Daniel Lepage on 21 Sep 2003 19:51:14 -0000


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Re: [spoon-discuss] Puzzle Games



On Sunday, September 21, 2003, at 02:21 PM, Craig wrote:


Doesn't this basically mean that whoever responds fastest wins? At any
given time, at most four people will be able to move, and all of them
will have exactly one available move; Whoever posts first gets the move.

Yes, but this frees up another open space. This is because the space they
were in is now empty.

Right. And now you have the same situation again. The point is, there'd be no actual *skill* involved, as the only choice a player has to make is whether or not to move, and its always preferable to move.

Another possibility might be to assign people to desired neighbors,
and give
or take points based on how many of their desired neighbors they are
adjacent to. The neighbors should be chosen such that the players can
arrange themselves in a partial grid with all players next to their
desired
neighbors, but they should then be scattered such that nobody starts
out
next to their desired neighbors. If the arrangement was made right,
they
could never all be next to the right people (cf Sam Loyd's "fifteeen"
puzzle).

There needs to be more than one blank square; otherwise, it becomes
just like the above, where most Contestants can't do anything, and the
two or three who can do something only have one available move.

Two or three blank squares is probably ideal, in both situations.

Note that the latter encourages cooperation, but only to a limited degree.

 -- Teucer

"Nothing exciting here except the day the volcano went off under us and
killed everyone in a torrent of fire. Yep, pretty dull."
 -Baron von Skippy

ragnarok@xxxxxxxxx
teucer@xxxxxxxxxx



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