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[Kuildeous]

WanderingWinder posed a question in another thread: Why wouldn't you ever reveal a Province when you play Explorer? Indeed, why wouldn't you?

I love a good puzzle, so I pondered on that and came up with a solution, which is unlikely to happen. I thought, "This totally should be posted in the Puzzles forum." So here it is—with credit due to Wandering Winder for prompting that train of thought.

Of course, an obvious solution is, "The Gold pile has run out, so there's no point in revealing Province." Technically true, but let's make this a little harder and find reasons that you would purposefully choose to not reveal Province, even though doing so would get you Gold. 

I thought of another solution, though this one is even less likely to happen than my first solution.

Lenoxus already gave one solution, so I can't claim to be the first. Just in case you never saw that solution, I won't post it here.

[Jack Rudd]

Here's another solution to the puzzle: there is just one Silver left in the supply pile, and emptying that pile will win you the game.

[guided]

You gave a Gold in hand but not a Silver, and you want a differently-named card for some purpose related to Cornucopia. Perhaps you plan to play Menagerie next (and you had another Explorer in hand, I guess?), or you're going to play a Horn of Plenty. Or you have no Silver at all in your deck and need it for Fairgrounds. Etc.

Some of these scenarios don't even strike me as all that terribly unlikely. Particularly the Horn of Plenty angle.

[theory]

Your hand is Upgrade - Explorer - Province.  You have an extra Action from your Fishing Village last turn.  You want to get a Victory card, and so you play Explorer to gain a Silver, then use Upgrade to trash the Silver into an Island or Gardens.

[Deadlock39]

I think this one may have been mentioned in the thread this came up in.

You have an extra action from some sort of village. You have Explorer, Province, Forge, <$5 card>, <not a $2 card> in your hand, and you want to Forge the $5 and your gained silver into a Province.

[Frozyme]

Here's another solution to the puzzle: there is just one Silver left in the supply pile, and emptying that pile will win you the game.

The polar opposite of this is another reason - if emptying the gold pile will end the game and you're behind

[Anon79]

Same idea as some of the others above, but substitute Remake for Upgrade.

[Kuildeous]

I forgot that there is a spoiler tag now. I guess I'll give my solution as well, though this one has even more ifs than the other solutions.


Say you have Contraband, Province, Explorer, a Copper, and some useless card.

You play Explorer and gain a Silver to your hand. You then play Contraband. You know that you cannot afford a Province. Your opponent only knows that you have a Contraband, a Silver, and two unrevealed cards. He's very likely to name Province (or Colony) as the card you cannot buy. Now you have free license to buy that Goons (or whatever).


My second solution was the Fairgrounds solution, but I didn't take it farther and extend it to Menagerie or Hunting Party

[DG]

Perhaps you have played a golem and found an ambassador and explorer. If all the cards in hand are victory cards, you may prefer to gain a silver from the explorer and pass that to your opponents.
Perhaps you might want to trash the gained treasure using an apprentice and not want to force a reshuffle by drawing too many cards.
Perhaps you want a silver in hand to force a hunting party to find another card in the draw deck.
Perhaps you are going to play a masquerade and are hoping your opponent will pass you a tournament, assuming that you don't have a province in hand.
Perhaps taking a silver will exhaust the silver supply, or enable you to exhaust another supply pile (see previous posts on upgrade etc), which would improve your cities

[Personman]

This is a fun game! I'm not going to bother spoilering these since there are so many already.

You're on the Gardens plan and your opponent is playing Possessions. Silver is probably good enough for you, and Gold might help them too much. (Explorer is actually good on the gardens plan, and gardens is probably good against Possession, so this isn't even that unreasonable!)

Your deck is made out of Silvers and Wishing Wells, and you want to keep wishing for Silvers and being right. (This is a stretch, because I think that's a pretty terrible deck, but once you're there it could be the right play)

In a similar vein, you need exactly 2 money and aren't going to reshuffle before the end game, and you know they have Smugglers and are going to reshuffle (or have Watchtower)

You're playing the Explorer solely so that you can have another card you don't care about in your hand so that you can play your Steward to trash your Curse, and you'd prefer not to let your opponent know that your Province is in hand (because of your Contraband, or because you don't want them to know you missed on Tournament, or because you want them to be scared that you'll Salvage it later...) Or, on isotropic where they'll know about your province anyway, because there's only 1 Gold left and you want to buy it.

My favorite:
You have enough money already, you are planning to buy exactly 5 cards later this turn under Watchtower or Royal Seal, Adventurer is in the spread and you really don't want it, only good threes are in the spread, and you know that Swindler is in their hand (due to Cutpurse/Bureaucrat/paying attention and it's their last hand)