PCC#18 "You Have Died of Dysentery"

Answer explanation: The title of the puzzle and the meta prompt are about the educational computer game "Oregon Trail" that you may or may not have played when you were a kid in school... If you did, I hope the nostalgia factor is strong and brings back delightful memories. The clue for 68A hints at "crossing rivers in style " and that we will have to do this four times in the puzzle.

The four rivers that you cross in the game are in order: Kansas River, Big Blue River, Green River, and Snake River. These rivers all begin the four longest across entries: 17A, 26A, 47A, 59A. The next step of the puzzle is to identify the different river crossing methods in the game. You can take a ferry across, ford the river, caulk the river and float across, or hire an Indian tour guide... you can also wait and see if conditions improve (hinted by 1A) but this option isn't actually crossing the river.

FERRY crosses KANSASSTATEFLAG at "F"... FORD crosses BIGBLUEOX at "O"... HIRE crosses GREENHORN at "R"... and CAULK crosses SNAKEINTHEGRASSS at "K"... making our meta answer FORK (as in fork in the road). In the game there are some decision points where the trail splits and you need to decide which route to take.

An inelegance that I was not too thrilled about this puzzle is that the river crossing option of "hiring a tour guide" is ONLY available for the SNAKE river in the game... but here I have it crossing GREEN river. The other thing I'm not too thrilled about is you have to dig pretty deep to find the "hire" option when you do Google searches... it's not on the Wikipedia page and Googling "Oregon Trail river crossing options" only lists ford, caulk, ferry but also takes you to "Oregon Trail (Apple Arcade)" which differs from the classic computer game... these two websites include the "hire" option: https://www.died-of-dysentery.com/stories/crossing-rivers.html and https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/mac/564877-the-oregon-trail/faqs/30964

I messed up a bit with my research - I wanted to release this puzzle on the anniversary date of the when "Oregon Trail" first came out, which per the wiki page is Dec 3, 1971 (52 years ago). I realize now that the 1971 version of the game is purely text-based strategy with no graphics... The 1985 version of the game is the one that added graphics and is the most well-known entry in the "Oregon Trail series"... you can play it here: https://oregontrail.ws/games/the-oregon-trail/

Nice fill! Took three hints

Thanks!

Loved this!

my first instinct was methods of death in oregon trail ("snake" bite etc), but i was lucky in looking things up to chance upon the names of the rivers, and it was smooth rafting from there (besides, i was rather young when i played it and never really paid attention to the names of the rivers... i always drowned anyways)... great puzzle, jealous as ever of you geniuses and your amazing ideas and your abilities to make such gifts and share them with us

Fun! I got there thanks to ALL of the hints. (I'd recommend the Apple Arcade version, actually — not a full nostalgia value but some good updates to historical accuracy and perspectives and richness, more strategic gameplay, and of course radically better graphics and animation.)

Very nice! I bought the game for my (kids...?) Switch but we haven't played it a ton yet. Really need to sit down and play more with them. Such good memories from my youth.

I have only played the text-only version on a paper-based TTY connected via acoustical coupler modem to the university mainframe across town. I may or may not have the code on a roll of paper tape somewhere (or maybe I just have HUNT THE WUMPUS or STAR TREK.)

When our family got its first computer (about 1992? 93?) Oregon trail was one of the first games our children played… over and over (I can still hear the music). Good nostalgia!!