Mathler is like Wordle, but with math. It’s trickier than it first appears and, just like Wordle, gets exponentially easier with each guess.
Category: games
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rocketcrab.com mobile gaming
What is rocketcrab.com? Simply put, it’s a collection of open source party games for phones. You choose a game and invite your friends to join.
Here are the descriptions from a few of the games:
Drawphone:
In Drawphone, there are no winners… only losers! Players take turns drawing pictures and guessing what those pictures are. If you guess correctly, nothing happens! If you guess wrong or draw like a toddler and ruin the chain of drawings and guesses, rest assured that you will be mercilessly mocked for your honest mistake (which ultimately doesn’t even matter in the grand scheme of the world).
Wavelength:
Wavelength is a social guessing game where two teams compete to read each other’s minds. It’s a thrilling experience of TALKING and THINKING and HIGH FIVING that anyone can play—but it also has some of that deep word game sorcery, like Codenames, where your decisions feel tense, strategic, meaningful.
Fake Artist:
Everyone is drawing one picture together…and one doesn’t even know what they draw. There is a Fake Artist hiding among the real artists – can you find out who it is? The Fake Artist has to be careful not to be give himself away and guess what is being drawn while the real artists have to signal the other artists with their drawing that they know the word, without making the drawing too obvious for the Fake Artist. The catch? you only get to draw one line.
Enigma:
Two warring factions are trying to send secret messages to their comrades, but their communications are broadcast for the enemy to see. To keep their messages secret, each faction “encrypts” their messages using 4 keywords, known only to their comrades. Meanwhile, the enemy tries to intercept their messages by listening to their clues and figuring out the enemy’s keywords. The first faction to intercept 2 messages from the other faction wins, unless a faction loses by miscommunicating 2 of their own messages.
Based on The Resistance, Snakeout:
Out the snake, or be outed as a snake! ?
Snakeout is a game in which a team of loyalists is infiltrated by a group of snakes. The loyalists must try to figure out who the snakes are, and the snakes must try to keep the loyalists from figuring out their identity. The game is separated into five missions. The first team to “win” three missions wins the game.
And more… They’ve even got Secret Hitler, Code Words, and One Night Werewolf.
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AI Learns Monopoly
I don’t remember the last time I played Monopoly but I have fond memories of the game. My dad built it up as one of the greatest board games ever when he picked up a used copy at a garage sale. I tend to agree (at least when I was kid — of course board games have come along way since I was a kid).
My friends always thought our set was weird because it had a milk cartoon, egg holder, and goblet instead of the usual metal shoe, wheel barrow, or scottie dog, etc. but I’ve come to love the classic wooden pieces over the more modern metal ones.
The video above discusses the use of artificial intelligence to figure out the best Monopoly strategy. It took the equivalent of 1600 years of monopoly playing for the AI to discover that… I won’t spoil it for you except to say that if you’ve ever looked into strategies, the best one is one you probably already know.
(Via Kottke)
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Solving Wordle on the First Guess
Following up my Wordle post from a couple of days ago, here is a story about someone using software analysis on Twitter posted guesses to solve Wordle on the very first guess.
It turns out the squares
taking social media by storm contain enough information to correctly guess the daily Wordle on the first attempt each day.
The site includes some examples and has a link to download the code.
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Best First Guess Word For Wordle
Wordle, it’s all the craze lately.
I’ve done a deep dive figuring out the best first guess word for Wordle.
TLDR: Skip to the last table which breaks down the best words by the greatest chance to have the most letters in the word in the correct spot vs the most letters in the word but in the wrong spot.
Find out more after the jump.
Secret Hitler is a fun hidden identity social deduction party game for 5-10 players about finding and stopping the Secret Hitler.
Players are secretly divided into two teams: the liberals, who have a majority, and the fascists, who are hidden to everyone but each other. If the liberals can learn to trust each other, they have enough votes to control the elections and save the day. But the fascists will say whatever it takes to get elected, advance their agenda, and win the game.
A couple of years ago I found that the creators of the game released a black and white Creative Commons copy for printing. I later found a colour version and made a few changes as well added my own printable box template to go with it. I sent it out to the local printshop to get it printed on large card-stock and decided to share in case you’d like to print your own:
If printing and cutting aren’t your thing, you can find purchasing options at https://www.secrethitler.com
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The Magic of Chess
Another chess related post today. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it on this site but for the past 4 or 5 years I’ve been the President of the Lethbridge Chess club. Last Christmas I was demoted to President Emeritus and Klaus Jerricho has taken over the job.
Anyway, today’s post is about The Magic of Chess, which is a short documentary that shows young chess champions revealing how the game has enriched their lives. The four minute movie was shot by director Jenny Schwitzer Bell on location at the 2019 Elementary Chess Championships, a high-stakes tournament held annually in Nashville.
From The Atlantic:
In attendance—and interviewed in the film—was Tani Adewumi, the 8-year-old Nigerian refugee who, while living in a homeless shelter with his family, beat elite-private-school kids in the New York Chess Championships.
The children interviewed in the film are articulate and wise beyond their years. “When I asked the kids questions like, ‘What has chess taught you?,’ I was surprised, given their limited life experience, that they could formulate a response beyond the obvious mechanics of the game,” Schweitzer Bell told me.
Chess “teaches you how to make a plan,” one child says in the film.
“When you lose, you learn from your mistakes,” says another.
Photo credit: David Pacey CC 2.0
(via The Loop)
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The Knight’s Tour
The Knight’s Tour is a sequence of chess moves by a knight on a chessboard such that the piece visits every square only once. How hard could it be?
Here’s one possible path that I worked out starting at e1.
e1, g2, h4, f3, e5, g6, h8, f7, d8, b7, a5, c6, d4, b3, a1, c2, b4, a2, c1, d3, c5, a6, b8, d7, f8, h7, g5, e6, f4, h3, g1, e2, g3, h1, f2, e4, c3, d1, b2, a4, b6, a8, c7, b5, a7, c8, d6, e8, f6, g8, e7, d5, e3, c4, a3, b1, d2, f1, h2, g4, h6, f5, g7, h5
The trick is (as far as I can tell) you’ve got to move in a pattern such that at the halfway point your board looks like this:
There might be other ways to complete the tour, but regardless, if you can get sets of two in the block pattern similar to the image above then the rest is just as easy as getting here in the first place. Also, notice that only two corners have been filled at this point, A1 and G8 while at the same time in the centre four squares D4 and E5 are filled while D5 and E4 are not yet taken. The other general idea is to choose the move that has the least options to move to next (beware there are exceptions).
The knight is randomly placed at the outset but this pattern is buildable from any of the start positions I’ve worked on. Give it a try: The Knight’s Tour. The source code is at github if you’d like to build your own — created by Reddit user psrwo.
(via BoingBoing)
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Talent is universal, but opportunity is not
Nice piece by former World Champion of chess, Garry Kasparov about 8-year-old chess prodigy Tanitoluwa Adewumi and how to create more chess champions.
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Two Grandmasters in Lethbridge
If you’ve watched my one second everyday video, you know that I’ve been playing quite a bit of chess lately. I’m excited to say that the activity level at the chess club in Lethbridge has been picking up and they’ve even secured two Grandmasters for an event next weekend.
Grandmaster Eric Hansen and GM Robin van Kampen will be in Lethbridge on Sunday, March 30, from 1:00 – 4:00, at the Galt Museum.
Eric has graciously volunteered to play as many players as we can muster. We will pack the house and have 25+ adult players and 10-15 juniors play him simultaneously.
The fee to play will be $10 for adults and free for junior players. All players are welcome!
Update: I’ve added some photos from the event.
Alexandra Botez (@alexandravbotez) playing against Eric Hansen.
See more details on the Lethbridge Chess Club’s page.