Special trash

[thomas-lehericy]

Bob has a trash card in slot x. Cathy has a valuable card in slot x. Donald has a playable card in slot x.

Alice SHOULD play-hint if she has nothing better to do. But it may be better for her to NOT play-hint slot x.

If Alice, instead of play-hinting Cathy’s card, trash-discards,

• then, since she did not save Bob’s card in slot x, Bob assumes it is safe to discard. However, since Alice may have wanted to get more clues (because she felt the team did not have enough), it is in general safer to stop there and play-hint by discarding.

Now assume that Alice trash clues.

• Bob deduces that Alice thinks she has "nothing to do", despite the obvious play-hint at slot x.
• Thus Bob’s slot x is not worth saving (giving a clue on it would have cost exactly the same amount of clues).
• In any case, Donald should get a play-hint. Alice must expect that the play-hint will be given by either Bob or Cathy.
• But Cathy should not have the opportunity to play-hint, because she could discard a valuable card.
• Thus, it is Bob who should play-hint.
• Furthermore, since Alice let him do as he wanted, it means his slot x card may be discarded as Bob see fit.
• Bob thus marks his slot x card as SPECIAL TRASH KNOWN BY ALICE: -> Alice knows that Bob knows it is trash, -> but Cathy and Donald do not.
• A discard of this card can then, at a later point, be used to play hint a card in CATHY OR DONALD’S hands, but NOT in Alice’s, allowing finesses on Alice.
• Bob may then choose between cluing Cathy’s card (and keeping the "special trash") or discarding the "special trash" to play-hint Donald.

NOTE: if Cathy had trash too, Bob would also trash-clue (or trash-discard) to special-trash her, and would NOT consider himself special-trash’ed. So Bob not trash-cluing is a message to Cathy that

• she has a valuable card there (she marks that she should not discard it) - this is even if Bob did not clue Cathy’s card specifically,
• Bob got special trash’ed and is aware of it. With this convention, Bob does not need to save Cathy’s card anymore, and may proceed to give another unrelated clue (meaning Alice can, in fact, trash clue when there are at least two play-hints to give!)

So this special trash is, in fact, also known by Cathy.

Similar situation if Cathy has a playable card: Bob will mark his card as special trash, but Donald, seeing everything unfold, will also know that it is a special trash. Only Cathy may then be play-hinted by discarding Bob’s special trash.

[thomas-lehericy]

With only the basic convention, having a play hint that only targets a certain player is much weaker than a vanilla play hint.

The interest is that this may trigger any number of agreed-upon conventions.

For example, consider the following rough "finesse" convention. Say that Alice has a clue that can only play-hint Bob. She must make sure that Bob’s card in this slot is protected:

• either there is a sufficient queue of play hints,
• or Bob’s card in this slot is known unplayable by him,
• or someone else has a playable card in this slot (note: Alice giving a play-hint without any obvious protection is, in itself, a double play hint - on Bob, and on another of the players who are aware of the "special trash". But the targetted player should not play immediately, otherwise Bob will not react.)

Discarding this card is a trash clue for anyone but Bob, who takes it as a play clue.

• If there is a playable card in this slot in another player’s hand, Bob does nothing. When nothing gets played (or when another player, seeing that two cards are playable, doubles the play hint - which is what they should do, but WITHOUT "fix-cluing" Bob’s card), he thinks he got "let the clue tick", and marks his card in this slot as playable.
• If not, Bob directly marks the card in this slot as playable. In short, Bob WILL mark this card as playable.

In short, Alice tells everyone that Bob’s card, specifically, will be playable at some point.

It is up to the players to decide what type of finesse or bluff should be triggered by such a situation. My suggestion:

• the first compatible clued card should be played first ("prompt").
• if no such card is available, then cards in finesse position should be played.
• Because there is little control on the target card, I would advise against layered finesses. If the first card played in this manner is not in logical sequence with Bob’s card, this should be considered a bluff, and stopped there (Bob will not play his card, and no other player will try to keep playing). If the card is in a logical sequence, the next likely card should be played, etc.

NOTE: if Alice discards her special trash, and Bob’s card is trash, the only interpretation that doesn’t lead to Bob playing (and striking) is that it is a normal play clue.

[thomas-lehericy]

Note on shared information:

In the second situation described in the OP (Cathy has the playable card, Bob the trash), as soon as Cathy plays her card, she will know (by looking at the history with this new information) that Bob got special trash’ed. However, in order not to "waste" the special trash, she will, just like everyone else, consider the "special trash" as play-hinting her and only her.

With the information symmetry re-established, players can now imagine a lot of fun conventions made possible by this new "tag" -- since it is indeed merely a "tag" with a "card-holding player" and a "target player"!

[thomas-lehericy]

The ideas presented here are in contradiction with 8.2, which gives special meaning to a double trash clue.