Merlins Magical Boxes



HOW TO GET WHAT U WANT FROM MERLIN (much respect to TRICKSTER)

How to win the Merlin’s box game every time: Each box moves like a knight (the chess piece). This means every box could move…: 1 up, 2 right 1 up, 2 left 1 down, 2 right 1 down, 2 left 1 right, 2 up 1 right, 2 down 1 left, 2 up 1 left, 2 down That’s 8 ways that it can move. However, remember that going 2 up or 2 down will always take you to the same square (before moving left or right) going the other way because there are four rows. For instance, if the rows are laid out 1 2 3 4 and you are at 1, going two down gets you to 3 (1, 2, 3) BUT going two up gets to 3 as well (1, 4, 3). This means that moving 2 up, 1 right is the same as 2 down, 1 right AND 2 up, 1 left is the same as 2 down, 1 left. 1. 1 up, 2 right

2. 1 up, 2 left

-- 1 down, 2 right (SAME AS #1)

-- 1 down, 2 left (SAME AS #2)

3. 1 right, 2 up

4. 1 right, 2 down

5. 1 left, 2 up

6. 1 left, 2 down

That means that each box you do pick can be one of 6 items (the six boxes from wherever it came from). However, you must remember that the left stretches all the way back to the right and top to the bottom. For instance, if you want an item in the top left, it could end up in the bottom row two from the right. I’ll show that in a second. So, let’s lay out the diagram…

[--] [--] [--] [--] [--]

[--] [--] [--] [--] [--]

[--] [--] [--] [--] [--]

[--] [--] [--] [--] [--]

That’s the standard Merlin’s Boxes layout, correct? Now, let’s say you see an item you want in the top left.

[x] [--] [--] [--] [--]

[--] [--] [--] [--] [--]

[--] [--] [--] [--] [--]

[--] [--] [--] [--] [--]

Okay that item can move to six different spaces remember? The potential places are:

[1] [--] [--] [--] [--]

[--] [--] [a] [a] [--]

[--] [a] [--] [--] [a]

[--] [--] [a] [a] [--]

Now, that means that every item in the ‘a’ squares has a 1/6 chance of ending up on the 1. Another example, say you want to pick square 1. That means that it can be any item from squares a, as shown:

[--] [--] [0] [--] [0]

[0] [0] [--] [--] [--]

[--] [--] [--] [x] [--]

[0] [0] [--] [--] [--]

So your job is to find every “good” item (i.e. Whatever items you see that are showing that you want). Chart where those items could land. For instance, 1, 2, 3, and 4 are all good items. I’ll show you their potential landing spots.

[1] [--] [--] [3] [--]

[--] [--] [--] [--] [--]

[--] [2] [--] [--] [--]

[--] [--] [--] [4] [--]

It’s going to be every place that 1 can land, b is going to be every place 2 can land, c is going to be every place 3 can land, and d is going to be every place 4 can land. Note: There is no significance to the difference between the uppercase compared to the lowercase letters. It was just for spacing.

[bd] [D ] [B ] [---] [---]

[C ] [C ] [ad] [ab] [bd]

[D ] [ad] [C ] [---] [ac]

[---] [---] [ac] [ab] [bc]

Obviously you don’t want to pick any of the blank spots. You obviously have no chance of getting any item you want in those squares. However, the squares with two or more letters (in this case, there are none with more than 2, but when actually playing the game you may get some) are good picks: you have a 2/6 chance (two letters, six boxes than could potentially land there) of getting an item you want. That's 33% and much better than when you thought you were only getting 1/20 shot (5%) right?