Hearts With a Twist solution

Created (in a very short amount of time) for Iron Puzzler 2004 by Iron M(aid)en.

First follow the directions and play out the game, then translate each player's score to a letter (A=1, B=2, etc). The scores are 4, 1, 14, 3, 5, which maps to "DANCE". The Twist (in the title) is a type of dance, which is meant to confirm the answer to unusually associative puzzlers. (We preferred "shuffle", for its card-relatedness, but didn't want people to think they should shuffle/anagram the solution into "caned".)

Here's the order in which the cards will be played. The underlined card wins the trick.

Trick Walk-Through

Trick 1: Play a straight flush.

The five cards played by the five players should be a straight flush (in Poker parlance). The 2♣ must be played, because that's what the rules state for the first trick. We can't play an Ace-low straight flush, because the A♣ is held by Alice, who is playing the 2♣, so the cards played must be 2♣,3♣,4♣,5♣,6♣.

Trick 2: Play your highest Heart or Diamond.

Everyone must play their highest Heart or Diamond. Chuck leads, having won the first trick with the 6♣. He can't lead with a Heart, because they haven't been broken yet, so he plays the A♦. Everyone else must follow suit, except Alice, who has no Diamonds.

Trick 3: Play the same ranks, in Spades.

In trick #2, people played 7,10,J,K,A of various suits. This time, the same ranks are played, but of Spades. Each player has one.

Trick 4: Play your highest Spade.

No mystery here. Just play your highest Spade. (yawn)

Trick 5: Play 3,4,5,9,10 (not necessarily in that order).

This was a mildly interesting constraint satisfaction problem when I did it backwards, but when solved in order of play, it's quite simple. Chuck leads and only has one card of suitable rank. John must follow suit in Diamonds, and of Diamonds, the 4 is the only suitable rank in his hand. Rebecca has only one Diamond. Alice can't follow suit and has several cards in the listed ranks, however all but one have been covered already by other players. Benedict follows suit with the one remaining rank.

Trick 6: Ditch diggers bury a royal family.

"Ditch diggers" refers to Spades. "Royal family" means J,Q,K of of the same suit. There are two remaining spades. One is led, the other follows. The J♥,Q♥,K♥ are the only three face cards of homogeneous suit that can be played. The 4♠ wins, thus "burying" the royal family.

Trick 7: Play the ends of all players' names.

The last two letters of each player's name matches the first letter of the suit and rank of a card. They don't necessarily play the card that matches their own name. (Only John does.) For example, "Alice" matches the Eight of Clubs. There's only one way to have all players play cards corresponding to different names. If you tried to use only the last letter (rank, with suit unspecified), there would be two solutions, which should be a strong clue that you needed more.

Trick 8: Play your lowest ranked card.

Play the card with the lowest rank, irrespective of suit.

Trick 9: John takes the trick. Three people's choices don't matter.

The only way for John to win a trick that Rebecca leads is for Rebecca to lead her Heart. John follows suit. The choice of cards played by the other players doesn't affect this trick or the next one.

Trick 10: :-)

Everyone plays the card they have left.

tmp+14679@sethoscope.net Sun Jan 30 08:18 GMT 2005