Constellation Game (Twelve Janggi)
, Twelve Janggi — Let's Catch the Lion!This time Dongmin and Hyunmin are the last come in and all others players have time to start conspiring against their rising power.
Constellation game has players collecting stars to complete these constellations:
- 3 red stars make Aries (2 points)
- 4 yellow stars make Sagittarius (3 points)
- 5 blue stars make Cassiopeia (5 points)
- 6 green stars make Lyra (7 points)
White stars can be used as stand-ins in any constellation. Black stars are "bombs".
If player manages to complete 3 constellations, game ends and he/she wins. The player with the least stars loses and goes to Deathmatch.Alternatively, if someone collects 3 black stars, they lose, and the winner is the one with the most points.
Stars are collected in rounds. Each round has 7 random coloured stars + one black star to be distributed among players.
Players have cards with numbers from 1 to 5 on them. They present these cards to dealer back side up. After all players put their cards down, cards are flipped revealing the numbers. Players who picked same numbers don't get anything. Remaining players take as much stars as it says on their card going from lowest value to highest, as in player with 1 is the first to take a star, but they can only take one, player with 2 goes second and takes 2 stars and so on.
Hyunmin quickly figures that if 5 people decide to alternate numbers between them, 2 remaining players will always get repeated numbers and will be completely frozen out and denied of any stars. With this strategy in mind he approaches several people, namely Ahyoung and Jongbum, starting to build majority alliance. Jongbum then explains this strategy to Dr. Yeonseung who then asks why do they need Hyunmin in the first place. Adding to the temptation is the fact is that Dongmin/Hyunmin power pair only have 2 black garnets between them which means they can't initiate Black Garnet mission to escape Deathmatch.
There is no better time to try to eliminate at least one of the dominating players. Three men only need two girls to create majority and stick it to dominators.
Ahyoung and Yeonjoo actually try to approach Dongmin first, but he's being cagey and doesn't give them firm guarantees that he will give them token of life. Dongmin even arrogantly prevents Hyunmin from trying to build majority alliance further. Girls then go to Jongbum/Yeonseung/Yuhyun opposition camp and they lay out a simple strategy which convinces them.
It is done. The game starts and Dongmin/Hyunmin become the victims of Hyunmin's own strategy. They can't do anything, they try to rope in individual players away from 5-player majority but it all falls through.
Yeonjoo gets the most stars in the first round so alliance decide to continue to push her to victory while continuing to deny Dongmin/Hyunmin of stars. She completes three constellations and wins the game. She gives token of life to Ahyoung, which leaves three men vulnerable for Deathmatch. The alliance chooses Hyunmin as the elimination candidate, as 1) they're intimidated by his performance in the main matches and 2) the girls want to spare Dongmin since he talked to them earlier on. Hyunmin picks Jongbum as his Deathmatch opponent. Hyunmin's reason is that he feels somewhat betrayed by Jongbum, given that he shared his 5-person alliance strategy with him only for Jongbum to turn his own strategy against him.
Jongbum initiates Black Garnet mission and gets an incredibly tough memory challenge (probably the hardest challenge ever in The Genius) where player has to memorize 12 bus station names in 30 seconds and then repeat them back in arbitrary order. Jongbum comes up with a strategy of memorising the first letter of each bus stop in order, and it almost seems like he might succeed. Unfortunately, the pressure gets to him, and he rushes to answer instead of taking his time (since there is no time limit). He slips up and says the third bus stop for the second card, causing him to fail the Black Mission. Jongbum goes to Deathmatch.
Hyunmin and Jongbum are playing Twelve Janggi, which is simplified version of chess played on 3x4 board (hence twelve). There are two ways to win: either you capture the opponent's King piece, or you move your King into the opponent's territory and have it survive the subsequent opponent turn. Again, the pressure gets to Jongbum and he makes the fatal mistake of placing a piece on the wrong spot, leaving one side open for Hyunmin to move his King piece. This allows Hyunmin to checkmate Jongbum; either Jongbum moves his King and has it captured by Hyunmin's King, or Jongbum doesn't move his King and thus allows Hyunmin to move his King into Jongbum's territory. With this checkmate, Hyunmin beats Jongbum, eliminating him.
Thus ends the first substantial opposition against Dongmin and Hyunmin.
Trope:
- The Dog Bites Back: Ahyoung and Yeonjoo turn on Dongmin after being treated as nothing more than cannon fodder by him.
- Fixing the Game: Subverted. As a deleted scene for the episode had revealed, the Producers had marked the backs of the number cards with tiny star patterns showing each card's exact value. Although Hyunmin suspected early on that the cards were marked in some way, neither he nor anyone else figured it out.
- Gilligan Cut: Hyunmin confidently announces that he has "a strategy with majority alliance, it will be very hard to stand against us". Flash forward to him crying at the end of a game.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Hyunmin formulates an ironclad strategy for the upcoming game, then shares it with others hoping to create majority alliance with them. The others, however, decide that he's becoming too big a threat and and turn Hyunmin's strategy against him.
- Hurricane of Aphorisms: Dongmin's spitting proverbs this episode:Dongmin: Yeonseung, there are no such thing as solid alliances. There are just solid strategies.
Yeonseung: Hyung, do you practice these comments at home?
Dongmin: Yeonseung, there are no practiced comments. There are just practiced people. - Manipulative Editing: Flash forward edited two separate scenes where Hyunmin is trying to threaten Ahyuoung and Yeonjoo and when he's crying after eliminating Jongbum to create a narrative that he is gonna plead to Ahyuoung and Yeonjoo not to pick him and then cries because he was eliminated.
- My Greatest Failure: By far the worst performance for both Hyunmin and Dongmin
- Old-School Chivalry: In the beginning, Dongmin calms Ahyoung and Yeonjoo down saying that other remaining male players won't be picking them for Deathmatch because it would look bad. However, when girls betray him, and he himself becomes a target, he hypocritically takes passive-aggressive stance threatening them to do just that.
- Tall Poppy Syndrome: After the Dongmin/Hyunmin alliance dominated the previous 2 episodes, the other players start plotting against them.
- Variant Chess: Twelve Janggi is a simplified version of Janggi which itself is a Korean variation on chess.
