Inez has given up all pretenses to subtlety. You appear in the middle of a busy park. You hear gasps all around you.
You're sitting at a table, with Inez – an adult again – sitting across from you.
"Are you insane?"
"Do you really care about these people?" she asks. "I mean, they aren't real anyway."
"Of course they're real."
She shrugs. "But they're our puppets. I could easily use the House to change history so you don't pop in here, and then they're fine again." She glances around. "But I don't see any reason to. Look at them."
You do. And all you see are people milling around a park on a sunny day.
"It's a non-event," Inez assures you. "Two-thirds of them have already decided that they must have been seeing things."
"But –
Inez motions at the tabletop between you. Set into the concrete is an eight-by-eight grid with chess pieces arranged on it. "It's your move."
"I'm not playing chess with you, Inez."
She just stares back at you blandly.
You sigh, and half-heartedly push a pawn forward one space.
Inez nods, and then grasps her chin, studying the board closely. Her hand hovers over the pieces. She makes a few abortive gestures. At last, she places her hand down right in the middle of the board and, with a flick of her finger, sends your king shooting off the table and into a nearby bush.
"I win!" she announces.
You give her a level look, which she counters with a wide grin.
"Come on," she prompts you. "You know you want to say it."
"You can't do that."
She doesn't answer, just gesturing with one hand in the direction of the bush your chess piece just disappeared into.
"Okay, you can do it, but that doesn't mean you've won the game."
"Why not?" Inez asks. "You lost your king. Besides, it was fun. I thought games were supposed to be fun."
"That may have been fun for you but it sure wasn't for me."
Inez nods towards the board. "My king's sitting right there," she offers.
You balk, glancing at her, down at the chess board, and then back up at her again.
"Come on," she urges. "Try it. It's a blast."
You look down at the board again, uncertain. "Whose chess pieces are these anyway?"
"Oh for goodness sake," Inez says, and with a sweep of her arm she sends half of the pieces skittering across the concrete. This gets more of a reaction from the people around you than your sudden appearance did a minute ago.
"Rules are oppressive. 'Bishops can only move diagonally.'" She scoffs. "What's the fun of that?"
"A lot more fun that scrambling around picking chess pieces off the ground," you point out. "Flinging the pieces around isn't a game – it's just. . . ." You stop and narrow your eyes at her. "I see what you did there."
Inez starts ticking off on her fingers again. "Puzzles require choices. Choices require dead ends. Dead ends require rules."
"Got it."
"So," Inez says, leaning forward, "what do rules require?"
You pause to think. "Consensus."
"Exactly. We just saw it happen. If you want to play chess the boring old way and I just want to knock pieces into the bushes, there's no game."
"Okay," you say slowly, warily.
"So playing a game means voluntarily giving up a measure of control. I can't play any old way I want to. I have to play the way you want to."
"We want to," you correct her.
"Same thing," Inez says. "One more step: what does consensus require? There are two things."
"Communication."
"That's one," Inez says, "but I'm looking for the other one."
You stare off across the park, looking through rather than at the other people. You finally turn back to Inez, saying, "I don't suppose you'd just tell me?"
Inez smiles. "You can't have consensus unless all of you have all of the same rules. If we agree to play chess, but I know about pawn promotion and you don't, then we'll be playing completely different strategies, and you won't try to stop my pawns from reaching the eighth rank."
"I actually don't know much about chess," you admit, "but I'll take your word for it."
"If we're playing baseball but your team doesn't know about stealing bases, then," Inez offers.
"Got it."
"So now here's your question: is it possible to play a game if you don't know all of the rules?"
"Of course not," you say automatically.
Inez frowns. "Huh? Really?" Her hand comes up from under the table and she sets down another one of her envelopes. "Why don't you give it a try?"
And then she's gone. Unlike your sudden entrance, no one seems to notice her sudden exit.
After a roll of the eyes, you retrieve the envelope and open it. It's all written in English, but you haven't the slightest idea what you're looking at:
You can solve this puzzle and then find the solution on the Solution Page. Or you can: