Nine Tails - stuck

gcewing on 2011/04/13 07:25

"The gate is locked, and it's staying locked."

What am I supposed to do now?

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Comments

stefanor on 2011/04/13 10:18:

There is a walkthrough (noted in the last diary entry): http://stefanor.uctleg.net/skaapsteker_docs/

But try using all your feminine charm on him.

hidas on 2011/04/13 23:39:

The quests aren't optional.

gcewing on 2011/04/14 02:18:

There is a walkthrough

Ah, yes, of course. A geisha on her own is tongue-tied, but give her a fan and suddenly a world of new conversational opportunities opens up. Dead obvious. :-)

Also, apparently foxes can't pick up fans, but they can pick up and use just about anything else!

drnlm on 2011/04/14 09:11:

It's a magical fox. Don't question the rules of magic, or it will stop working.

Hugoagogo on 2011/04/14 10:09:

Sounds very similar to certain concepts on how to fly

hodgestar on 2011/04/14 12:47:

For the kitsune
a fan is superfluous.
For geisha, needed.

superjoe on 2011/04/14 16:30:

What you have done there
I see. But 'kitsune', my friend,
is two syllables.

hodgestar on 2011/04/14 17:37:

The kitsune also cheats at haiku. :)

cyhawk on 2011/04/14 18:27:

How is it two syllables? きつね, ki-tsu-ne. (I have no idea about Japanese.)

hodgestar on 2011/04/14 18:58:

Cyhawk: To first approximation you don't pronounce the 'u'.

cyhawk on 2011/04/14 20:12:

Ah, interesting! I read a bit about haiku now and I have another argument in favor of your haiku :). It appears haiku have 5-7-5 "sound units" instead of syllables originally — basically 5-7-5 kana characters. So even if kitsune is 2 syllables it counts as 3 for haiku purposes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku#Syllables_or_.22on.22_in_haiku

superjoe on 2011/04/14 20:23:

How is a syllable not a sound unit? The way I checked my work was looking up kitsune on wikipedia and listening to the pronunciation. It sounded like he skipped the 'u' like hodgestar said.

cyhawk on 2011/04/14 20:52:


My expertise also comes from Wikipedia :). It says: "Traditional haiku consist of 17 on, in three phrases of five, seven, and five on, respectively. [...] In Japanese, each on corresponds to a kana character [...]." And kitsune is three kana: きつね.

It is of course open to debate what happens when we mix Japanese and English text in a haiku. Should you measure in syllables for both English and Japanese? Or should you use "on" for the Japanese part? It might also be viable to define "on" for the English part too to some extent, resulting in less than 17 syllables total:

"In 1973, the Haiku Society of America noted that the then norm for writers of haiku in English was to use 17 syllables, but they also noted a trend toward shorter haiku. This trend is borne out by the winter 2010 edition of Frogpond, which contains haiku with an average of 10.5 syllables, varying from six at the shortest to 15 at the longest."