eric@whuxle.UUCP (Eric Holtman) (07/02/84)
Recently (August 84), Games Magazine ran a letter from a guy whose basic thought was "Gee, it's real easy to bust up some of your contests by having a PC do the dirty work for you." (FYI- Games Magazine has a contest or two in almost every issue. Some, like this month's "Word Marathon" are ideally suited to PC or VAX crunching (in fact I have several subprocsses running at this very moment working on them) ). My questions are: Are there many readers of Games magazine out there? Do you enter the contests? Do you use a computer? Do you wish people wouldn't use computers?? Do you want to discuss computer contest crunching, this current conttest in particular?? Thanks for yours time, eric holtman harpo!whuxle!eric ihnp4!whuxle!eric
esr@iheds.UUCP (E. Rieback) (07/03/84)
I am a devout puzzler and Games reader. I have considered using a
computer to solve Games contests, but haven't attempted it for two
reasons:
1. I don't have Webster's Unabridged in machine readable form
2. If I can find a maximum-score answer via computer, so can
500 other people, and the contest comes down to a random
drawing.
I also find it irritating when the winning contest entry, submitted
by those 500 determined people, turns out to have such esoteric words
in it that it doesn't seem fair to creative-minded people without
access to a computer.
I enter Games contests for the chance to use my creativity, and to work
through a difficult challenge. Therefore, the only contests I enter are
those that do not have a maximum answer, but rather those which use
imagination and creativity and a hint of madness :-). Good examples of this
type of Games contest are Chop Logic and Pic Tac Toe. While I have not
won a Games contest yet, I did win two contests in Games Magazine's
(now defunct) offshoot magazine, Four Star Puzzler. The satisfaction I
felt in winning them could never even be approached by winning via a
computer-generated entry.
Any more comments from you letter-crunching Games contest addicts?
Eileen Rieback
ihnp4!iheds!esrpizer@ecsvax.UUCP (07/04/84)
I fully agree with E. Rieback, the fun is in figuring the games out and not
winning. I have come to use the computer to figure out cryptograms, and I
once attempted using it to enter a contest. However, each time my goal was
not to actually "win" but simply to see if I could apply my computer to the
task. I have subscribed to games for quite a few years, have entered some
contests, but never won. For me, it seems, the computer makes no difference!
Billy Pizer
(pizer@ecsvax)
{happy 4th o'July}pizer@ecsvax.UUCP (07/06/84)
I also messed around with the same puzzle Joe Ramey talked about, using a
function of a spelling checker that shuffled given letters into possible words.
As did Joe Ramey, I did not submit it, rather just "messed around". I also
agree that most of their puzzles are much more dependent on creativity than
luck or computer skill. The purpose of Games is to give subscribers puzzles
and contests to try their luck and creativity at; a computer can be useful
as a tool, but should not be the one doing the puzzle.
Billy Pizer
(ecsvax!pizer)
{always here, never there}gary@mit-eddie.UUCP (Gary Samad) (07/06/84)
><
Ah, I had that same flash: "Why not use my PC to exaustively crunch
the possibilities in a Games contest to get the highest score in a
pseudo-pinball machine"
I feverishly constructed a program to do a depth first search and that
even allowed me to suspend it's work and restart it later (I really used
the machine!) I let it run for an entire weekend. On Monday with great
expectations I checked the results. Alas, it had done much work but
was not finished! After a quick calculation it dawned on me: if I
rewrote it to run on an IBM mainframe it would be finished in a mere
3 million years!
I've found that to be true with all Games contests so far. I believe that
they, in fact, conciously choose puzzles with a large number of permutations
and that are "not computable".
Now, a computer may be used as a tool to explore more deeply paths that
you, the human, have selected; but, an exaustive search is out of the question!
Gary Samad
{decvax!genrad,ihnp4}!mit-eddie!garygwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (07/07/84)
The now-defunct British magazine Games and Puzzles was pretty good; look for back issues. It too had contests (I won several "Games vouchers", not that they are worth anything now).
eric@parallel.UUCP (Eric Griswold) (07/11/84)
"Oh Deep Thought! Can you answer latest contest in Games?"
"I can. <pause> But I'll have to think about it."
"How long?"
"Two million years."
Who wants to bet the answer will be 42?
-- Go ahead, flame me --
Give this whole article one big :-)
{sri-unix|sun}!parallel!ericwong@whoaru.DEC (What? Me worry?...) (09/16/85)
I forgot who posted the message about things available from GAMES magazine, but I have a comment. They left out Cosmic Encounters! Cosmic Encounters is a game we play every lunch hour here at work. It's available from West End Games in New York and it's made the GAMES 100 for the past five years straight. It's a GREAT game...no two games are alike, and chance is reduced as much as possible, AND there's alot of player interaction. The basic game is $20, with nine expansion sets at $6 each. I myself have most of the game, and three other people in my group are getting complete sets of their own. I really don't know why anyone would play anyother game... The Mad Chinaman
oyster@uwmacc.UUCP (Vicious Oyster) (09/18/85)
< "'Cosmos Encounter'? Let me guess, we battle the evil Carl Sagan...> In article <446@decwrl.UUCP> wong@whoaru.DEC (What? Me worry?...) writes: > > >They left out Cosmic Encounters! .... >I really don't know why anyone would play anyother game... > Aaaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!! Another raving testimonial without a single bit of information about what the game is actually about! Now that I've calmed down a little, how about posting some reviews of these stupendously magnificent games that make all others obsolete?
kscott@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Kevin Scott%Kuntz) (09/21/85)
>In article <446@decwrl.UUCP> wong@whoaru.DEC (What? Me worry?...) writes: >>They left out Cosmic Encounters! >>I really don't know why anyone would play anyother game... In article <1472@uwmacc.UUCP> oyster@uwmacc.UUCP (Vicious Oyster) writes: > Aaaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!! Another raving testimonial without a >single bit of information about what the game is actually about! Cosmic Enounters is One of the games I've enjoyed most, and I've played quite a few games. It is best if you play with the same group so that you learn the potentials of powers and flares together, and don't have some expert who runs the show. As you play the game more, it grows funner and you play the game more, and ... a vicious cycle. When I was an undergraduate, we stopped playing any other game and generally were playing 3 games a night, until the owner of the game (and all the expansions) threw it away(!), due to it's effect on his studying. The premise of the game : You have five planets in your system(spaces, units, whatever. The game is supposedly aimed at scifi types, it could just as easily been written as straight forward descriptions but the scifi bit lends some humor and mnemonics to the game) which you defend from other people's attacks, and you are trying to win a game by colonizing other peoples planets. You have tokens(armies, fleets, semantics) which you use to conquer other planets. You can form alliances, to help take over or defend a planet. The rules are quite simple as to how a turn takes place and the battle is done by playing one round (1 card) of war. Now the bad part, the rules change. And they change differently for each player. Each player is randomly given powers by a big card defining what kind of alien race(s) his system is. Some of the wild cards in your hand may also force the game to proceed in a certain way. And then there are the flare cards... which give you additional ways to break the rules. Bugs: There are times when two players ways of breaking the rules conflict, i.e. one player has the ability to play two cards against one in the war, but another player is entitled to see what card the other player plays before he chooses his card. Does the person who must show his card to the other player have to show both cards? But the definitions of the powers each player has are well defined (considering), and as long as you play with the same set of gamesters you can write down what supercedes what Opinions on playing: Buy the deck of flares, additional powers, but save your money on buying the lucre expansion set. It is best to give a player 5 alien races at the beginning of the game and let him choose two to play the game with. Copy your original cards (not the playing cards, the ones that detail the powers of each alien race) with a copier and keep the originals safe, this keeps the cards from becoming marked (a brown stain on the back of a virus power will alter the way everyone else chooses their powers if they see it). This is also a cheap way to aquire expansions :-). Never use too many flares unless you are playing a weird game for the fun of trying a game with lots of flares. Don't play the game allowing superflare powers unless the flare power is useless in conjunction with the main power. -- two to the power of 638 and falling ...