Hello,
The beast is a pretty interesting card which combine psychology and conventions on top of the reasonning already present.
You can only play a tile on it if the difference between your dices is exactly 1.
The card fade after any tile is played on it.
When you have 67, then you should play 7, then the other player know you got 67, and so they can guess 6.
When you have 12, then you should play 1, then the other player know you got 12, and so they can guess 2.
Until that point, everyone agree it's logical.
But now let's see six differents reasonnings:
1/ Oh dang it:
I play a random dice every time, that way the other player got 50% chance to be right. 50% is pretty high, isn't it?
2/ Always play highest:
When you got 56, you play 6 because since with 67 it should be 7, by playing 6, they can deduce it was 5.
When you got 45, you play 5 because with 56 it should be 6, and so they can deduce it was 4.
When you got 34, you play 4 and they can deduce it was 3.
When you got 23, you play 3 and they can deduce it was 2.
3/ Always play lowest:
When you got 23, you play 2 because since 12 should be 1, they can deduce it was 3.
When you got 34, you play 3, and they can deduce it was 4.
When you got 45, you play 4 and they can deduce it was 5.
When you got 56, you play 5 and they can deduce it was 6.
Note that already the first two reasonnings got conflicts.
4/ Stop in the middle (pivot 4):
When you got 56, you play 6 because since with 67 it should be 7, by playing 6, they can deduce it was 5.
When you got 23, you play 2 because since 12 should be 1, they can deduce it was 3.
Then, when you got 45, you play 5.
And when you got 34, you play 3.
That mean that the 4 is never showed, and that work too.
5/ Three is my favorite number (pivot 3):
Since I know that everyone love the number pi, it look logic to me that the focus of anything should be 3.
And so we will do the same that reassoning 4/, but never show the number 3.
And that work well too.
6/ Adaptation:
There is always others cards visible. Here, I will play depending of others cards. Which mean that sometimes with 56 i will show 5, and sometimes show 6, depending of what playing 5 and 6 on othersj tiles would do.
All of those are some reasonnings, and outside of 1/ they always 100% gives the answer, so you got logically no reason to goes for one above another.. Conventions are pretty funny because 1/ make you sure that you would got no convention, but at that point that could be one.
Personnally, my instinct was going for lowest, since it was what usually done on others cards. But people are disagreeing with it and think that pivot 4 is better. Note that influencing others is pretty easy, and you can easily forget what instinct can be. Like discarding newest in hanabi.
I asked chatgpt too: https://textup.fr/803667XJ
Final conclusion:
The beast is a pretty interesting card which combine psychology and conventions on top of the reasonning already present.
You can only play a tile on it if the difference between your dices is exactly 1.
The card fade after any tile is played on it.
When you have 67, then you should play 7, then the other player know you got 67, and so they can guess 6.
When you have 12, then you should play 1, then the other player know you got 12, and so they can guess 2.
Until that point, everyone agree it's logical.
But now let's see six differents reasonnings:
1/ Oh dang it:
I play a random dice every time, that way the other player got 50% chance to be right. 50% is pretty high, isn't it?
2/ Always play highest:
When you got 56, you play 6 because since with 67 it should be 7, by playing 6, they can deduce it was 5.
When you got 45, you play 5 because with 56 it should be 6, and so they can deduce it was 4.
When you got 34, you play 4 and they can deduce it was 3.
When you got 23, you play 3 and they can deduce it was 2.
3/ Always play lowest:
When you got 23, you play 2 because since 12 should be 1, they can deduce it was 3.
When you got 34, you play 3, and they can deduce it was 4.
When you got 45, you play 4 and they can deduce it was 5.
When you got 56, you play 5 and they can deduce it was 6.
Note that already the first two reasonnings got conflicts.
4/ Stop in the middle (pivot 4):
When you got 56, you play 6 because since with 67 it should be 7, by playing 6, they can deduce it was 5.
When you got 23, you play 2 because since 12 should be 1, they can deduce it was 3.
Then, when you got 45, you play 5.
And when you got 34, you play 3.
That mean that the 4 is never showed, and that work too.
5/ Three is my favorite number (pivot 3):
Since I know that everyone love the number pi, it look logic to me that the focus of anything should be 3.
And so we will do the same that reassoning 4/, but never show the number 3.
And that work well too.
6/ Adaptation:
There is always others cards visible. Here, I will play depending of others cards. Which mean that sometimes with 56 i will show 5, and sometimes show 6, depending of what playing 5 and 6 on othersj tiles would do.
All of those are some reasonnings, and outside of 1/ they always 100% gives the answer, so you got logically no reason to goes for one above another.. Conventions are pretty funny because 1/ make you sure that you would got no convention, but at that point that could be one.
Personnally, my instinct was going for lowest, since it was what usually done on others cards. But people are disagreeing with it and think that pivot 4 is better. Note that influencing others is pretty easy, and you can easily forget what instinct can be. Like discarding newest in hanabi.
I asked chatgpt too: https://textup.fr/803667XJ
Final conclusion:
ThanksWhile a random human might indeed gravitate toward using 4 as a pivot initially, it’s important to show them that this is just a psychological tendency and not a logical necessity. By emphasizing the symmetry of the dice pairs and the fact that other pivots (like 3 or 5) work just as well, they can begin to see that 4 is not inherently more logical—it just feels that way due to cognitive biases.
