Knightmare Lexicon - A Knightmare Encyclopædia
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1. Tilt Your Head Back technique
Term coined by Forester in a Lexicon entry to describe a method of seeing used by various dungeoneers.

The original Helmet of Justice was designed to debar forward vision by the wearer, but not downward vision, thereby allowing dungeoneers to see items that they might be standing over, better than their advisors could. This enabled a facet of the symbiotic co-operation between advisors and dungeoneer that was both the necessity and hallmark of a successful team.

Nevertheless, some dungeoneers decided that there were easier ways to give themselves an advantage where manoeuvring was concerned. As Tim Child revealed in the short documentary introduction to Knightmare's debut on Challenge? in 2003, "If they tilted their heads far enough back, they can see the clue tables across the room."
 
 [Related Image] Like sidestepping, strategic head-tilting was a technique that eluded the very earliest teams, but proved irresistible to later ones.

As described elsewhere in the Lexicon, Team 3 of Series 2 used head-tilting.

Dungeoneer Scott from Team 9 of Series 3, who posted on the Knightmare.com Discussion Forum in 2003 (as Scott_Series_3), confessed that 'after that corridor with the amoured knight i was peeking so much they had 2 put an actual blindfold on me so i couldnt see a thing! hehe naughty naughty'.

Another tilter was dungeoneer James from Team 5 of Series 3. However, this did not stop his quest from finishing in Level 1, perhaps corroborating the Knightmare gamebook tenet that cheats do not prosper in Knightmare Castle.

Indeed, head-tilting tried Tim Child's patience: "When they did that, they were told that the blindfold would go on underneath if they didn't behave themselves." There were times when a dungeoneer's head-tilting may simply have been done to get the helmet to sit more comfortably: it's up to individual watchers where they draw the line in giving tilters the benefit of the doubt.

The new Helmet of Justice design brought in in Series 7 made the 'TYHB Technique' far less possible for the wearer. Though ironically, this was the season where seeing-eye spells were handed out copiously, encouraging dungeoneers to look at that which traditionally only their advisors in the antechamber could see.

As for the world of fanfiction, in Interactive Story #1, Treguard himself gives into temptation:

"Master, you're in some kind of clue room, we think. There's a table in front of you, can you see it?" He couldn't. But if dungeoneers could bend the rules by tilting their heads backward to see further, so could he.
"Yes, I see it now Pickle, I'll go and see what's on it."


Hugo Myatt (Treguard) gave a demonstration of dungeoneer head-tilting during one of the Q&A sessions at the 2014 Knightmare Convention.

[Earlier versions: 2012-07-23 17:00:08, 2006-05-04 04:01:24]

Provided By: David, 2019-12-22 16:03:27
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