In order to work out TORTOISE's nefarious plan, you must take on the role of the spymaster to coordinate with our agents in the field and keep tabs on enemy agents. To do this, you will need to make efficient use of available resources. We anticipate that there will be four groups of potential agents to monitor, and every code word will be used twice over the course of the operation. Keep track of your communications with the spies, and pay attention to the assassins in order to properly make sense of TORTOISE's puzzling scheme.
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This puzzle is based on the game Codenames, designed by Vlaada Chvátil. Full knowledge of the rules of Codenames is not necessary to solve this puzzle, but here are some things you should know:
- There are two factions: red and blue. Each consists of one spymaster, who gives encoded clues, and several spies, whose job it is to decode those clues in order to tap the correct field agents.
- Potential field agents are represented by a tableau of 25 cards, arranged in a 5-by-5 grid. Each card has a word on it.
- For each tableau, a map with a 5-by-5 grid of colored squares indicates the identity of each potential agent in the corresponding position in the tableau:
- Red squares (marked with ◇) and blue squares (marked with ◻︎) indicate agents from the two factions. There are 17 red and blue agents on each map, 9 of one color and 8 of the other.
- Yellow squares (marked with ○) indicate innocent bystanders. There are 7 bystanders on each map.
- The black square (marked with ✕) indicates the assassin. There is one assassin on each map.
- Colored rectangles around the outside of the grid indicate which faction has 9 agents rather than 8. That faction will act first.
- Maps can be paired with any tableau of potential agents.
- Maps can be rotated by any multiple of 90 degrees before being set in place.
- Once a card tableau and map have been chosen, the spymasters must use clues to communicate the locations of their field agents:
- The first spymaster to give a clue will be the one whose faction is indicated by the color at the outside of the map card.
- Each clue must be one word. Single-word proper nouns are allowed.
- The clue should lead to one or more field agents in the spymaster's faction, and no other potential agents.
- The spymaster will also give a number, indicating the number of field agents the clue refers to.
- The spies of that faction then coordinate to decode the clue and identify the indicated field agents.
- The factions alternate turns, with the goal of identifying all of the agents on a faction
