What is the pointy end for?
Last time we left our hero Guybrush Threepwood outside of Captain Smirk’s Big Boy Pirate Gym. He’s been standing there for the past two weeks waiting for us to care again about his adventures: 
“I am a big boy! Sword training, cannon firing, and hook grappling, huh? Well, I only have one of those things so…” 
Looking back at this I wish I had picked “Um… Could you please put out that cigar?” option before moving the plot along. Now I’ll never know what Smirk would have said… 
Oh, where have I seen this guy before? When did Duke Nukem lose an eye? 
“But you’ve never even seen me fight!” 
Bastions of adult masculinity right here folks…
Fighting Spirit
It’s nice when the game makes its flag checks so obvious, it also helps point the player to what they need to proceed. The designers could have just had no one answer the door until the player had both 30 piecess of eight and a sword in their inventory before having Smirk come out. This way though tells the player exactly what it is they need to proceed. 
“Lets!” 
This is where he tells Guybrush he’s a born natural! 
He can’t be all that bad, can he Smirk?
Special Measures
“That’s good right?” 
“I don’t know if I feel comfortable about this Captain.” 
Yeah, that’s because you’re behind that infernal device!” 
I’m imagining a montage! 
Another montage! 
“Do it faster and harder than anyone else?”
You fight like a Dairy Farmer
We’re screwed… 
Sick burn 
Another sick burn! You are killing it Threepwood!
Can’t we just hug instead?
I’m shocked that Guybrush’s response was incorrect! 
“But I paid you 30 pieces of eight!” 
Indeed… Well, Guybrush at least knows which end of the sword to stick into his opponents. That is about all he knows though. Turns out sword fighting isn’t about sword fighting, much to the chagrin of fencers everywhere, but about belittling people. 
We take Guybrush back to the map screen and let’s take a closer look at it again. There are a number of colored moving dots on the map, those are wandering pirates. We ran into one or two of them before but nothing ever happened but an awkward conversion. That is no longer the case. Now that Guybrush has the proper training… 
We can challenge them to duels! 
This early in the game Threepwood only have a few insults to use. In order to defeat the sword master and get closer to becoming a real pirate he’s going to have to learn a lot more. How? By learning from these guys. We can insult them and they can insult us. We defeat them if we can insult them three times without a clever comeback and vise versa. It’s okay if we lose though. That’s good, cause it means we learned a new insult which we can use on the next guy and if we’re lucky he’ll also give us the correct response to it! Needless to say, this could take awhile. 
Guybrush doesn’t know the rejoinder to this insult, either does this pirate. 
He does know that one… 
A new insult! Guybrush will use this against his next foe!
Stick and stones make break my bones…
Another new one! And with that we’ve been defeated. 
Thankfully, for these pirates scarring the self esteem is enough. Threepwood goes in search of another duel: 
No help there. Knowing the insults is only half the task. We need to know the proper rejoinders as well or we’ll still lose fights. 
As satisfying as it may be to win a duel. This one was a complete bust. We didn’t learn any knew insults or rejoinders. Like a said, awhile… On to the next! 
Nice! Now we know that one completely. 
And a new one to test on another pirate. 
And another! 
Well, looks like Guybrush is going to be wandering the island waving his sword and tongue at people for a bit. We can catch up with him again next weekend. TO DO – Get a map – Master the Sword – Master Treasure Huntery – Explore the town – Avoid Le Chuck – Become a Pirate – Meet Stan – Learn how to fight with sword – get a ship – get a crew (?) – Kiss the Governor. – learn all the insults
