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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9629072" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Agreed. The whole “you can’t draw inferences from initial conditions if the answer isn’t already preconceived/defined and the conclusion able to be derived” line of thought is…well it is something…It’s like folks have never actually applied reason to an information set and been unable to derive a correct conclusion (nonetheless, falsification of an incorrect surmise is enormously valuable to accumulated knowledge…assuming the corpus of knowledge updates). That can happen IRL because you’re lacking necessary information, or you’re lacking necessary tools/bandwidth, or you’re working from an anchoring bias/first principles that has led  you astray. Just because you haven’t derived a perfect working model or a bulletproof conclusion doesn’t mean you didn’t functionally infer from initial conditions/information set.It can happen in a fiction mystery/game because any of:* The mystery is poorly conceived, poorly articulated, a or convoluted quagmire that functionally harms or defies chains of inference and information integration. This happens so damn often. Once you move beyond Pictionary and Taboo dynamics, the creation and articulation of any  sort of labyrinthine puzzle becomes increasingly fraught. The Sherlock Holmes boxed sets are utterly riddled with examples of this. I’ve played all of them with 3 brilliant puzzlers (one of which is the best I’ve ever been around) and we’ve fallen face first more than we’ve come out on top. The frequency of failure state in elaborate mystery creation is uncomfortably large.* The investigators or investigative process are/is compromised (structurally, process-wise, deficient means).Beyond that, just the process of building out or workshopping a mystery often requires either (a) rejiggering inference chains midstream (to make the puzzling remotely functional) or (b) rejiggering the initial conditions, or (c) rejiggering the actual conclusion because your inference chains and initial conditions are excellent, but they don’t point the way beautifully to that particular solve and better serve an alternative solve. Boom; solve outright rewritten while the rest stays intact. And it actually took the application of reason to ascertain that best fit answer.</blockquote>

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