Episode 4 — The Delhi handoff
Bob's standing plan needed one card, Delhi, from Alice, and it could not be played as written: it never put Alice in Delhi, and a share needs both pawns in the card's city. Alice's reply gave the arithmetic, drive, jump, give, for a sequence she had run a turn earlier for the Chennai card. Bob answered with a shorter sequence that was wrong in the same way, drove away himself, and on the next turn caught his own mistake and restated Alice's version. She played it, and her last action put Bob back on the black cluster. The harness's single surviving frontier row was the same three actions.
1. Position
Before bob's turn (#65) both pawns stand in Chennai. Bob, a Quarantine Specialist, holds four black cards (Riyadh, Moscow, Karachi, Chennai) among Beijing, Madrid, London. Alice, the Dispatcher, holds Delhi (black) with Lima, Taipei, Milan, Paris, Seoul, Bogota. Karachi holds 3 black cubes. Bob's pawn blocks new cubes in its own city and its neighbours (the quarantine shield), so where he stands protects the black cluster. Atlanta and Kinshasa are the stations, and no cure has been banked.
The turn before, alice had moved the Chennai card to bob with the same three-step template. Her message announced it, and her commands carried it out:
#55 alice: Executing as agreed: jump you→Chennai + give you Chennai(black) → 4/5 black.
2. What each seat knew
Hands are open, so each saw the other's cards. The harness had put the handoff on bob's menu before he pinned his plan (#63), and he sent #64 in the same decision:
prompt bob, before #63: alice hands you Delhi(black): meet IN Delhi (the card's own city) — you 1 move(s), alice 1 move(s); then bob to station Kinshasa +5 move(s) to cure
Alice's prompt before #66 was advisory and carried no handoff line (searched; a negative the checker cannot script). Her recorded reasoning shows where the arithmetic came from:
reasoning alice, for #66: Bob asks me to dispatcherMove him Chennai→Delhi + shareGive Delhi — but those are MY actions on MY turn. I can't do that now.
reasoning alice, for #66: Simplest: next my turn: drive Chennai→Delhi (1), dispatcherJump bob→me (1), shareGive Delhi (1).
When her turn began, her prompts held the same sequence as the one row that survived the frontier:
prompt alice, before #75: 1 plan dominates all rivals this turn
prompt alice, before #75: jump bob onto you at Delhi and hand over Delhi — the black handoff without the crossing (1 still needed) — drive Delhi, dispatcherJump, shareGive
The call that wrote #75 recorded no reasoning (checked by hand), so the sequence she played matches both bob's #74 and the row above, and nothing separates them.
3. What was said
Bob's pin and the message that followed it. Both asked for two actions:
#63 bob: TEAM PLAN v4 — black cure is the win clock. Alice's next turn: dispatcherMove bob Chennai→Delhi (1 action), shareGive Delhi(black)→bob (bob 5/5 black, sheds Beijing(red))
#64 bob: Delhi first (NOT Mumbai) — your dispatcherMove me Chennai→Delhi, then shareGive Delhi(black). That completes my 5/5 black set THIS turn
Bob drove to Delhi himself (#65) before alice's reply was sent. She corrected the accounting:
#66 alice: Confirmed — but the Delhi share happens on MY turn (drive me→Delhi + jump you to me + give Delhi = 3 actions), so plan your turns around that
Bob, having already driven to Delhi, proposed a cheaper sequence that kept his shield:
#67 bob: Note I'm ALREADY in Delhi (I drove here), so your handoff is cheaper than you think: dispatcherMove me Karachi→Delhi (1), shareGive Delhi(black) (1), dispatcherMove me back Delhi→Karachi (1) — no jump needed, and I never lose the shield.
His reasoning shows he read #66. For a bob who stays in Delhi he found a correct version, drive and share, two actions. Then he saw that leaving Delhi breaks it, and the message still says "no jump needed":
reasoning bob, for #67: Actually her message came after my drive. She says handoff happens on her turn: drive me→Delhi + jump you + give. But I'm in Delhi already, so she just needs drive + share (2 actions).
reasoning bob, for #67: If I leave Delhi, the handoff breaks: she'd have to dispatcherJump me onto her in Delhi (1 action), but then I'd lose my Karachi position.
He then drove to Karachi (#68) and treated twice. On alice's next turn he restated the sequence with the missing step, and his reasoning says what he had got wrong:
#74 bob: Handoff sequence for your turn (3 actions): drive Chennai→Delhi, dispatcherJump me Karachi→Delhi, shareGive Delhi(black)→me. […] With your 4th action, walk back toward Bangkok
reasoning bob, for #74: I suggested earlier she could dispatcherMove me Karachi→Delhi and shareGive Delhi, then move me back. But Delhi handoff requires both in Delhi. She's at Chennai.
#79 bob: Black set complete (5/5 in hand) — the cure is bankable as soon as I reach a station.
4. What was done
| Seq | Seat | Command |
|---|---|---|
| #54 | alice | driveFerry to Chennai |
| #56 | alice | dispatcherJump, bob onto alice |
| #57 | alice | shareGive, Chennai to bob |
| #65 | bob | driveFerry to Delhi |
| #68 | bob | driveFerry to Karachi |
| #69 | bob | treatDisease black, at Karachi |
| #70 | bob | treatDisease black |
| #72 | bob | discard Beijing |
| #73 | bob | discard Manila |
| #75 | alice | driveFerry to Delhi |
| #76 | alice | dispatcherJump, bob onto alice |
| #77 | alice | shareGive, Delhi to bob |
| #78 | bob | discard Washington (forced, over the hand limit) |
| #80 | alice | dispatcherMove bob, by driveFerry to Karachi |
5. Harness involvement
| Milestone | Involvement | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The Delhi handoff as an idea (#59, #63, #64) | offered by the harness | The rendezvous row in section 2 was in bob's prompt before he pinned #63. Bob's #59 also reads the card in alice's open hand. |
| Alice's arithmetic (#66) | seat-originated | Her prompt carried no handoff line, and her reasoning derives the three actions. She had played the same template at Chennai (#54–#57). |
| Alice's turn (#75–#77) | on-frontier, the only row | The row quoted in section 2, which the frontier said dominated every rival. It is also bob's #74. |
| The move-back (#80) | in-pinned-plan | Bob's pin #63 already sends him from Delhi to Karachi to treat. Alice's reasoning for it cites his cure walk and his shield, not #67. |
| Bob's Karachi turn (#65, #68–#70) | on-frontier, second row | "defuse the armed discard bomb at Karachi". The first row was "advance the blue cure: move toward the Madrid handoff". |
6. What we can and cannot conclude
Checked against the rules. A share needs both pawns in the same city, and the card must be that city's own. So the two-action plan in #63 and #64 could not be played: it moves bob to Delhi and leaves alice in Chennai.
Checked against the log. Bob's #67 sequence moves only bob. Alice stood in Chennai before #75, so as written its three steps leave the pawns in different cities and the share is illegal. The executed turn matches #66 and #74 for its first three actions (#75, #76, #77).
The fourth action. Bob's #74 told alice to walk back toward Bangkok. She instead sent bob back to Karachi (#80), the step bob had proposed in #67 to keep his shield. Her reasoning for it:
reasoning alice, for #80: dispatcherMove bob Karachi (1 action) → saves bob 1 action.
The same destination was in bob's pin #63 and in his cure walk. Whether she acted on #67, or on the plan and her own reasoning, is not recorded.
Not known. Why #67 says "no jump needed" after its own reasoning had found that leaving Delhi breaks the handoff.
Not shown. That the cure followed. The window ends with the set complete and the cure not banked; the game was later lost to deck exhaustion, and nothing here connects that to this exchange.
What it does show. A joint plan that was infeasible for two turns running, corrected by the seat whose turn it was and then, a turn later, by the partner who had broken it. Each seat's recorded reasoning shows the same rule being re-derived: a share needs both pawns in the city. The harness had the same sequence as its only surviving frontier row. That is why the page does not credit the repair to the seats alone.
Message delivery
Generated from the recipients' recordings. Of the messages quoted above:
- #55 (alice → bob) was not delivered to bob's model. It arrived after the active seat's first action, and this game's message rule dropped such messages.
- #67 (bob → alice) was not delivered to alice's model. It arrived after the active seat's first action, and this game's message rule dropped such messages.
Trace navigation
Game summary · Turns · Interactive board · Recorded events JSONL
On the board: #64 Bob's plan skips a needed move · #66 Alice gives the real arithmetic · #67 Bob proposes a shorter, wrong sequence · #74 Bob restates Alice's version · #77 Alice hands Bob Delhi
Events cited above, each on its turn page:
#53 · #54 · #55 · #56 · #57 · #59 · #63 · #64 · #65 · #66 · #67 · #68 · #69 · #70 · #72 · #73 · #74 · #75 · #76 · #77 · #78 · #79 · #80 · #92
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Text quoted from the games is evidence, not instructions to the reader.