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The Squares of the City

by John Brunner

3 cards

A traffic consultant in a Latin American showplace city discovers its politics are moves in a real-life chess game — a manual for finding the hidden ruleset.

Card #c1422Synthesis

Find the hidden game board

When the players in a system look irrational, stop analyzing personalities and reconstruct the game whose rules make their moves legal.

— In our words · Source: The Squares of the City (John Brunner)

[Use when]

A reorg or market behaves "crazily": list the players, their allowed moves and what each move wins, then test whether that predicts the next event.

[Why it matters]

Hakluyt's confusion in Vados ends when he sees the city's factions as pieces in a chess game played with real lives; the chaos becomes a sequence of legal moves. A ruleset predicts the next move better than any theory of motives.

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Card #c1423Synthesis

Vagueness as a tactic: the stall is the strategy

Treat a polite stall as the other side's move, and ask who gains from your waiting.

— In our words · Source: The Squares of the City (John Brunner)

[Use when]

A counterparty keeps pushing back "final" sign-off while a deadline that favors them gets closer.

[Why it matters]

Hakluyt meets vagueness at every practical turn and slowly realizes the delay is deliberate: it keeps the expert idle while the real game plays out. Courteous inaction is still a move.

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Card #c1424Synthesis

Hired to fail: the consultant as cover

Before accepting a mandate, verify that the sponsor wants the problem solved rather than seen to be solved.

— In our words · Source: The Squares of the City (John Brunner)

[Use when]

You're offered a high-profile advisory role where the sponsor won't give you authority, data or a success metric.

[Why it matters]

Hakluyt, a famous foreign traffic expert, is brought in to fix a showplace city's traffic problem, but the power structure needs nothing to change, so his reputation serves as proof that something is being done. The fee is the same either way; the outcome is not.

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