ABOUT THE DIPLOMATIC POUCH

"Watching Dippers clash where diplomats congregate" could be the title of a D-rated (see what I did there?) theater show, but it could also be the subtitle of this year's Diplomacy FTF world championship. The WDC in WDC has come and gone. Many participated, many more have watched. With current technologies live-streaming is almost a given. Certainly with Chris Martin in the organization. The Pouch itself was amply represented with Brian Lovelace, copy editor and first-time participant, and no-one less than Manus Hand, founder of the Pouch, who returned to the scene after a long absence. How they and everyone else fared, you can read elsewhere in this Zine.

We've included an interview with the winner this time. An audio interview no less, which must be a first for the Zine. It's a good interview, amicable, with room for the interviewee to expand on his thoughts and views. The devoted reader may remember the series of interviews I had a few issues ago with top contenders in the previous WDC. Much to my surprise one of these got a follow-up in Diplomacy World, with which our magazine sometimes engages in a friendly rivalry. It concerned a question that had unintentionally infuriated the person interviewed and had therefore been scrubbed from the published interview. I'll go into this deeper in the Pouch Deposits section, but this is my take-away: Although it felt like a backstab at first, I'm glad my question got answered, even if it was in a rival magazine. The framing of the question was perhaps not ideal, but it touched on an important topic. The winner of this stab is you, the reader.

In another experiment I posted the Sherlock Holmes puzzle from the Spring issue, "The Stirring Case of the Double French", in a number of Diplomacy forums. One of these, on WebDiplomacy, led to a spirited discussion and eventually, after just three days, to a full and correct solution. Riddles are perhaps not everyone's cup of tea, but by having many minds making various suggestions, the intended interpretation eventually transpires. An example of the paradigm that the collective is greater than the sum of its members. Holmes, Watson and their exotic guest are engaging in a similar "forum" discussion in the solution published in this issue, proposing various interpretations until hitting upon the correct one. After that, it's a simple question of reconstructing the game. Or is it?

Enjoy the Pouch!