Experdize Spanish Hotel - Applied

How to play: every guest speaks Spanish, and reading them is the whole game. The hotel runs itself — she calls the next guest up, fetches the key cards, tags the bags, loads the carts, wheels them to the rooms, brings them back, runs the vacuum round a checked-out room and walks back to her desk, all without being told. You never tap a person, a door, a bag or a cart. What you answer is two questions, both in a row of buttons along the foot of the floor.

Take as long as you like. There is no time limit and nothing to beat the clock to: a level is 10 questions, and it ends the moment you answer the last one. One question is up at a time, and while it is up the whole lobby stands still — nobody walks in, no queue moves and no patience bar drains — so you can read it as slowly as you need. The stopwatch at the top counts up rather than down: it is your result, not your deadline, and your fastest run at each level is kept.

One: what does she say? A guest reaches the counter and four Spanish lines appear. One of them asks how many are checking in — Combien de personnes ? — and three ask something else. Pick one and that is what she actually says, so read before you tap: cuántas noches asks the NIGHTS, cuánto es asks the PRICE, and cuántas maletas lleva is the same question about BAGS — you ARE a number of people and you HAVE a number of bags, which is a split English does not make. Get it wrong and they answer ¿Perdón? — she has to ask again, and it counts against you. Get it right and they say how many they are and what room they want, both at once: Somos dos. Quería una habitación doble.

Two: which room did they ask for? The second row offers the rooms that would actually take them — una habitación individual, una habitación doble, una habitación familiar, una suite — and one of them is the one they said. ⚠ It is individual and never simple, which is what an English or a French speaker reaches for and which in Spanish means "uncomplicated". One phrase in four drops the article for the plural — ¿Tienen habitaciones libres? — because Spanish has no partitive, so where French must say des chambres Spanish says the bare noun. ⚠ And una habitación doble is a room for two PEOPLE and says nothing about the furniture: that is una cama de matrimonio against dos camas. Pick the right one and she checks them in there at its own rate, with a tip. Pick a wrong one and they are checked in anyway — you are paid the cheaper of the two rates, you get no tip, and your streak breaks. The readout above the floor holds what they asked for while you choose, and tapping the guest asks them to say it again — free, but it costs seconds. That is the only tap on the floor that does anything.

Room numbers are read as ordinary numbers — chambre cent un for 101 — and each door wears its number and its type on the sign above it, so the words on the rows are the words on the walls. ⚠ The rooms are on the premier étage, which is ONE FLIGHT UP: the floor at street level is the rez-de-chaussée and carries no number at all, so a Spanish first floor is an English second one. A room whose door mat matches the party's colour pays a $12 bonus. You cannot lose a level — a guest who gives up waiting still walks out and still costs you the booking and your streak, but nothing ends the shift except answering its last question.

Level is how hard the words are, and it is the only thing that changes what you have to know. Beginner writes the respell and the English under every line and lets guests in at half the rate. Learner drops the English. Advanced gives you the characters alone and the room request fades after a few seconds — and pays more for it. Win and you take the next shift, and the next level with it up to Advanced; the shift itself keeps climbing after that, and the floor gets busier as it goes.