Diversion no. 1
Cryptid Mahjongg
144 tiles. 701 officially unexplained. Match the pairs and clear the board, an outcome no federal program has yet achieved. Every tile is a real case. We checked. That was the fun part.
Board cleared. Case closed.
A tile is playable when nothing sits on top of it and either its left or its right edge is clear. Dimmed tiles are blocked.
About this tile set
Nothing here is invented.
The nine Saucers are documented sightings, from Kenneth Arnold’s skipping discs in 1947 to the lights over Phoenix in 1997. The nine Orbs are famous lights with fixed addresses, several with their own roadside viewing platforms, at least two of which turned out to be headlights on a highway — a finding that changed nothing. The nine Tracks are physical trace cases, from Jerry Crew’s plaster bucket at Bluff Creek to a French landing site studied by an actual arm of the French government. The four Agencies stand in for the winds, because official inquiry arrives loudly, moves things around, and departs. The three Visitors are the dragons, obviously. The two Exhibits are Navy footage the Pentagon itself released, making them the only tiles in the set with a .mil provenance. We looked into inventing something and found the record was already funnier.