A Tetris "line race"

YouTube link.

This is what's called a Tetris "line race" (also known as a "sprint"), in this case an attempt to clear 40 lines in the minimum possible time. This is the kind of thing top-level Tetris players do when they're bored, and/or want to prove that they are truly the best in the world.

The player here is a Japanese woman player* who goes by "Keroco," and he or she achieved 40 lines in 19.68 seconds. That's the first time that someone has broken the 20-second barrier, and it's astonishing, to say the least. (A few years back, 40 seconds was considered a great time.) Tetris champion Ben Mullen wrote of the feat, "Let me humbly submit that this may be the greatest achievement in the history of gaming. ... This won't make national news. But to be honest, it should." 

Found at Mental Floss.  Note that in this Tetris game the position of pieces can be adjusted after they have fallen. 

Rubik's cube solved in less time than it takes you to read this post

YouTube link.

At the 2013 Rubik's Cube World Championship, Australian Feliks Zemdegs' fastest solve was a ridiculous 7.36 seconds.  Are you done reading this?  He's solved the cube.

Snake (the game) being beaten

The player controls a long, thin creature, resembling a snake, which roams around on a bordered plane, picking up food (or some other item), trying to avoid hitting its own tail or the "walls" that surround the playing area. Each time the snake eats a piece of food, its tail grows longer, making the game increasingly difficult. The user controls the direction of the snake's head (up, down, left, or right), and the snake's body follows. The player cannot stop the snake from moving while the game is in progress, and cannot make the snake go in reverse.

The embed above is the final image in a GIF showing Snake being totally beaten.  It just takes a couple minutes.

Geoguesser challenge

When you click on GeoGuesser, it uploads a series of five Streetview images from Google.  You can then explore short distances, and the goal is to find out where those locations are and mark them on the map.  Your score is apparently determined by your distance from the actual location.  I don't believe there is a time limitation.

I'm not sure what determines what distance you can "travel," but it does seem to be limited.  Some of the most relevant information in the photos has been obscured (notably license plates on vehicles), but you can read many billboards and building signs.

When you place your answer on the map, you can zoom in on the target for more accurate placement (assuming you know where you're going).

The five uploads are probably random; I was helped in getting a high score by having one American and two Scandinavian locations.  I tried again using Google in a separate tab to look up some words I saw and was able to raise my score to 16,801, but I don't know if that was "legal."

Start here.

Via Neatorama.

An awesome dungeon

I was always thankful that in our group there was always one guy who would kick the doors down, get eaten by the ogres behind the doors, and then be reincarnated by the Dungeonmaster.  It saved a lot of time.

The above is a licensed map from Paratime Design, via fuck yeah cartography!

See also A Random Dungeon Generator.

A 17th century game board

The image above shows top and bottom view of a magnificent game board from the 17th century, whose story is detailed at The History Blog:

Attributed to Georg Schreiber of Königsberg, Prussia, a 17th century master craftsman famed as the chess set maker to royalty, the game board is made of opaque white amber and translucent red amber on a wood chassis with an ebony superstructure, carved Roman-style portrait busts and chased silver accents. There’s a Nine Men’s Morris board on one side, a chess board on the other, and it opens up to reveal a diptych backgammon board. Inside it holds 14 game pieces of cream amber, with a white amber profile in the center overlaid with translucent red amber, and 14 pieces of translucent orange amber. The profiles are of all the kings of England from William the Conqueror to James I...

This particular game board with its exquisite craftsmanship and royal English theme may have first been owned by King James I, who ruled England at the time of the board’s creation and who is the last English king portrayed on the game pieces... we know that King Charles I was an avid chess player, not even interrupting his game when he was told that the Scots had changed sides and were supporting Parliament. According to the tradition that has accompanied the piece for centuries, King Charles I brought the game board to the scaffold on the day of his execution, January 30th, 1649...

Further details on the provenance of the board at the link.  Here's a view of the board opened for playing backgammon:

What are the odds?

This was the deal for a game of Spider.  The game uses a double deck, so I think the chance of seeing 10 black cards on the layout is about 1/1650.

I waste too much time playing solitaire. 

Trailer for the new Sim City

YouTube link. 

I've built Sim cities for about 30 years, so I'm really impressed with the graphics for the new version to be released in March.  I'm NOT impressed by the report at Flesh Eating Zipper that this new version will require an internet connection at all times.  That's a game-breaker for me, as it is for many on the Reddit thread.

"Color pic-a-pix" online game

You are provided an empty grid with data on the x- and y-axes for the distribution of colors within the grid.  Then use your mouse to fill in the blanks.

I thought the 20x20 grid was a difficult (but fair) challenge.  Found by Alex and posted this morning at Neatorama.

The game is here.

Addendum:  A hat tip to reader Muzzman, who knew of a similar (and free) site at Griddlers.

"Circle the cat" game

Click the circles to make them dark, and try to entrap the cat.  Simple to understand, but somewhat difficult to execute.  It took me quite a while before I could win 4 in a row. 

The game does not seem to escalate to more difficult levels with each victory.  In its concept it reminds me of the old 3M boxed game "Twixt."

The image above is a screencap.  The game is here, via Neatorama.

The new Sim City

YouTube link. 

I've played Sim City since the original version was released in the early 1990s, and from that frame of reference I'm in awe of the graphics in the newest version, shown in the trailer above (via BoingBoing).

Chess in the Middle Ages

Stained glass of Chess Players from the Hotel de la Bessée (Villefranche sur Saône) (1430-1440).

'The game of chess as a metaphor for love ritual, permeates the culture of the late Middle Ages in literature as in the figurative arts...

Both players wear stylish clothes and extravagant hats, as was fashionable in the fifteenth century. The lady wears a long robe of cloth lined with fur. She shaved the top of the forehead, as elegant women usually did in the early fifteenth century, and wears a horned headdress, so-called “split roll”. Her partner is wearing a beautiful chaperone that forms a turban on his head. The gray and yellow - two favorite techniques of painting on glass - are employed on a very pure glass, of varying thickness, sometimes very thin. Its remarkable quality of execution is also one of the best artworks of the Lyons area from the mid-fifteenth century.’

Text and image via Miss Folly.

I'll use this occasion to bid a fond farewell to "Miss Folly," whose tumblr has for several years been a source of fascinating material.  From her farewell post:

This post will be the 13,000th post. It will also be my last. It has been difficult to balance all my responsibilities and other interests. Yet this is one of many art blogs on Tumblr - some much better than mine, I think, and posting works of art I have never seen before! Believe this! I am truly grateful to learn more about art from other Tumblrs. And, although I will no longer post, I will poke about from time to time to see what I can continue to learn : ) Ah, and, should someone wonder, I will not be starting another blog.

I think blogging should be an act of love. Full stop. It is not, contrary to some, a matter of how many people visit and follow a blog.

A quick search of TYWKIWDBI reveals over 20 links to her tumblr, generally for "things I didn't know" and including some truly remarkable images.  I'm posting four items from her tumblr today as a way of saying farewell.

She does not indicate whether her tumblr will remain up, or whether she will be taking it down.  I hope it stays in place, because it has some truly wonderful material.  If you're not familiar with the site, you should visit it today:  Miss Folly.

This is NOT the best full house to have in poker

I was surprised, because it seems counterintuitive, but the math (below the link) is irrefutable.

Think about it first before peeking.  Why would aces over 8s be better to have than aces over kings?

Aces over kings would beat any other full house, but isn't the best for beating straight flushes. From the explanation at Futility Closet:

Specifically, each of the hands AAA99, AAA88, AAA77, and AAA66 will prevent 13 straight flushes — each ace prevents one, and each spot card prevents five.

These are thus the best to choose; of the 40 possible straight flushes, each leaves only 40 – 13 = 27 straight flushes that can beat us. By contrast, the impressive-looking AAAKK leaves 40 – 6 = 34, or even more if we haven’t covered all four suits.

ESIARN TOLCDU PMGHBY FVKWZX QJ

ESIARN TOLCDU PMGHBY FVKWZX QJ should be used in place of the more familiar ETAOIN SHRDLU CMFWYP VBGKQJ XZ when guessing letters during the playing of the word game "Hangman."

The new sequence is better because the old one represents the frequency of letters in the written/spoken language, which is dominated by common words, while the new sequence reflects letter frequency in the list of dictionary words.

Then you need to modify your choices according to the length of the word, and refine it again depending on whether the first letter you tried was present in the word or not.

Full details are at Data Genetics, via Neatorama.

"Gravitas" flash game

Once again, credit to Miss C at Neatorama for finding interesting flash games.  This is another of my favorite type - physics based - that involves rotating the onscreen figures to get red squares to their goals (without hitting the pink thingies).  I finished fourteen of the first fifteen levels (ultimately gave up on level #11 shown above)

The above is a screencap.  The game is here.  Previously posted games here.

"Curvy"

A flash game in which you convert a pattern such as the top one into the bottom one, by clicking on the hexagons to rotate them.  Each pattern appears to have a unique solution.  I found it to be interesting, but frankly not very challenging.

The images above are only embeds; the game is at this link.  Via Neatorama.

A new personal best in "Midnight Mansion"

Midnight Mansion is a game for Mac OS X. 

As Jack Malone, you will explore eight huge mansions, each filled with traps, puzzles, and secrets, as you search for legendary treasure. Ride on conveyor belts, avoid zapper beams, and dodge monsters as you collect keys that give you access to new areas of each mansion.

The last mansion in the series is the "Spider Palace," on which, for the first time, I got a score that put me in the top ten of the national scoreboard:

Now maybe I can redirect my free time to something more productive.   (But it's a very addictive game...)

Jorinapeka

Miss Cellania locates the best flash games.  Her latest find, posted at Neatorama, is "Jorinapeka," which requires you to come up with path-finding strategies.  I've found that it takes about a minute to play a level, so total game time is about 10-20 minutes.

The goal is to clear the colored circles from the pattern, but not necessarily in the shortest time or with the fewest moves; it seems that a long path generates more points than a quick completion of the level.  The most valuable strategy seems to be the creation of extra moves.  There are several "bonuses" - the four at left are the only ones I've found.  As with many such games, the music is repetitive and annoying, but overall the game is a pleasant diversion.

All these images are screencaps.  To play the game, go to this link.

Addendum:  New personal best score 9754 (couldn't clear level 23 in five moves, embedded above) -

- after reading the tips from "anonymous" in the comments section.  And wasting many, many hours...

"Attractor" flash game

It's been a long time since I've added anything to this blog's flash games category.  Here's one that will waste some of your precious time.  There are no instructions at the site, so you have to intuit the maneuvers, but it's easy to explain.  Press the little blue thingies to attract the white thingies and press the yellow thingies to repel them, trying to steer the white thingies into the red hole.  There is no scoring system or timer or penalties. 

I can't embed the game; you will need to play at this link.  I would favor a mute button to help maintain your sanity.

If you are serious about playing Pac-Man...

... then you might benefit from reading GameInternals' analysis of strategy and tactics.

Each of the ghosts is programmed with an individual “personality”, a different algorithm it uses to determine its method of moving through the maze. Understanding how each ghost behaves is extremely important to be able to effectively avoid them...

The key to understanding ghost behavior is the concept of a target tile. The large majority of the time, each ghost has a specific tile that it is trying to reach, and its behavior revolves around trying to get to that tile from its current one. All of the ghosts use identical methods to travel towards their targets, but the different ghost personalities come about due to the individual way each ghost has of selecting its target tile...

One important implication of Pinky’s targeting method is that Pac-Man can often win a game of “chicken” with him. Since his target tile is set four tiles in front of Pac-Man, if Pac-Man heads directly towards him, Pinky’s target tile will actually be behind himself once they are less than four tiles apart. This will cause Pinky to choose to take any available turn-off in order to loop back around to his target. Because of this, it is a common strategy to momentarily “fake” back towards Pinky if he starts following closely. This will often send him off in an entirely different direction.

Lots of stuff like that at the link.