Some Blog Site

1. How do I win?
By having more chips showing your color than the opponents does of his color.

2. How do I get the chips to show my color?
Place your chip down at the end of a row. All the chips of the opponent’s color in a line between your newly-placed chip and an existing chip of your color, you get the flip them to your color.

Note that you must have a chip of your color in the line – if it’s a line of all the other color, then nothing happens.

Also note that you can convert only the chips in that line until the first of your color. If the line of the other color is interrupted by one of your color, then you must not flip any chips after that one, even if you have another chip later in the line.

3. How do I prevent the opponents from taking over my chips on the board?
The only way to truly prevent it is by getting to the corners. A corner is the end of all lines, so no one can place a chip after it to flip it.

The edge of the board is better than the middle, but the corner is the best.

4. How does the game end?
Keep taking turns until the board is full. Or, if you have an older game and lost some chips, until you’re out of chips.

5. How do we start the game?
Place 4 chips in the middle of the board, 2 of each color and alternating, like this:
XO
OX

Then the first player places a chip wherever he wants, and you take turns.

There, now go play Othello. Or Reversi, they’re similar.

One of my daily mini-diversions is to play Waffle.

Waffle is a word game, over at wafflegame.net

You are given a grid of letters and you need to swap letters until they form the expected words. It’s quick and simple, and the solution is rarely elusive.

What is challenging about it though is that it gives you between 10 and 15 turns to find the solution. The best solution is in 10 moves, which gives you 5 stars.

You’re able to play the daily waffle only once, so give it your best shot there. But if you’re short of the 5-star ranking, you can play it later in the waffle archives.

I go back and try to get 5 stars on them if I miss it the first day. And most of the time I’m able to get it. But some of them I was not getting – I was stuck on 4 stars no matter what I tried.

I thought a brute-force process might find the optimum solution, but of course I didn’t want to do that myself, so I wrote a Python script to find the way to solve it in 10 moves.

But the output was to the console, and thus not user friendly to the general public. So then I wrote a Python script to generate the image showing the moves, trying to get it to match what someone would see on their screen when they’re playing the game.

And then I wrote a Python script to grab the other puzzles from the waffle archives.

Then I put the results on Some Fun Site, so you can go there to see the best solutions to the waffle game.

I was using all that for my Python training. I hadn’t used Python before, but people at work were using it for certain scripts so I thought I’d see what the fuss was about.

Overall, I’m not a fan of Python. It can be useful, but it’s awkward to me. I much prefer PHP.

Anyway, go play the Waffle game and if you get stuck then go over to Some Fun Site to get some help.

This is a guide for how to play the board game Rummikub. This is an older game, I think our set is from the ’80s. If you’ve played the card game Canasta or Rummy, you’ll have no problems.

Our game came from my wife’s side, and they pronounce it as “rummy-cube”, although I am always tempted to call it “rummy-cub” because that’s how it’s spelled.

1. How do I win?
By being the first one out of tiles.

2. How do I get rid of tiles?
By playing them, from your hand onto the table.

3. How do I play them?
If you can make a set or a run (I just remembered, Phase 10 experience will also help with this game), or if you can extend someone else’s set or run.

4. How do I make a set or a run?
A set is 3 or more tiles of the same number but different colors. Note there are 4 colors, so the biggest a set can get is 4. A run is 3 or more tiles of the same color but in order numerically (and sequential). There are 13 numbers, so you can get a run as large as 13.

Once you have “broken in” by playing your first set/run, you can them play on other people’s sets/runs. Once tiles are played, it doesn’t matter whose they are.

5. How does it work if I can’t play anything, do I just pass?
No, then you draw a tile, and then your hand gets bigger, and it takes longer for you to win.

It is a simple game, really. A smidgeon of strategy, but more luck of the draw, so you can just play the game. But it is still fun.

There, now go play Rummikub.

This is a guide for how to play the game Herd Mentality. This is a game in the spirit of Apples to Apples, but you’re trying to please the crowd rather than one specific person. I like it better than Apples to Apples, because I’m not subjected to the whims of someone else’s mood. Some people may like it less, because they get less of a chance to be silly.

1. How do I win?
By being the first player to 7 (or 5, or 10, we change it depending on how the game is going and how people are feeling) points.

2. How do I get points?
You get a point when your answer matches the majority’s answer.

3. How do people answer?
Each turn, the leader/reader guy will take a question from the box and read it to the group. Everyone writes down an answer. Once everyone has an answer, you read them aloud and compare/tally answers. If there is a majority answer, everyone who has that answer gets a point. Slight correction, it doesn’t need to be a majority, just an answer from more people than any other answer.

4. How do I not win?
If, when the answers are tallied, your answer is the only one by itself, you get the pink cow (pink, because it stands out from the herd). Note that multiple lone answers cancel each other out and the cow does not change ownership. If you have the cow, you can’t win – you can still accumulate points but you can’t win unless someone else earns the cow away from you.

5. How do I let other people know they are taking too long to write down an answer?
You moo at them.

It is a simple game, and can accommodate a wide number of players. It used to be that for family gatherings with more than 10 people, the only game we could play was Apples to Apples. It’s nice to have more options.

There, now go play Herd Mentality.

This is a guide for how to play the game Ticket to Ride.

1. How do I win?
By having the most points at the end of the game

2. How do I get points?
By making train routes. Just playing a train route gets you some points, but connecting routes to destinations gets you more points.

3. How do I make a train route?
Each route is marked on the board by colors. When you have enough cards of that color, you spend the cards needed for that route (one card per train car) and then you get to put your train tokens on that route.

4. How do I get train cards?
Each turn, you can do one of 3 things: draw train cards, play a train route, or draw more route cards. Question 3 went over how to play a train route. For how to get train cards, just draw them from the pile. You can draw from the 5 face-up cards or from the face-down pile. Normally you draw 2 cards, but if you draw a face-up wild card you get only 1.

5. How do the route cards work?
At the beginning of the game, you draw some starting train cards and also some starting route cards. Those are your goals. Actually they’re called destination cards because the game doesn’t care what route you take to connect the cities. If you can play your trains to connect a route, you get the points on that route card. If, at the end of the game, you didn’t fulfill that route then the points are subtracted from your total. If, during the game, you’ve made all your routes then you can take additional routes.

Note: this is for the USA edition of TTR. They have other maps, so you could buy TTR with routes in Europe or Asia or such. Some of those have other features such as tunnels or mountain passes that have additional rules.

There, now go play Ticket to Ride.

Now it is time for another PSALM.

Gamma made this one, like last time. This one was titled “Surprising Fishing” by him.

Now only 140 more to go.

This is a guide for how to play the game Fluxx.

1. How do I win?
By being the first person to meet the goal.

2. How do I meet the goal?
By playing Keeper cards that match what’s shown on the Goal card.

3. How do I play a Keeper card?
Each turn, you draw a card and play a card. Well, that’s not exactly true – that’s how the game starts, but it changes.

4. How does it change?
You can play different types of cards. There are Goal cards (you can change the goal) and Keeper cards (that are for attaining the goal) and there are also Rule cards, that change the rules of the game like how many cards you draw and how many you play.

5. Wait, how can I win the game if someone can change the goal? How does that even make sense?
That’s what makes Fluxx different – some people think it’s more fun, and some people think it’s less fun. Yes, the goal changes, the rules change, someone can just take the cards in your hand, etc. That’s why it’s called Fluxx.

It’s not a difficult game to learn, but it can be difficult to play because you have to always re-learn the rules (when they change). Also, there are a variety of versions. We have the original Fluxx (which is fun) and Chemistry Fluxx (which is even more fun). They have even more versions, which we haven’t tried, but might be worth it depending on your interests.

There, now go play Fluxx.