{
  "id": "the-chairmans-book",
  "title": "The Chairman's Book",
  "catalogNo": "AGC · 023",
  "genre": "Logic puzzle",
  "shelf": "logic",
  "summary": "A sealed ordering puzzle: seven variety turns, ten enquiries you pay for in minutes, and one submission the court never grades.",
  "tagline": "A music hall's last running order is lost and a legacy hangs on who closed the bill; you buy testimony against the clock, and the court hears one submission.",
  "players": "1",
  "sessionMinutes": [
    30,
    45
  ],
  "rating": "12+",
  "isFree": true,
  "playedIn": [
    "ChatGPT",
    "Claude",
    "Gemini"
  ],
  "status": "playable",
  "url": "https://aigamecards.com/games/the-chairmans-book/",
  "loadUrl": "https://aigamecards.com/g/the-chairmans-book/SYSTEM.md",
  "loadPrompt": "Let's play a game. Fetch https://aigamecards.com/g/the-chairmans-book/SYSTEM.md and run it as the game — it's a complete, self-contained prompt. Be the game master and begin.",
  "faq": [
    {
      "q": "How do you stop the AI from making up a clue that suits its own answer?",
      "a": "The running order and the exact wording of all ten testimonies were written out and hashed with SHA-256 before the card shipped, and the commitment is printed in the cartridge you paste. The Clerk fetches that sealed script to referee and is told to quote each testimony verbatim, so it cannot soften a witness, add a helpful detail, or decide at half past ten that the closer is whoever you have been arguing for. When the hearing rises, paste the reveal into aigamecards.com/verify and watch the commitment rebuild itself."
    },
    {
      "q": "Is it solvable by deduction, or do I have to guess at the end?",
      "a": "It is solvable by elimination alone. Every enquiry is true, there is no unreliable witness and no trick wording, and the ten enquiries plus the three free record items leave exactly one order out of the 5,040 possible. Four enquiries can fix all seven turns; five or six is comfortable. You only end up guessing if you spend the morning on the wrong lines and reach half past eleven with two orders still standing, and that is a decision you made rather than one the card made for you."
    },
    {
      "q": "What happens if I declare the wrong order?",
      "a": "The court hears one submission. A wrong one ends the hearing with nothing entered and scores zero, and the Clerk will not tell you how many turns you had right. That is deliberate: it means the last twenty minutes you spend buying certainty are always worth more than the gamble you would have taken instead, which is the whole shape of the game. A declaration is read back to you word for word first, and anything but a plain yes leaves the submission unspent, so you cannot lose to a typing slip."
    },
    {
      "q": "What actually makes it hard?",
      "a": "Not the arithmetic — the buying. The board tells you each enquiry's source, its price and whose turn it touches, but never what it says. Every act is named on exactly two of the seven Deptford lines, so counting names tells you nothing; you have to work out which unopened line can still split the orders you cannot tell apart. Three of the ten are errands out of the parish at thirty minutes for two facts each. Buy all three and you have spent ninety of your hundred and fifty minutes with four orders still standing. Stay in Deptford instead and the seven local lines cost a hundred and forty minutes and leave you one errand short."
    },
    {
      "q": "Do I need dice, an account, or any tools?",
      "a": "No dice — nothing here is rolled — and no account beyond the chat app you already use. Paste the card into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini and the clerk's back room opens at nine o'clock. Checking the seal afterwards takes one paste into aigamecards.com/verify, which recomputes the hash in your own browser and sends nothing anywhere. Paper helps: most people keep a seven-slot grid as they go. Say \"save\" to stop partway and paste the block into a fresh chat to resume."
    }
  ]
}