Crimes against Yahtzee

The World Yahtzee Institute has received stacks of letters in the past few months with inquiries into the findings from the Nepalese archaeological dig. The dig, located in the Himalayan foothills, had produced what appeared to be a very early Yahtzee set – perhaps the oldest Yahtzee gaming equipment yet unearthed. It has been exceptionally difficult to keep a lid on the turn of events that occurred upon my team’s arrival to the site, given the high profile of such a find. The last thing I’d ever want to do is to withhold information from my fellow Yahtzeeists but the powers-that-be imposed a gag-rule until all of the facts surrounding the matter had been brought to light. I’ve been given permission to speak openly about the matter as of this afternoon.

My team and I arrived in Nepal last October and began our investigation. Our initial tests of the artifacts – which consisted of two fully intact dice, a shard of a broken die, and a yak bone shaker cup – seemed to indicate the authenticity of the equipment. However in order to be absolutely sure, I made arrangements with the Nepalese government to have the relics transported to the main WYI laboratory in Prague. From there, we could perform additional testing to put the matter to rest. After having spent only two full days in Nepal, we were on a plane heading back to Europe. We arrived the next day, but the trunk of Yahtzee artifacts never did – they’ve been missing since we left Nepal.

As I’m sure you can imagine, an international uproar ensued. Blame for the missing relics was passed around generously but the trail was cold. The despair and disappointment of having lost such important artifacts gradually began to fade over the following weeks and eventually the mood at the World Yahtzee Institute was back to near-normalcy. That all changed late last week when the Institute received a ransom note from a group who claims to have stolen the Yahtzee treasures.

They call themselves the “Empty House”, in what I can only assume is a poorly constructed play on the Yahtzee scoring category, the Full House. More details about this shadowy group will be released to the public in the coming days – but rest assured that the manhunt is already underway. It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone could possibly want to suppress a discovery of this magnitude, but I suppose everyone doesn’t share our peaceful, compassionate worldview. If you have any information about the disappearance of the missing Yahtzee relics or of the Empty House, please contact your local branch of the World Yahtzee Institute immediately.