So by saying that the watchman can say the name more than once means that there is a high chance that the watchman's neccesary speech is not in the storyline, correct?
You will remember the night you were struck by the sight of... ten thousand fists in the air!
Well I made my list and I checked it twice, and it looks like Thingfish hasn't been very nice.
I went through the game and catalogued every last entity that can be found within the game, and came up with nothing that fits his riddle. I have a list of over 800 names, titles, and terms used in the game, either as titles in speech boxes, or mentioned/shown in any other way within the game. I am 100% confident that my list is complete and correct down to the smallest details and pieces of script, and nothing in it fits Thingfish's riddle according to the hints he has given out.
This means either one of two things - The riddle has a valid answer within the world of FFIX, but Thingfish has been playing everyone for fools with false hints, or the riddle has no valid answer at all, and Thingfish has been playing everyone for fools anyways.
Either way, I am official calling him out and saying his riddle has no valid answer.
I must commend him, though. If it wasn't for this I wouldn't have had the motivation to go through the game with the finest of combs and uncover every last trival aspect of it. I now know by heart much more about the minutiae of the game than I though possible, such as Queen Brahne's favorite food(deep-fried bat), or the one place in the game that the Viltgance is mentioned outside of the card game(a crew member named Dolf mentions it as his ship while talking to his wife in Lindblum), as well as the actual year that the game takes place in, according to the FFIX chronology(exactly 1800), and hundreds of other interesting bits of info. Unfortunately, none of this has anything to do with the answer to Thingfish's riddle whatsoever.
Unless the answer is Lav Layderce or one of the dwarves, the only full names not guessed so far, then Thingfish is running us around in circles and probably laughing his head off.
If you like, I can post my list here(it's very, very big, not only detailing every entity within the game, but a description and location as well) and Thingfish can confirm or deny his answer within the list.
Commendable work, Free_Spirit; you have done what the rest of us have not had the time or patience to do, and for that I(we) are thankful!
I do not however agree that Thingfish is fooling us. As detailed as you think you have been, you might have missed just the one thing which reveals the answers name, and then it's all in vain. Perhaps you forgot that you could backtract to somewhere at one point and get new conversations from people, or something similar.
On the other hand, Thingfish might be fooling us in the sense that he's got us to believe in certain core assumptions which are not actually confirmed by him. Thingfish is sly as a devil, but he's always had a perfect answer to his riddles.
As for your list, I would be pleased if I could see it. You could post it all here, although since that might just spur on a ton of random guesses, perhaps send it to me in a private message? Whatever, I merely wish to see if you haven't missed something.
I didn't mean it like that, sorry. Anyone else who wants to see it should naturally be allowed to see it. It's just that posting the full thing here will incite more people to randomly guess than if it's PM'd.
I can imagine Sir. B. and Tiffy's surprise right now...
I am released from this burden, as is everyone else!
Well done, Free_Spirit! As you can now see, I don't cheat either, and naturally there was always an answer to the riddle! Shame you only got it by process of eliminating names from a list and trying to matching ideas to the riddle and not by working out the whole riddle itself, but nevertheless, I couldn't really allow it to carry on after you'd posted the name of the answer as, once I eventually revealed it, you would have felt rather cheated.
I'm guessing the others who spent hours working out the intricacies feel a little cheated now, but, to be honest, I really don't think all the difficulties in the riddle were going to be worked out to provide the answer. It was likely so complex that it would put people off working it out and push them rather towards looking through name lists to find characters that might fit. No matter, the complexity is where I remain the winner even though the answer has been given
I actually do feel bad, since I did want to figure out the riddle's meanings as it relates to the answer myself(as of this moment, I have'nt actually looked at the explanation yet), but just wanted to confirm it had an answer first. I had of course spent many long hours pondering the riddle itself, as well as the ponderous amount of reasoning that went on here(and I am willing to bet my interpretations for much of the riddle is in fact mostly correct, now that I am connecting the conductor to the riddle). Hell, I feel cheated and I'm the one that got it. How ironic is that?
Anyways, since the riddle is solved, I guess there's no harm to post my list, other than the harm such a massive text dump would do to the thread mechanics. It is in fact a very interesting list to read through if you're a fan of FFIX trivia like I am. I'll format it and post it up in a bit.
And personally, I think it would be cool if you deleted your reasoning and let me give my own reasoning to the answer, since I haven't yet read yours. I know from personal experience that it's disheartening to have someone guess the right answer to a riddle without reasoning. I don't think too many people have seen it yet, and at least me giving some explanation would keep any "No fair cheater" lines to a minimum.
streme Wheelie
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