Cehss

Apparently it's like normal chess, but with the pieces arranged in unconventional starting positions.

I photographed this at the Hilldale Mall in Madison, on my way to the local Apple store.  I presume the layout is the work of an uninformed or inattentive employee rather than a passing troll.

When I play Scrabble with family, we like to do variants of the game.  I wonder if recreational chess players ever modify the game a la "Battleship," setting up pieces any way they want before the start of the game.

"The game with no aim"

But it does have a name:  Sandspiel.

At the link you can read the "info" if you want, or just start clicking.  Choose a dot to select the size of the elements you want to insert.  Then click on the element and then on the drawing space.  There is a "freeze-frame" in the upper left if the lava or exploding gas get out of hand.

With a tip of the blogging hat to Miss Cellania, who always finds and posts the best flash games at Neatorama.

Tetris block distribution

I always wondered about this.  Discussed at the Data Is Beautiful subreddit.

Slither.io

This is why I didn't get any blogging done this weekend.

Slither.io is a multi-player game in which you are a vermiform creature.  You control its non-stop motion with your mouse cursor, towards which it always moves (the head stays in the center of the field-of-view). 

You get bigger by eating the colored dots.   You can briefly speed up your motion by left-clicking, but that uses energy and diminishes your size.  You die instantly if you bump into another "worm," as happened to me in the screencap below when the blue-and-yellow "lucky punch" darted in front of my face before I could move.  The resultant bright dots resulting from a death are particularly nutritious, so any death creates a feeding frenzy of nearby "worms."   One way to kill another worm (when you are big enough) is to encircle them and then coil smaller until they are forced to bump into you.  As soon as you die, you can click to be reborn until you've wasted an entire day.  There is no pause option.

That's basically all there is to it.  At the bottom right is a "map" showing your location in a circular world (if you fall of the end you die).  At the bottom left is your status (length and comparison to other participants at that moment).  At the top right is the leaderboard.

This was my best score last night:

That was good enough for the #2 rank at the moment.  I achieved that mostly by letting others fight and die and then scooting in to eat the dots; I spend a lot of time in a defensive coil with my head inside the coil, where nobody could make me bump into them.  I was killed by a tiny little guy who darted in front of me.

All of the above are screencaps.  The game can be played here (and presumably at many other locations).  Some strategy tips are here and here.  Readers are invited to leave their own suggestions, relevant links, and a report of their best score in the Comments below.

Thousands of new Scrabble words

A nightmare for prescriptivists:

Thousands of new words - including slang terms lolz, shizzle and obvs - have been added to the latest Scrabble word list, its publisher has said.

About 6,500 words have been added to the latest Collins Scrabble Word List, including a number of slang terms used on social media and in text messages. New words include twerking, emoji, bezzy and ridic - short for ridiculous.

Other new words now acceptable in the board game include onesie, devo - short for devolution - vape, and shootie, meaning a fashionable shoe that covers the ankle. New words involving technology include facetime, hashtag, and sexting, while exclamations such as augh, blech, eew, grr, waah and yeesh have also been added.

It is the first update to the list since 2011.

A clever ploy by the publishers to make me replace my Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.  Again.

Twenty

Here's why I'm not getting any more work done today.  Darn you, Miss C.

The image is a screencap of my score of 15 17 20 (finally, but this was in the alternate mode).  The game is here.

There is an alternate mode, which may be easier to start with because it is untimed, but the new tiles appear from above rather than below.  I've scored a 18 in that mode:

I know there are some very skilled games-players on board the blog here.  Have a go, and please share your strategies in the comments.

"Color Tiles" game - updated

Here's why I'm not blogging this morning.

The image above is a just a screencap of my best score.  The game is here.

Like all the great flash games found by Miss Cellania and posted at Neatorama, this one has a very simple interface, only one rule, and wastes an inordinate amount of one's time.

Please feel free to post your high scores in the Comments, and someone please let us know if there's a second level or if an improved version becomes available.

Addendum:  There is no second level.  A tip of the gaming hat to reader RolandT, who achieved the elusive "200" score:

You can read his strategy suggestions in the Comments.

"Smooshing" cards is an efficient way to shuffle

YouTube link.

A Stanford University mathematician explains some of the nuances of shuffling playing cards.  Most of it is standard math (7 shuffles adequate, more superfluous), but the comment that "smushing" (1:00 in the video) works quickly and effectively was new to me.

I challenge you to a game of 2048 - updated

This will be the only post today, because this morning I found 2048 and have wasted an inordinate amount of time studying/playing it.  As noted by the embed above, so far my highest score is 3408.  (After another hour, 5616).  After another day 16,176.

I have to get some work done this weekend and can't afford to waste any more time.  But I don't mind wasting your time.

Have a go, and feel free to post your best score (and strategy tips) in the comments.

The embedded image is just a screencap.  THE GAME IS HERE.

??is there a way to predict in which empty square the new tile will appear?

Update:  Using the strategies outlined by readers in the Comments, I was finally able to view the 2048 tile -

- and maxed out at 33,800.  Finally I can quit and go do something productive.

Update 2:  Here is a near-perfect pre-2048-tile-appearance board:

Starting at the second 2 of the top row (or, in practice, at the top 16), one can then sweep all the way down in a sinuous curve to convert the 1024 into a 2048.  This kind of configuration is not necessary to generate a 2048, but it certainly is esthetically pleasing.

Update 3:  This will me my final addition to this post - a view of the black 4096 tile...

... which I finally saw on my way to a final score of 50,936.  I'm done with this game.  Time to move on.

Update 4: A tip of the hat to reader Matthew for sending me the link to this article about the strategies used by artificial intelligence to solve the puzzle. 

"Most instances ended with a score around 390,000 and a 16,384 tile, but the best instance built a 32,768 tile and stayed alive long enough to reach a score of 839,732."

Final (?) update:  I was informed by reader Jan Reynolds that a "Super 2048" now exists - an 8x8 board with immensely higher potential scores and time-wasting capability.  I gave up after creating the 16,384 tile:

 and then (wisely, I think) opted NOT to "keep going."  Jan reported that she had "been beavering away for several months, have a score of 128,386,728! Have 2 tiles with face value of 2,097152 which would give me the magic 4,194304 tile but they are not near each other :( "

The game is here (and other variants from the pull-down menu). Discretion advised.

"Escape games" in London

You and three of your friends get locked in a room and have one hour to figure out how to get out.

A new concept for me.  To an avid reader of John Dickson Carr mysteries, this sounds like fun.

This is HintHunt, an interactive locked room mystery game, hidden in plain sight just down the road from Euston Station...

Everyone seems a little wary, but confident, as the girl runs through the rules of the game, telling us that we will get hints from her whenever she thinks we need them (“No one has ever done it without hints, there is no shame in getting hints”), and that each key or code we find will only work on one door or safe. It all sounds rather straightforward and, dare I say, eminently doable – until she drops the bomb that only 50 per cent of people make it out in time.

The next hour passes in an incomprehensible blur of searching, re-searching, punching numbers into safes, punching other numbers into safes, locks, keys, map coordinates and, at one point, a UV torch... The hints that appear on the count-down screen started as a slow trickle, but by 50 minutes in are coming thick and fast.

Three other London-based "escape games" are listed at the link.

Addendum:  In March 2015 The Guardian posted a feature story on this topic.

The "safe spot" in Pac Man

All those quarters I wasted in Pac Man, never knowing that there is a square where you can "hide" from the ghosts:

The right side of the T-section beneath the ghost regenerator can be used as a safe spot where the ghosts are unable to find and catch Pac-Man. There are two conditions that must be met to make the safe spot work for Pac-Man. The first is that none of the ghosts must "see" Pac-Man enter the safe spot. If they do, they will follow him in there, and the said spot will not be safe. The other condition is that Pac-Man must be facing north. You don't necessarily need to approach the spot from the south (just to the right of where Pac-Man begins the round). You can enter from the east and quickly change orientation to point north. If you meet both conditions, you can leave Pac-Man in that location for as long as you like and move the joystick when you are ready to resume play. Marathon players of the game often use this trick if they need a break from the game.

Map via The Guardian.  There are many more tips at StrategyWiki.

Evolving popularity of chess openings

Based on the study of "a data set of over 650,000 chess tournament games ranging back to the 15th century," this graphic depicts the first three moves of the games.

Found at Randal S. Olson, where there are separate graphic depictions of the evolution over time of White's first move alone, and White's first + Black's first.  Via Kottke.

"The Landlord's Game"

This game from the 1920s is a precursor and a direct inspiration for the famous game of Monopoly.

Magie designed the game to be a "practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences". She based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate. Magie also hoped that when played by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into adulthood.

More at Wikipedia and the links there.

A tip of the hat to reader mikemonaco for alerting me to this link.

New rules for Monopoly

From an AP article in the StarTribune:

No rent collection while in jail, double the dough for landing on Go and clean out Free Parking if your luck takes you there are among five made-up Monopoly rules Facebook fans voted in for future editions of the board game.

Several thousand people weighed in on "house rules" over 10 days of recent debate and a year after Hasbro Inc. added a cat token and retired the iron in a similar online stunt aimed at keeping the 79-year-old game fresh...

The winning house rule for landing on Go means players get 400 Monopoly dollars instead of the official 200. As for Free Parking, official rules call for absolutely nothing to happen when a player lands there. Under the house rule, any taxes and fees collected are thrown into the middle for a lucky someone who lands on that corner square.

Rounding out the five winners are players must travel around the board one full time before they can begin buying properties, and collecting 500 bucks for rolling double ones.

Photo credit Steven Senne, Associated Press.

A Tetris "line race"

YouTube link.

This is what's called a Tetris "line race" (also known as a "sprint"), in this case an attempt to clear 40 lines in the minimum possible time. This is the kind of thing top-level Tetris players do when they're bored, and/or want to prove that they are truly the best in the world.

The player here is a Japanese woman player* who goes by "Keroco," and he or she achieved 40 lines in 19.68 seconds. That's the first time that someone has broken the 20-second barrier, and it's astonishing, to say the least. (A few years back, 40 seconds was considered a great time.) Tetris champion Ben Mullen wrote of the feat, "Let me humbly submit that this may be the greatest achievement in the history of gaming. ... This won't make national news. But to be honest, it should." 

Found at Mental Floss.  Note that in this Tetris game the position of pieces can be adjusted after they have fallen. 

Rubik's cube solved in less time than it takes you to read this post

YouTube link.

At the 2013 Rubik's Cube World Championship, Australian Feliks Zemdegs' fastest solve was a ridiculous 7.36 seconds.  Are you done reading this?  He's solved the cube.

Snake (the game) being beaten

The player controls a long, thin creature, resembling a snake, which roams around on a bordered plane, picking up food (or some other item), trying to avoid hitting its own tail or the "walls" that surround the playing area. Each time the snake eats a piece of food, its tail grows longer, making the game increasingly difficult. The user controls the direction of the snake's head (up, down, left, or right), and the snake's body follows. The player cannot stop the snake from moving while the game is in progress, and cannot make the snake go in reverse.

The embed above is the final image in a GIF showing Snake being totally beaten.  It just takes a couple minutes.

Geoguesser challenge

When you click on GeoGuesser, it uploads a series of five Streetview images from Google.  You can then explore short distances, and the goal is to find out where those locations are and mark them on the map.  Your score is apparently determined by your distance from the actual location.  I don't believe there is a time limitation.

I'm not sure what determines what distance you can "travel," but it does seem to be limited.  Some of the most relevant information in the photos has been obscured (notably license plates on vehicles), but you can read many billboards and building signs.

When you place your answer on the map, you can zoom in on the target for more accurate placement (assuming you know where you're going).

The five uploads are probably random; I was helped in getting a high score by having one American and two Scandinavian locations.  I tried again using Google in a separate tab to look up some words I saw and was able to raise my score to 16,801, but I don't know if that was "legal."

Start here.

Via Neatorama.

An awesome dungeon

I was always thankful that in our group there was always one guy who would kick the doors down, get eaten by the ogres behind the doors, and then be reincarnated by the Dungeonmaster.  It saved a lot of time.

The above is a licensed map from Paratime Design, via fuck yeah cartography!

See also A Random Dungeon Generator.

A 17th century game board

The image above shows top and bottom view of a magnificent game board from the 17th century, whose story is detailed at The History Blog:

Attributed to Georg Schreiber of Königsberg, Prussia, a 17th century master craftsman famed as the chess set maker to royalty, the game board is made of opaque white amber and translucent red amber on a wood chassis with an ebony superstructure, carved Roman-style portrait busts and chased silver accents. There’s a Nine Men’s Morris board on one side, a chess board on the other, and it opens up to reveal a diptych backgammon board. Inside it holds 14 game pieces of cream amber, with a white amber profile in the center overlaid with translucent red amber, and 14 pieces of translucent orange amber. The profiles are of all the kings of England from William the Conqueror to James I...

This particular game board with its exquisite craftsmanship and royal English theme may have first been owned by King James I, who ruled England at the time of the board’s creation and who is the last English king portrayed on the game pieces... we know that King Charles I was an avid chess player, not even interrupting his game when he was told that the Scots had changed sides and were supporting Parliament. According to the tradition that has accompanied the piece for centuries, King Charles I brought the game board to the scaffold on the day of his execution, January 30th, 1649...

Further details on the provenance of the board at the link.  Here's a view of the board opened for playing backgammon: