Hmm. There are so many options here.
[Choose from popular options:] [Search()]
[.... chess, table tennis, mini football, carrom, gunshot, quick math, golf, general science quest, foreign language, aptitude test, checkers, dice roll, ....]
Carrom huh? Good. And there's a option for search too.
I was just looking at my given device when something almost crashed on me.
Whoosh. Damn I just dodged it. "What happened??" It's Ichitoshi.
"Hey Haze! I was wondering what you are looking into." So you crash into people for that? "Don't you know this has came out?"
I showed him my selection screen. We need to choose those 5 games after all.
"Ohhh, I didn't see it yet!" He quickly pulled out his'. Is this his normal behavior? Oh well.
[Search] tap.
Carrom is good but I'm curious.
That curiosity costed me 20 no 30 minutes.
[Black Vienna]
A cult-classic, pure-deduction board game designed by Gilbert Obermair in 1987.
In a standard game, players rely on public information shared among a large group. In a 1v1 duel, the mechanics shift into a brutal, claustrophobic zero-sum game.
Setup.
The Hidden Target: 3 cards are placed in the center (The Black Vienna Gang).
The Private Hands: The remaining 24 cards are split evenly. You hold 12 cards, and your opponent holds 12 cards.
The Investigation Pool: 3 investigation cards (each containing 3 letters) sit between the players.
On your turn, you select one of the 3 investigation cards and hand it to your opponent. Your opponent must declare how many of those 3 letters they hold in their 12-card hand.
If you hold a letter, your opponent definitely does not have it.
If you do not hold a letter, it is either in your opponent's hand OR it is one of the 3 hidden target cards.
Winning Conditions
The Absolute Accusation: A player correctly names the exact 3 hidden cards on their turn.
The Forced Confession: Through strategic questioning, a player corners their opponent mathematically, forcing them to realize they have no paths to victory left, leading to a mental break or surrender.
Losing Conditions
The False Accusation: If a player guesses the 3 hidden cards incorrectly, they lose immediately.
The Time-Out (Mental Exhaustion): A strict time limit per turn (e.g., 60 seconds) forces players to do complex combinatorics under immense stress. Miscalculating a single letter collapses their entire logic matrix, leading to a breakdown.
The Penalty Rule (Illegal Bluffing): If a player lies about the count of cards in their hand, they are instantly disqualified.
There are standard 4 strategic ways to win this shitty game in it's standard multiplayer game mode. But a 1 v 1 leaves only 2.
Info starvation and the mirror trap.
Unfortunately, this opponent of mine here is just trying to repeat my moves and when I try something too suspicious, he gets away.
"Ok, here comes this card." I slid an investigation card across the table.
He stared at the three letters, his face blank. ".... One."
Yeah, you would say that, I thought. It was time to take a massive risk. I confidently slammed down my next token. "Denied."
He narrowed his eyes. "Hoho, so what card—"
"Two," I cut him off instantly.
".... Ok." He slumped back slightly. Cool, he was getting frustrated. He had no idea that move was a pure, desperate guess.
It was time to spring the trap. I picked a card from the pool containing letters I had been hoarding in my hand for a long time—letters I knew he didn't have because I held them myself.
"This one," I demanded.
He hesitated, sweating. ".... One."
Yes. Good. "Ok."
Two turns later, I struck the final blow. I threw down another card, reusing a letter from a previous round to trap him in a mathematical corner.
"One?" he stammered, looking up in shock.
Can you even calculate? I mocked him silently. Really? A one? Of course I know you don't have that letter. Because I've had it in my own hand the entire time.Hmm. There are so many options here.
"My turn," Yoo-jun murmured, his voice losing its slight tremble. The hesitant mask he wore a second ago was completely gone. He reached out with a steady hand, selecting a card from the pool containing the letters B, F, and X. He slid it across the floorboards toward me. "How many?"
I didn't need to look at my private hand of twelve cards. I had them perfectly memorized. B and F were sitting safely in my possession. X was the wild variable.
"Two," I replied calmly.
Yoo-jun didn't blink. He simply took a physical token and marked his sheet. His face was entirely devoid of expression now—the exact same creepy, hollow look he gave me when the automated overhead system announced his time penalty transaction few minutes ago. He was operating like a machine, dragging this match out to the absolute limit just to map out my cognitive habits. Or am I thinking too much?
But a 1v1 duel of Black Vienna leaves no room for stalling. Every question you ask is a dual-edged blade. If you ask about letters you hold, you starve your opponent of data—but you also waste a turn narrowing down the center target.
I looked at the way Yoo-jun had arranged his tracking sheet on the floor. It was slightly angled.
A silent trap.
He hadn't been repeating my moves out of being annoying. He had been mimicking my rhythm to subconsciously bait me into a predictable pattern of hoarding specific letters. By feeding me his initial frantic stammering, he wanted me to believe I had him cornered so I would rush my final accusation and hit a False Accusation threshold.
Unfortunately for him, I don't rush.
I picked up the next investigation card: D, L, and R. I held none of them. This was the final diagnostic test to shatter his mirror matrix. I slid it forward.
Yoo-jun's finger tapped the floorboards rhythmically. "Two."
A precise, absolute answer. If he held two of those, then combined with the public data from the earlier rounds, the hidden identity of the Black Vienna Gang in the center of the table was down to a singular, definitive branch. He had calculated the alphabet sectors perfectly, matching my speed despite the immense psychological pressure of the countdown.
Except, he didn't factor in my true baseline. He assumed my hoarding pattern extended to the third tier of letters, but I had abandoned that logic path four turns ago. I had deliberately fed him false tracking data by asking questions that compromised my own position, intentionally misdirecting his deduction sheet.
The game had entered the final reduction phase. There were only three investigation cards left in the pool.
I picked up the next card: A, K, P.
I didn't say a word. I simply placed it flat on the floor between us.
Yoo-jun stared down at the three letters. The silence in the gloomy room grew incredibly heavy, the oppressive aura of our stalemate settling over the floorboards. The creepy, blank stare he held just a moment ago slowly fractured as he realized the mathematical trap had shifted. If he lied to save himself, the strict hand inspection at the end would trigger an instant disqualification under the Penalty Rule. If he told the truth, the game was over.
"Zero," Yoo-jun whispered, his shoulders dropping slightly.
"Thank you," I said softly.
The deduction was complete. The letters A, K, and P were not in my hand, and they were not in his. Mathematically, they could only exist in the center of the room.
Without a shred of dramatic flair, I reached out my hand and tapped the three face-down cards sitting in the middle of the floor.
"I accuse," I stated, my voice flat, cool, and absolute. "The Black Vienna Gang consists of A, K, and P."
Yoo-jun slowly let out a long, exhausted breath. He didn't slam the floor, and he didn't make a scene. He simply turned his twelve private cards face up, revealing the remaining letters of the alphabet perfectly accounted for.
"Correct," Yoo-jun said, his posture slumping back into a completely relaxed, almost lazy demeanor. The chilling intensity he had manufactured over the last forty minutes completely evaporated. He rubbed the back of his neck and gave a small, defeated smile.
"Man, Wangdu... you're tough. I really thought the card-shift on turn six would throw your tracking off. Now I need to meet someone I guess."
"It was a good match I guess." I replied, standing up from the floor and neatly stacking the physical cards back into a single deck. Meet someone? Does he know his thoughts are leaking out?
We exited the gloomy room together, stepping out into the bright, sterile hallway.
2 round done. 3 to go.
....
"Wangu.... Wangdu.... Wangdu.... are you for real?"