Editing Samsara:Fundamentals (section)

===Example 3: What Does it Say, Indy?===
In this contest, a renowned linguist is trying to decipher the weird, characters that he found on a pot-shard.  His goal is to be able to understand what the script means.  The script’s goal is to remain unintelligible. Again: anything and everything can be an actor in a contest and have a goal, even inanimate entities or abstract ideas.

If the professor delivers a check, he might have just thought of a possible way to conjugate something, or maybe thinks that he’s noticed a similarity between this squiggle and an ancient Hittite symbol.  If he delivers 6 checks, he might have a flash of inspiration, turn the symbol upside-down and realize that it is not Hittite at all, but Mesoamerican!  This contest should probably work on a time-frame exactly opposite of that in the previous example: hours and hours could go by with each die roll and the entire contest might take weeks or months (or longer).

The checks that the writing delivers might be best represented as mental strain and fatigue which the linguist suffers.  They could also be interpreted as false leads and blind alleys of interpretation which take up precious time.  If the ancient script wins the contest, the professor might throw up his hands in disgust and give up, or suffer nervous exhaustion, or just plain realize that he has no idea what he is looking at (see The Varieties of Checks for more guidance on this).