’t really conclusively point to a suspect ourselves, due to lack of evidence.
There are huge assumptions in the big reveal that don’t feel like genuine deductions, and it makes both Bobby’s actions and the last murder seem a bit nonsensical. (Strangely enough, the actual solution of this film’s mystery feels more like the FAKE solution to the previous film’s mystery.)
I’m not saying the story doesn’t wrap up nicely. They manage to tie both movies together in an interesting way… but as someone who likes to try to solve the case alongside the protagonists, I felt a little cheated.
And given how Winner Takes All wrapped up all the loose ends from the previous film, I wonder if there’s anything more for a follow-up to accomplish. This might be a one-and-done (well, two-and-done, anyway).
You should definitely watch it for the fun twists and tropes, though. It’s not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.
Did you enjoy your return visit to MYSTERY ISLAND, fellow puzzlers? Let me know in the comments section below!
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