Shindig

Meredith Gerber

HINTS:
• A game is being played. What game is it?
• How does the game unfold for each player?
• Things should be adding up.
• What form do you expect the answer to take?
• The puzzle results in a phrase that clues the answer.
SOLUTION:

The game that's being played does not have a specific name, but is fairly common in Germany and is described at the following URL:

A good German-English dictionary can be found on line at: http://dict.leo.org/

The numbers listed in the puzzle is the sequence of results of the die that is rolled at each turn.

The die results are seperated by player. Because a player does not have to roll the die if it is her turn but she has rolled the most recent 6, every fourth number does not necessarily correspond to the same player. I suggest mapping out the die results by entering them in a grid with four columns, one for each player. In this case, reading down a column gives you the results of a particular player's die rolls.

Each player's die roll values map to a word.

The nth word is arrived at, letter by letter, by analyzing the numbers corresponding to the nth player. Values one through five are added up, while a value of six corresponds to a break and indicates that it's time for the next letter. The sum of the one through five values map to letters via an A=1, B=2, C=3,..., Z=26 correspondance. As an example, the sequence 1 2 6 1 6 1 1 6 corresponds to the word CAB.

The rolls:

P1P2P3P4
3421
2532
4521
3262
6623
5 31
6463
45 2
54 2
6243
612
5 36
4361
35 2
54 3
32 4
6513
632
2 16
1161
2613
6412
314
512
514
412
616
551
451
541
6612
4 16
6515
616
2562
15 3
24 4
6666
```P1: 324365645654353621265456462126: LEITENDE
P2: 4552645426354256164355465546565546: POSAUNEN
P3: 2326236413613161111111111111166: GEHEN
P4: 12123132232612343261324242626562346: VORBEI
```

Read in the playing order, these words are: LEITENDE POSAUNEN GEHEN VORBEI.

This translates to, in English, 'Leading trombones go past.'

The flavor text mention of music outside clues this as being a reference to the musical, 'The Music Man'. A popular song from that musical is 'Seventy-Six Trombones'. The flavor text phrase of being 'unsure of the count' clues that the answer is a number, the number of leading trombones.
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