I'm going to explain everything that was going on in the scene, working my way up to the more relevant clues, and ending with the Angry Man's reason for being angry.
Most everybody figured out that this is a restaurant, despite my intentional red herring of the podium and chalkboard. The chalkboard contains a bistro-style description of today's specials. The podium wasn't really meant for speaking, other than perhaps calling out the name of someone whose table is ready.
Three people are seated just in front of the podium, waiting for a table. In the northwest corner, there is a clean table ready to seat a party of two, but the three will need to wait for a larger table to open up.
My second red herring was the open window just east of the waiting area. This was an order-up window where waitstaff pick up food to deliver to tables. I meant for people to briefly think it was a window to the outside world, when it was just a window to a different room, the kitchen. As for the cheeseburger: you know how in ethnic restaurants there are often one or two "
safe"
choices for people who don't really like the other food on the menu? Well, some lame-o ordered a cheeseburger. And the Chef, who prides himself on his fine Italian food that everyone should love, grumpily fried up a burger and threw it on the counter. That's where "
begrudgingly"
came from, but it isn't important to the puzzle.
The harried standing man is next to and facing the order-up window, so you might guess that he's a waiter. And you'd be right. It's a small café (only five tables), so he doesn't really have to rush that much. In this case, he is concerned about the party of four at the northeast table. It won't be his fault that the chef has taken so long with the food, but still he's likely to get stiffed on a tip for the delay.
The northeast table have been seated for some time, and people there would really like their food. One tablemate is looking towards the order-up window expectantly. Another covets the shrimp fettucini at the north table. One fellow tries to boost morale by bringing up things to talk about other than food. Thankfully, they won't have to wait much later. Their four plates of food will be brought over from the window by the waiter in just a moment.
The kitchen was left out. To have some detail comparable to the rest of the drawing, I'd have needed maybe ten or twenty more clues. And all of those clues would have just said, "
this is a kitchen"
, "
yep, this definitely a kitchen"
, "
in case you missed it, this is a kitchen"
, and so on. I felt all those clues would have been fairly distracting, possibly boring, and I already had plenty of clues that had very little illumination value for the puzzle. So the kitchen, the chef, the dishwasher, the walk-in fridge, and all that business was represented with one simple box.
The north table has a bunch of people chomping enthusiastically at their meals. Well, except for the snotty kid that would rather be eating fruit roll-ups. There is the woman making food-related comparisons. Here comes a tangential mini-rant:
I am always slightly annoyed (and shouldn't be) when I sit down to eat food, and people at the table want to talk about food that is available from other restaurants. I find it boring conversation, because it always follows a pattern like:
"
Have you ate at
RestaurantName?"
"
No, is it good?"
"
Oh, it is
so good. You
have to go there. The
SomeFood is spectacular!"
"
Sounds great. I'll have to check it out. Have you ate at
OtherRestaurantName?
"
No, is it good?"
Ugh. Anyhow, not too much going on at the north table.
The southwest table has people getting ready to order. One man is feeling smug about choosing the perfect item from the menu, whatever that is. Another man is somewhat worried that he won't have made a choice before the waiter arrives, and is communicating his need to concentrate on the menu with an extra-furrowed brow. Another ambivalent guy has no idea what to get--he might just order a cheeseburger and make the chef grumpy again.
Finally, we arrive at the Angry Man's table. Hopefully, you noticed that the empty chair is pulled out from the table. Every other chair in the scene is either filled or, for the two empties at the northwest table, tucked neatly beneath. You might infer from this and the empty plate that someone has left the table. The Angry Man and his wife sit on the east side of the table. A woman on the west side is feeling guilty about something, and I will tell you that it is something that her missing husband did--not her. The Angry Man's wife is consoling. "
Oh, don't worry about it."
, she says, "
You can get the next one if you want, or whatever. We don't care. Really, it's fine."
"
Are you sure?"
asks the guilty woman, "
I don't know what's taking him so long."
The Angry Man is, of course, angry, but he's not going to be an uncivilized beast. He looks down at the bill for four people's meals, and pulls a hundred dollars from his wallet to cover it. "
Last time I'm going to dinner with that jerk,"
he thinks to himself.
That jerk is sitting on a toilet in the men's restroom. He knew he might have to wait a while, so he settled in on the can and read a newspaper. How long should he wait? Five minutes and the check might not have arrived. Ten minutes and they might still be talking. Probably fifteen minutes would do it. He looks at his watch to see if he's been in the bathroom long enough. When he gets back to the table, he'll probably just say he wasn't feeling well.
The Angry Man suspects some kind of trick like this, but grimly resolves to pay for both sides of the table.
Many people were close to the correct answer, but just a little bit off. So for example,
Amourav said very early (4/14 7:58pm PST):
The angry man is angry because he took a woman out to dinner at an Italian restaurant but has to pay for the whole meal, which is expensive, himself.
But Amourav left out the actions of the restroom escapee. (Remember that I asked for the actions of a person other than the Angry Man to be specified.) Sadly, Amourav later made a guess where he talked about the Angry Man's friend in the restroom, but then he didn't mention in that guess how the Angry Man had to foot the bill.
Impressively early, on April 18th, before the last clue which revealed a man in the restroom, rookie
Zoombini made this guess:
The angry man is angry because one of his companions has been in the bathroom for too long.
...but he omitted the Angry Man's action (paying the bill) which was the more direct cause of anger. I tip my hat to Zoombini for imagining the man in the bathroom before the clue explicitly added him to the scene.
There were also some mostly-correct variations where people asserted the man in the restroom was sick, but I felt that since he was looking at his wristwatch, that possibility should be ruled out.
I acknowledge there are ambiguities and different ways things could be interpreted. The puzzle required fuzzy reasoning, and I'm sure some people will be disatisfied with how a little bad luck in guessing can give you a wrong answer.
It's hard for me figure this out, but I think all the correct guesses that specified the three elements I asked for came in after the last clue was revealed. I was lenient on whether or not the Angry Man was able to pay the bill or not, since there were no hints that suggested one way or the other.
Leroy00 on 4/23/06 2:23am PST:
The angry man is angry because he cannot pay the bill for the meal and leave because the second man who is supposed to pay half the bill is on the toilet reading a newspaper (and has been for some time).
Vylycyn on 4/21/06 9:40am PST:
The Angry Man is angry because he has to pay for the meals of the four people at the table because the other man has been in the bathroom for so long.
Leroy and Vylycyn were too late with their correct answers. Three had come in earlier.
The third-place winner and receiver of 25 rank points is
Stefan, who announced at 6:02pm on the 21st:
The Angry Man is angry because he wants to pay and leave the restaurant, but he's been waiting for about ten minutes for his friend, who is on the toilet reading a newspaper.
In second place is
Jbluestein, winner of 50 rank points, who correctly stated at 7:09am on the 21st:
The angry man is angry because the guy hiding in the bathroom is waiting there for him to pay the bill.
Hours earlier, at 3:25AM the same day,
Tuttle gave us:
The angry man is angry because one of his dinner companions has been in the toilet for a while, and the angry man has to wait for him before he can pay the bill and leave.
...which means Tuttle wins the contest. Congratulations for being so logical, intuitive, and lucky! Tuttle gets a hundred rank points and any single item of his choosing from
the Prize Pile.
I like to see rookies, who are new to DROD contests, come in and win them. It seems to prove there's hope for the fresh contenders out there. Both Jbluestein and Tuttle were rookies, and get an extra 10 rank points in addition to the points awarded for placing.
We had a huge number of rookies in this contest. All of them will get +10 rank points. Here's the complete list:
Amourav
Bunches
ChrisB
chowyunbrent
Ezlo
jbluestein
jmpava
karcher
maestro8
McFrugal
NobleHelium
Ostegolectr1c
Ravon
Telvayne
Tuttle
zoombini
Fifty people played the game, which is a great turn-out. I hope you enjoyed yourself. You'll only need to wait about a week for the next contest announcement which will be coming from Ezlo.
-Erik
____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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[Last edited by ErikH2000 at 04-24-2006 02:10 AM]
