Zendo, short takes

[cellio]

I played Zendo for the first time Sunday night (with ralphmelton, mrpeck, Dani, and Maggie). It's very reminiscent of New Eleusis, but with icehouse pieces instead of cards and a Zen facade (which isn't important). The basic idea of both games is that one person decides on a rule and everyone else makes plays, attempting to determine the rule by induction. For each play the rule-maker calls valid or invalid under the rule, until someone correctly determines what the rule is. I kind of like the twist in New Eleusis of a player being a "prophet", but I like the more visual nature of Zendo. I mean, it's hard to go wrong when you get to play with plastic bits. :-)

I had a lot of fun playing. I also learned a valuable lesson about rule construction: that the rule-maker thinks it might be too easy does not make it so. Ok, next time I will not construct a rule based on primary versus non-primary colors... oops. :-) (At one point Ralph guessed a rule that could have been correct, but for one counter-example on the table. It was, ironically, the one counter-example that had been vexing everyone throughout the game. Before I noticed it I was strongly considering declaring his rule to be correct even though it wasn't my rule, but I couldn't.)

Short takes:

Real Live Preacher's epic struggle with a raccoon: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Quote from tonight's D&D game: "does the 'mirror image' spell pass by value or by reference?" (The question, put another way, was: are the extra images of the caster sym links or copies? By reference, or sym links, as it turns out.)

"[Introverts] tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours." -- Caring for your Introvert, link courtesy of metahacker. I'm not sure I agree with a lot of the article, but I do like this quote -- and I've definitely been in meetings like that.

I haven't read the last couple hundred issues of Cerebus, but Dani brought home the final issue, #300, so I read it. Um, I think even if I had had the context from the current story line I would have felt that it was kind of pointless. Also a quick read, not counting the essays from the author, so nothing really lost. But it was weird.

Comments

Re: Zendo

[cellio]

Is Mastermind the game where you secretly place five colored pegs in a row and the other player has to determine what they are? I've seen that but never played it.

Thanks for the pointer to the Zendo community.

Re: Zendo

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's Mastermind. I've always assumed that most people have played it, since in my house growing up it was one of the classics, like Scrabble, Boggle, and Monopoly.