Cursed Treasure
by Jay Lorch and Michelle Teague

There are five curses a treasure can possess. A knowledgeable pirate can look at a treasure and know exactly which curses it has.

For each curse, there is a short rule a pirate can use to decide whether a treasure has that curse. You need to figure out the five rules, one for each curse. We suggest you try to figure out one rule at a time.

To help you figure out the rules, we've given you a bag of 24 treasures, each labeled with the symbols for the curses it possesses. The order of those 24 is unimportant, so don't worry about mixing them up.

The curse descriptions and the unlabeled treasures below won't help you figure out the rules. They'll become useful after you know the rules. Ignore the words in the curse descriptions that aren't in bold.

You will be stricken with a computer hex. What's a pirate doing with a computer, anyway?
You will be attacked by an octopus on the prowl for lazy pirate interns.
A heart attack from eating too much deep-fried gruel will necessitate a quadruple bypass.
You will be challenged to a dual, er, I mean, duel. You better hope it's not a spelling bee.
You will lose one eye when you forget to feed your parrot.