Knever

18th Jun 2014

Zathura (2005)

Question: When Danny presses the button, the red spaceship moves onto a white space. Later in the movie, after accepting the astronauts' help, all three discover that the red spaceship is now on a blue space. How could it have gotten there? Neither Danny or Walter kicked the board and Danny never actually moved it from its original position since they had to deal with getting rid of the Zorgons.

Answer: If you are talking about the part where Walter says that Danny cheated and Danny says "someone must have kicked the board", you're right, no one did kick the board. After again being asked if he moved the piece, Danny says "maybe I moved the piece by accident." I think this implies that Danny cheated and moved the piece himself, which is why it was on a different coloured space.

Except, it never showed Danny moving the piece at all. When Walter moved Danny's piece back to the space it was originally on, the game shot out a card accusing Walter of cheating and tried ejecting him out of the house. If Danny had moved the piece by accident and therefore technically cheated, it kind of raises the question as to why he never received a card accusing him of cheating and ejecting him from the house as well.

I think the answer to this is in the card's text - "Caught cheating" I believe this implies that since Walter was observed physically moving a piece by the other player, that is what triggered the cheating detection. Nobody saw Danny move his piece, so he was technically not caught cheating in the moment. So, ostensibly, one may be able to cheat as long as they are not caught by the other player.

Knever

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