Ludic Infinity

Ludiquest 2 solution (almost)

2009-09-03T13:03:00.001-04:00

It's been about a year and a half since I posted here. I've been gaming more recently, including attending the World Boardgaming Championships in Lancaster, PA in the first week of August. I've learned plenty of new games and definitely want to post some reviews, but first I think I need to post the solution (or as much as I remember) to Ludiquest 2.

It's probably easiest to go through it line by line (I've added the hints where relevant):

'With Roman count "as 102"' and "Where does c = 100?", "Where does 1000001 = 65 = A?" - Obviously, in roman numberals 102 would be CII. Which would make the part in quotes read "asCII". ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange and is common knowledge to anyone who programs.

"You'll read the writing on the wall" - Nothing exciting here...just continuing the sentence to mention that ASCII is how you'll read what I've written. What is written, of course, is

57 76 57 48 57 55 57 57 57 56

If you plug these numbers into a standard ASCII table, they translate to:

9 L 9 0 9 7 9 9 8

"But you will need to change your view", "When does pi = 180?" - The characters don't make much sense as they are. To change your view, turn them upside down. Regarding the hint, in geometry 2 Pi Radians is equal to 360 degrees of a circle. Pi radians would be half a circle, telling you to turn what you have 180 degrees.

If you do so, they will read (roughly):

8 6 6 L 6 0 6 6 7 6

Now, they are beginning to look a little more familiar.

"Before you make the proper call" - Call this number on the phone. This hint reads "where does L = 5?". On a phone keypad is the answer. If you called 866 560-6676, you would get a voicemail which would give you the next hint. I turned off the phone number about a month or two after my last post. I have no idea who might answer now.

I know that at least two people made it this far, since I saw their numbers on the phone statement. There were multiple calls from each - I assume so they could hear the whole message and write down the numbers. However, no one solved the final one-word answer.

The voicemail clue had another little rhyme about "keys" and I read off a long list of numbers with occasional slightly longer pauses. If you were paying attention to the numbers, you definitely would have noticed that they tended to fall into the same range as the numbers from the original post, and were indeed ASCII. The longer pauses were intended to be line breaks. If you translated these using an ASCII table, you would get the following:

1 4 7 * 0 #

1 4 7 * 0 # 9 6 3

1 4 7 * 2 6 9 0

2 5 8 0 1 2 3 * 0 #

3 2 1 4 7 * 0 #

What does this mean? I'm not going to tell you. I'll leave it as a modest challenge for the reader. The answer is only one word and you have one clue remaining: "The last word will be found by location, not by sound" - really more of a warning not to go down the wrong path.

I have no idea if anyone is reading, but my next post will be a game review (and will be within 2 weeks).

- Happy gaming

Ludiquest 2 - Last chance!

2008-03-26T10:33:00.010-04:00

I am posting the Ludiquest puzzle one last time. Whoever sends the proper one-word answer to the correct e-mail address will win a new copy of Vegas Showdown or Hollywood Blockbuster (your choice). The puzzle has several steps and you will learn the e-mail address as you progress through the puzzle. I know at least one person has gotten extremely close to solving it. The hints I've previously revealed are included below the puzzle and I've added a new one. If this isn't solved by Saturday, I'll start revealing steps until someone gets it. Good luck!

With Roman count "as 102"

You’ll read the writing on the wall,

But you will need to change your view

Before you make the proper call.

57 76 57 48 57 55 57 57 57 56

Hints:

Where does c = 100?

Where does 1000001 = 65 = A?

When does pi = 180?

Where does L = 5?

The last word will be found by location, not by sound

Quick Update

2008-03-26T10:31:00.000-04:00

I'm impatient to retire the the Ludiquest so someone needs to solve it. I'll do one last post of it and try to link it in new places to get some new eyes to look at it and someone to solve it. If that doesn't work, I'll post pieces of the solution until someone gets it. After this, I won't be posting new Ludiquests unless I can figure out some way to structure them so they wrap up more quickly. Instead, I will post a game review every Monday morning, beginning with Fairy Tale this coming Monday.

Games played this week: The Bucket King, Ra, Shogun, Fairy Tale, St. Peterburg, California, Battlelore (x2). Shogun and BattleLore were both new to me and both were pretty good. I will definitely have to try both of them again. Game count is now at 63.

Game's I've played since Saturday, etc.

2008-03-12T16:54:00.005-04:00

It's been a furious few days of boardgaming. I've played Aqueduct, Nottingham (x2), Pit, Fairy Tale (x2), Vegas Showdown, Saga and Tongiaki. This brings me to 55 games for the year.

Inspired by a challenge on Brenda Brathwaite's web site, I was struck by an idea for a card game about assembling adventuring parties and matching their skills to dungeons/quests. Also, yesterday I practically completed a design for a new card-drafting game. When I will have time to develop these, I have no idea.

I did finally complete the newest prototype of Cattle Baron and got the chance to test it. It seemed to be a fair improvement, but I feel like the final few fence placements are anticlimactic since the board is usually too cluttered for them to be useful. I need to experiment with a few possible approaches to fix this.

Oops, has it been a month already?

2008-03-06T15:03:00.000-05:00

I’ve been a bad blogger again. It’s been almost a month without a post and that’s no good. Work has been pretty busy, but really it’s just my lack of discipline. I think I’ve put myself in the mindset that I need something “important” enough to write about, but that’s not really the right mentality for a blog. So, I’ve written myself a little list of fun or interesting (hopefully) things that have happened over the last month, and I’ll be making several posts over the next week.

By my count, I’ve only played 10 boardgames since I last posted, so my 2008 game count is woefully behind the pace at 45. I don’t have my list with me, but some of the games I can recall playing recently were California (x3), Starcraft the board game, Mystery of the Abbey, Race for the Galaxy, Ra, and Ticket to Ride.

I now have a fancy video card to go with my new PC and 22” LCD monitor, so I’ve been spending more time on PC games over the last month. I expect to add some PC/video game posts in the future.

Finally, Ludiquest 2 still hasn’t been fully solved and I intend to remedy that in one way or another. I intend to try to get more people to attempt it. If that doesn’t work, I’ll just start revealing how it is solved step by step until someone finds the answer. Still up for grabs is a copy of Vegas Showdown to the winner.

Design: CivDice

2008-02-07T15:27:00.000-05:00

Although Cattle Baron is the boardgame design I've made my priority, I have several other game ideas that I hopefully will have time to work on this year. Of these, I am most excited about a design with a working title of CivDice that I came up with around April of last year. I actually went so far as to blog a few entries about it on the Board Game Designer's Forum (where I called it Civilia).

I chose to prioritize Cattle Baron as my goal, because CivDice is much more involved and is going to take a lot of playtesting and tweaking to get right. However, I thought it might be fun to share some of the ideas that make up this design.

After being inspired by this post by Shannon Appelcline on the now-extinct Gone Gaming blog, my goal was to create a boardgame that simulated building a civilization and having your empire compete against those of other players. The primary constraints were that this game would have systems for expanding your empire, advancing your technology, trade, and warfare and be playable in two hours or less. This is a major challenge and I'll be happy if I can even come close.

Not surprisingly, CivDice features lots of dice. I certainly understand that dice have a poor reputation among eurogamers, but I'm hoping I'll be able to use them here without creating a game that rests primarily on luck. I'm of the opinion that by using medium-sized pools of dice, plenty of choices for how to use them and sufficient methods of altering dice rolls, the luck will be cut down to acceptable levels.

Players will roll dice equal to the current population of their civ, and the dice must be spent in order to move, attack, collect resources, or acquire resources, buildings, or advisors. Player's dice will be public knowledge and players will take turns spending them, so the order in which you do things will be important when competing for items.

One of the wrinkles I'm trying to include is to dovetail the dice mechanic neatly into manuevering on the map. The map will be a tiling of equilateral triangles, with cities and units resting at intersecting points. This means that from any location (that is not on the edge of the board), there are six neigboring triangles (some or all of which contain resources) and six adjacent places to move. Of course, there are also six sides on a standard die to make this a perfect way to generate player options.

Other new twists I plan to add involve the technology tree. Other than the default method of eliminating all other players (which will be very difficult in most cases), all victory conditions or means to earn victory points will be acquired through advanced technology upgrades. You won't even know what you need to do to win until you've advanced a bit along the tech tree. I am also planning a simple system for technologies to have general requirements, while not locking players into a set advancement path.

As a side note, I played a few games last night (Fairy Tale, Vegas Showdown, Pillars of the Earth) to bring the game count to 35. Also, I'm planning to make my more durable Cattle Baron prototype this weekend.

Third and Fourth Life?

2008-02-05T09:14:00.000-05:00

By now almost anyone with any technical savvy has heard of Second Life. For the few who haven’t, Second Life is a virtual online world. Unlike just about every other virtual online world, the makers of Second Life don’t provide content for you to collect, kill, race, destroy or otherwise interact with. What they do provide are tools for you to make your own content and a virtual currency so you can buy/sell it from/to other users. This currency can be traded for real U.S. dollars on their custom exchange so that developers can actually profit from their creations.

Second Life is pretty amazing and has received plenty of recognition as “the next big thing”, but I’ve always felt there were a few things holding it back from widespread acceptance. First is a heavy bandwidth requirement – pages load slowly just because that many 3-D objects are enough to clog up most users’ networks. Second, 3-D creation tools are complicated enough to stump the average user. And finally, new users need to download a client just for this purpose. Eventually, I thought at one time, the technology will catch up enough to eliminate the first two as issues (and the third one isn’t that big) and Second Life will supplant the World Wide Web. Although that "eventually" seemed to be a ways off.

However, two new software projects are underway that might change all that: Whirled and MetaPlace. Both of them allow users to create their own content. Both plan to have their own currency that can be exchanged for real currency. Most importantly, both of them are web-based. Most web-based content is more segregated, and smaller, so bandwidth should no longer be an issue. Web-based content is generally much easier to create than 3-D content, so the learning curve of the editing tools is far less of a barrier. Finally, all content can be accessed by anyone who has a web browser (meaning everyone) with no additional client download and can presumably can use links to and be linked from existing web pages.

Both projects are currently in Alpha. I think whichever gets to market first will have a huge edge in becoming widely adopted. I could also imagine either or both being adopted/bought/merged with one of the major social networking sites. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Conquer Club

2008-01-31T18:33:00.000-05:00

Frankly, I’m not a huge fan of Risk. In my younger days I used to think it was an excellent game, but after I was exposed to eurogames, its flaws become more evident. Now that I know better, I would say the game has the flaws of having player elimination, too much downtime, far too much luck, and overly dominant strategies (take Australia and hold). Despite this, I will always have a certain fondness for the game because of the enjoyable times I’ve had playing it.

Last night, I ran into an ad for a web site called conquerclub.com. While they never actually mention Risk (for legal reasons, I’m sure), let’s just say that they provide the ability to play a game very similar to Risk for free online. I think online play is a great match for Risk, because it mitigates key flaws in the game. I no longer mind player elimination since I don’t have to sit and watch, and I don’t mind the typical downtime for the same reason. In addition to this, they have different boards you can try and some rule variants that would be difficult to implement in a face-to-face game. Most games require you to move once per day (although if you don’t, your bonus armies will carry over to the next turn).

Last night I signed up for my first game, which differs from the regular game in two key ways: there is no set turn order, and the fog of war is enforced in the game. The lack of turn order is primarily to reduce wait time, but could still affect player strategy. My first thought is to wonder if players sometimes string two turns together (by moving at the end of one turn, and the beginning of the next) in order to blitzkrieg a position. Adding a fog of war, however, is something I expect will change the entire dynamic of the game. Not knowing the state of the rest of the map adds a huge uncertainty to any large-scale plans you might hope to carry out on your turn. Bottling yourself up in Australia is no longer nearly as attractive if it means you’re unaware of the world scene; and taking one country away from an opponent to prevent them from gaining a continent bonus is no longer obvious if you’re not sure who holds the other side of the continent. It adds a whole new reason to stage an attack – for information. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how this might add new life to the game.

In fact, just for fun I'm throwing down the electronic gauntlet - I have just created a new game (#1719311). Join if you dare. I'll see you on the battlefield.

"I'm not dead yet"

2008-01-30T16:11:00.000-05:00

It’s been ten days since my last post. That makes me a bad blogger and means I’ve rather quickly failed out on one of my gaming resolutions, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon it. I’ll just have to jump back on the blogging wagon and try harder this week. I’ll start back with a quick update of what’s been going on.

I had a party on Jan. 19th, and several party games were played which I can add to the game count: Lost Cities x 2, Snorta x 2, Scene It, Transamerica and the Bucket King. The new game count is 32.

Last Saturday (Jan 26th) I managed to rope a couple of friends into trying out the simple “Cattle Baron” prototype. The comments about the gameplay were encouraging and the game seemed to work well. However, the comments about the quality of the prototype were not very positive. I can’t really disagree – placing paper fence pieces on paper tile pieces lends itself to quite a bit of sliding around. My next order of business on this project is to fabricate a prototype that is a little more robust. Afterwards, we got in a game of Ticket to Ride: game count 33.

I broke down and bought Rock Band over the weekend. It’s very hard to find it for the PS2 and I saw two copies when I was walking through Best Buy. As expected, it’s a very addictive time-waster and probably has a bit to do with my dearth of posts.

Ludiquest 2 solved...mostly

2008-01-20T10:56:00.000-05:00

Someone sent me an answer early this morning, but it was incomplete. I thought they should recheck their work, and then I decided perhaps I should recheck mine. Sadly, I found one of the numbers was wrong and this would stop players from moving onto the next phase. So, since the person who emailed me answered as far as the error would allow, I am giving them the prize. I still want people to get to the end, so I will put up a second prize for anyone who finds the final answer. That prize will be a shrink-wrapped copy of Hollywood Blockbuster. I've corrected the last number in the sequence below to be 56 and I apologize for the error. Play on!

With Roman count "as 102"
You’ll read the writing on the wall,
But you will need to change your view
Before you make the proper call.

57 76 57 48 57 55 57 57 57 56

Where does c = 100?

Where does 1000001 = 65 = A?

When does pi = 180?

Where does L = 5?

*This number changed from 54

LudiQuest 2 Hints

2008-01-19T10:52:00.000-05:00

So it's been two weeks and no one has solved the LudiQuest. In fact, no one has even gotten far enough to see the next clue. I guess it's harder than I thought. So below I have added some hints. The hints are questions themselves, but not terribly difficult ones. They should be enough to guide you through the steps you need to solve the puzzle. Good luck!

With Roman count "as 102"
You’ll read the writing on the wall,
But you will need to change your view
Before you make the proper call.

57 76 57 48 57 55 57 57 57 56*

Where does c = 100?

Where does 1000001 = 65 = A?

When does pi = 180?

Where does L = 5?

*Corrected last number in sequence from 54 to 56.

Design in Progress: “Cattle Baron”

2008-01-18T15:57:00.000-05:00

Previously I mentioned that one of my New Years’ resolutions is to develop one of my own game ideas sufficiently that I’m comfortable submitting it to a publisher. While I have a few different options for ideas I’d like to limit it to one that is relatively simple (to make sure I have enough time to do it right), cheap to produce (since I think a publisher might not want to take a big risk on a new designer), and promising. Based on these criteria, I have culled out one of my more recent ideas and I will be concentrating on it.

The concept involves using both tile-laying and area enclosure, in order to create area majorities. The best analogy I could come up with to explain the gameplay (and therefore my choice for the working theme) is that of cattle ranchers fencing off different parts of a pasture in order to gain possession of the most cows (all the cows within an enclosure are scored by you if you have the most). There will be a limited amount of pasture tiles and fences which either player may place in turn. Different types of cattle will appear on the pasture tiles with each player being trying to create fields that have majorities of that type. The game will likely be two-player only. My working title is “Cattle Baron”, although I also like “Don’t Fence Me In”.

I created a very simple prototype a couple of weeks ago and tried playing against myself to see where it went. While there was some gameplay there, the tactics were more limited than I had hoped. You could both find scoring opportunities and respond to your opponent, but trying to defend against what your opponent might do was quite difficult. Recently, I’ve created a new prototype which I have yet to test. I’ve changed the configuration of the fields in order to make placing fences a little more difficult and I’ve added “neutral cows” that add to scoring, but don’t help make majorities for either player. I’m hoping these changes add to the tactical possibilities.

New Hints: Additional (and more substantial) LudiQuest 2 hints will be posted tomorrow.

Two more games played last night (Evo, Unspeakable Words) brings my game count to 25.

Ra Review

2008-01-16T14:59:00.001-05:00

Ra is by now a classic eurogame, but it’s relatively new to me. It’s also the prize in this month’s LudiQuest and it seems only fair to let people know what they’re trying to win by way of this review. Ra is a game for three to five players, was designed by Reiner Knizia, and most recently published by Uberplay.

The gameplay in Ra centers around gathering a variety of scoring tiles in order to garner the most points in the game’s three scoring rounds (or “kingdoms”). At the beginning of the game, players each receive three “sun tiles” (or four, in a three-player game) which will be used to bid on tiles in order to gain victory points (technically called “fame”, I think). The tiles are numbered one through thirteen (or up to sixteen, with five players) with the tile numbered one starting in the middle of the board.

On each player’s turn, they can do one of two things: Take a tile from the bag or call for an auction. If they take a tile from the bag, they generally add that tile to the group of things which will later be auctioned. The only exception to this is that if they draw a “Ra” tile, which instead forces an auction to be called immediately. When an auction is called, the person who initiated the auction (by calling it intentionally, or by drawing a Ra tile) bids last, with each player bidding once only. You may only use one of your sun tiles to bid with, so there are only three possible bid values (plus zero for a pass). If a player started an auction intentionally, they must bid if everyone else passes. When someone wins an auction, they take all the tiles and the sun tile in the middle (which cannot be used until after the next scoring) and put the tile they bid onto the board to become part of the next auction. The scoring round ends when a certain number of Ra tiles are drawn. The gameplay itself is very simple – there are few kinds of decisions to make and each one has very few choices. When learning the game, the more daunting task is keeping track of the many different types of tiles and how they work to add (or subtract from) your score.

Gold tiles are the simplest, giving a player three points during scoring and then being removed from the game. It is important to get at least one Civilization tile each round, because you lose five points during scoring if you have none (you start the game with a score of ten). Getting positive points with them requires you to acquire at least three different types before they are removed at the end of the scoring round. Pharoahs score five points each round for the player who has the most, while the player who has the least loses two points. You keep pharaoh tiles until the end of the game. Land is another tile type you get to hold onto, but they don’t score anything without having at least one flood tile (which goes away after scoring). As long as you have a flood, all lands and floods score a point apiece. Monuments don’t score until the third and final round of the game, but can be worth a massive amount of points if you have a lot of them. You score is based on both how many types of the 12 you’ve collected and on how many sets of three or more (bigger sets are worth more) you’ve collected. God tiles can be expended to allow a player to steal a tile from the “tableau”. If you do so, this is the only action you take on your turn. If you don’t do so, you’ll instead turn them in for two points during scoring. Finally, there are disaster tiles. Disaster tiles score no points – acquiring one means you have to remove two tiles you already own. Disasters affect pharaohs, civilizations, lands (and floods), or monuments, depending on the type.

The strategy in Ra centers around 1) how much groupings of tiles are worth to various people and 2) when to call an auction. By calling an auction to exploit a gap in the values of others’ tiles, you can often pick up a bargain.

Overall, Ra is a light game with quite a bit of luck. You can manage this luck to a certain degree by choosing whether or not to play “press your luck” at the end of a scoring round by gambling on how many valuable tiles might come out before the next Ra tile ends the round.
It moves quickly (once you learn the tiles) and has very little downtime. Based on these factors, I will rate it a 7.5 out of 10.

P.S. I got in some games on Saturday morning and increased my 2008 game count by six to 23(Pillars of the Earth, Clans x2, Evo, 24/7 x2)

LudiQuest II Hint

2008-01-12T11:25:00.000-05:00

No one has solved the LudiQuest yet, so it's time for a hint. This is a small one. The puzzle is repeated below, albeit with a small addition (your hint). Good luck. If no one has solved it around this time next week, there will be a bigger hint.

With Roman count "as 102"
You'll read the writing on the wall,
But you will need to change your view
Before you make the proper call.*

57 76 57 48 57 55 57 57 57 56*

*Corrected last number in sequence from 54 to 56.

Hint coming; new games played

2008-01-11T10:38:00.000-05:00

No one has solved LudiQuest #2 yet (or even made it to the next section), so I’m posting a small hint tomorrow. If need be, I have more hints ready to post next weekend also.

Last night I got a chance to play two new games: Thebes and Race for the Galaxy. That brings the 2008 game count up to 17.

I’m just polishing up the Ra review; it will be up later today.

New Year’s gaming resolutions

2008-01-08T15:30:00.000-05:00

So far this year I’ve played 14 boardgames.* That’s a much faster rate than is typical for me and bodes well for plenty of gaming goodness in 2008. I want to make sure I keep up that trend and so keeping up with tradition, I’m making some 2008 gaming resolutions.

1. Play the equivalent of a game a day: I’ve got a head start, so maybe I can actually get 366 (it’s a leap year) games in this year. I’m certainly going to try. I'll track my progress on this blog.

2. Finish a game prototype and get it polished enough to submit it to a publisher. I have plenty of game ideas. I even prototype some of them and bug my friends to play them. This year I resolve to keep my attention on one for long enough to make something out of it.

3. Post at least three blog entries a week. ‘Nuff said.

Just before the year started, I also played a couple of games of Ra. This brings my count up to five, which I think is enough to write a reasonable review. I’ll be posting it within the next couple of days.

* Games played: Bohnanza, Fearsome Floors, True Colors, Quoridor, 99 (card game), Pirate’s Cove, Vegas Showdown, Pitchcar, Fairy Tale, Zooloretto (x2), Phoenicia (x2), Buy Low Sell High

Portal

2008-01-06T11:08:00.000-05:00

I’ve primarily discussed board games here and I expect that to be a common topic, but I don’t intend for that to be my only topic. I want to discuss games and game-like activities in all forms, especially when they’re new and intriguing like Portal.

I received “The Orange Box” as a Christmas present and over the weekend I tried the new Valve game Portal. The game has the standard controls of a first-person shooter, but instead of shooting enemies you are in a testing area with certain objectives to complete.

All of the gameplay derives from one new concept: imagine you had a gun that could shoot portals. More specifically, imagine you had a gun that could create either side of a portal at a distance. You can only have one portal open at a time and you must create both sides of the portal to use it, but you can move either end of your very own wormhole almost at will by shooting somewhere else. For convenience, the game differentiates the sides of the portal by color (orange and blue) and each mouse button shoots a different color.

All of the objectives would be impossible without the portal gun, but many are quite easy with its use. For instance, if I need to get across a pit of deadly radioactive waste, I can just create a portal next to me, then place the exit across the pit and step through. There are instances where you must retrieve crates and place them on floor switches or get a bouncing energy ball (whose touch would be fatal) to go to a certain place or traverse a course filled with stationary (but armed) battle androids or use a combination of portals and gravity to propel yourself over barriers. The puzzles contained in each level’s physical layout are clever and force you to explore the new possibilities.

It’s surprising how disorienting the portal can be. When you first look through a portal and see yourself from another angle, your brain tells you that person couldn’t possibly be you (especially since, odds are, your portal avatar looks nothing like you). It gets even worse when you're falling through portals with different orientations (like one the wall and one on the ceiling). I guess travelling through a tear in the spacetime continuum is bound to cause some vertigo, at least.

Initially there doesn't appear to be any story at all as you progress through the game, just a series of "testing rooms" with excellent puzzles. You are often given instructions or commentary from the AI adminstering the test. The comments by the AI are often funny and sometimes a bit creepy. They set the narrative that you'll play out at the end of the game and keep you entertained along the way. The last level contains most of the story, and is one my most enjoyable gaming experiences in quite a while.

It's definitely shorter than most computer/video games that come out today. I liked this, since it meant I actually had time to finish it. There are bonus levels and harder versions of the original maps for those who are looking for more to do. More to the point, the ending of the game was great and I will remember it for years to come. I'd recommend this to anyone who owns a PC. If you don't want to buy the entire Orange Box package, you can download the game individually from Steam for $20.

LudiQuest II

2008-01-05T10:32:00.000-05:00

Ok, so it’s time for the next contest. I’ve given it a new, shiny (if slightly goofy) name. I'm sorry to say I had to make a last minute change due to a "technical difficulty", but I think it will still be quite interesting. I had a few goals in mind when coming up with this contest, and I’d like to share them with you.

i. I want to make the contest difficult enough that no one will solve it on the first day. I don’t want this to be a case where within hours of posting the puzzle it’s been solved, and most people are out of contention before they’ve even read it. Optimally, I’d like it to be a week or more before someone wins. If I eventually need to dole out pieces to make this work, I will – but for now it is solvable pretty much as soon as it’s posted.

ii. I don’t want the puzzle to require advanced mathematics or dedicated computing power to solve. While it might require a bit of ciphering, I’d much rather a few "Aha!" moments are enough to do the trick.
iii. I want the contest to be completely free to play (apart from having certain ubiquitous services, like the one allowing you to read this web page).

iv. I want their to be the possibility that you’ll learn something new while solving it.

v. I want the puzzle to be fun!

So those are my goals – we’ll see how thing play out. Keep #3 in mind – this puzzle is free, and knowing that might help you avoid a certain path. The prize, as previously announced, is a new copy of the game Ra. Once again, you’ll be told where to send your answer. Have patience, be persistent, and good luck. Here it is:

With Roman count as 102
You'll read the writing on the wall,
But you will need to change your view
Before you make the proper call.*

57 76 57 48 57 55 57 57 57 56*

*rhyme slightly revised to make it more clear

*Corrected last number in sequence from 54 to 56.

No Internet, LudiQuest slightly delayed

2007-12-27T13:12:00.001-05:00

I have just moved. And while I have greatly improved my commute time and more gaming space and that’s quite exciting, I have the downside of having no internet connection at home right now. The cable company came and set it up a week ago, but it is still not working despite several hours on the phone with them and a brand new computer. Hopefully, they will get it working properly when they come to the house tomorrow.

In the meantime, this has definitely made it more difficult to post, as well as to research the next puzzle contest. As a result, I am delaying the posting of LudiQuest #2 (yup, that’s what I’m calling it) until Saturday, January 5th around 11:00 am EST. In fact, for the foreseeable future I plan to post one contest every month on the first Saturday of the month.

Read this if you're a genius

2007-12-18T13:53:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across this tool that claims to determine the reading level of any blog you give it. It’s kind of fun to try various blogs and see what you get. What is this blogs rating? “Genius”. I imagine that the algorithm just takes the words in your blog and compares them against a reading-level chart, but it does seem to match up at least somewhat to my impressions of certain sites. Of the sites I’ve tried, this is the only one with a genius rating. For some reason that kind of makes me feel good, though perhaps I should be taking that as a hint that this blog is too hard to read. Comments?

The Solution - Puzzle #1

2007-12-17T10:17:00.000-05:00

I thought that those of you who tried your hand at the puzzle contest, might how to see how to solve puzzle #1 (yes, that means there will be a puzzle #2). I asked the winner, Mike Fassio, to send me some brief thoughts on it and here (slightly annotated) is his reply:

“First off I immediately noticed that the code was made up of elements from the periodic table so I spent some time tracking down all of the element names. I didn't see any sort of pattern emerge from the element names like if you took the first letter from each element name or something, so then I found out the atomic number of each element in hopes that there would emerge a pattern from the numbers. At this point I began to think entirely too hard about the numbers that I had written down. I tried breaking the lines of code down into as many combinations of numbers that were less than or equal to 26 (number of letters in the English alphabet). […]

I was beginning to become really frustrated and was certain that it was a more complicated puzzle since you had a 2 month time limit on it. I noticed that the atomic numbers were all primes and I began looking for ways to break prime number codes, particularly those that utilize the RSA algorithm. Then all of a sudden it hit me that the clue to the cipher was in the explanation of the riddle: "A prime example of an elementary cipher." Finally it all made sense, the cipher was 26 prime numbers which corresponded to 26 letters in the English alphabet. From there it was just simple substitution and I arrived at the solution: Email me this answer at jmplummer at aol dot com.”

I think that explains it rather well. I’m planning to post a second puzzle on January 1st, when I’ll be giving away a copy of the game Ra. Stay tuned!

We have a winner!

2007-12-12T15:49:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Mike Fassio, who sent in the solution about 25 minutes ago. I'll be sending him a new copy of Hollywood Blockbuster. I'll be following up with an explanation of the solution within a few days. It was a solved a bit faster than I expected - very impressive.

I'd be interested in hearing comments on whether it was fun, too easy, too hard, etc. I plan on following up with another puzzle for another prize within a couple of weeks so stay tuned!

Where do you find those games?

2007-12-03T19:33:00.000-05:00

People who have known me for a bit know that I play boardgames – boardgames that they’ve never heard of, that often have German names, and that they would never be able to find at stores they typically frequent. Generally, when I introduce these games to new players the first question that comes up is “Where do you find/get those games?”. So for anyone who has that question or would like a place to refer anyone that does, I will address it here.

First of all, the games that I’m speaking of are generally called Eurogames (or just Euros), German games, or designer games. This doesn’t mean they’re all from Germany, or even from Europe, but many of them are. You aren’t likely to find many of them at your local Target or Walmart – you’ll have to know where to go.

You may, and probably do, have a FLGS (friendly local game store) in your area. By the way, this particular abbreviation is the common way the gaming community refers to a game store (at least online). If you don’t know where it is, try googling “boardgame” along with your city and state. Chances are you’ll find that there is a game store or gaming club in your area that you don’t even know about. The person who owns that store is someone who knows and loves games (it’s hard to make money selling games, so there’s not another reason to own one). Tell the person working there that you don’t know much about games yet and you’re looking to get your feet wet. They’ll be happy to help you out with some recommendations. Hopefully, the FLGS also has a few tables set up to play games, times set aside for gamers to meet, and information on any local game clubs that exist. If they can’t help you with any of the above and don’t seem to know much about games, you’re in the wrong place. You should find a new FLGS or go to option number two, the internet.

While I prefer to support a local game store (because if no one supports it, it won’t be there long), sometimes you can only get what you want elsewhere. In the case of games, there are plenty of websites that should be able to provide what you’re looking for. I have purchased games at Funagain.com, Thoughthammer.com, and Bouldergames.com and been satisfied with the results each time. I’ve ordered them according to how much I’ve used each one. Tanga.com has a special on something at all times, and these are boardgames about 50% of the time (the special is the only thing you can get, however). If you’re looking for more information on any game before you buy (or you need ideas on what go get), head over to http://www.boardgamegeek.com/ and look it up. I can’t stress that site enough – go visit it right now and bookmark it…I’ll wait. I definitely recommend researching every game before you buy.

Before I end this post, I should mention a few games that a new gamer might enjoy. Transamerica and Ticket to Ride are two games about forming train routes that plenty of neophyte or veterans gamers seem to enjoy. Bohnanza is a card game about bean trading and Lost Cities is two-player card game with a thin archeology theme. If you aren’t looking for a basic “beginner” game but just want to jump in with both feet, I’d suggest Ra or Puerto Rico as nice medium-weight games. Click the appropriate link to learn more and have fun!

Other puzzles and prizes

2007-11-29T11:52:00.000-05:00

Yehuda Berlinger has a gaming blog that I read fairly often. He posts a lot, which means there’s usually something new to read. The reason that I mention his blog is that he will also be posing puzzles and giving out prizes, although on a much grander scale. His latest post mentions over $300 in games that will be up for grabs to those who sign up to his Google group. If you’re interested, hurry...you need to be signed up before this Sunday.

Puzzle Contest

2007-11-28T08:49:00.000-05:00

All of my posts are signed MadPuzzler, and I’ve decided that if I’m to have any credibility it’s about time I provided a puzzle. In order to encourage anyone who might actually be reading, I’m providing a small prize. Whoever first solves the puzzle and emails me with the answer will have a new, un-punched version of the game Hollywood Blockbuster shipped to them via the least expensive shipping method available (it likely won’t make it in time for the winter holiday of your choice, so don’t plan on that).

The puzzle hearkens back to some of my treasure-hunting challenges, but is a bit more involved since I expect you to have plenty of time and on-line resources at your disposal. Figure out what the message says and proceed from there. If no one has solved it in two months, I’ll replace it with something easier, but I don’t expect that to be the case. If someone does solve it, it’s likely that I’ll eventually post something more difficult.

Here is the puzzle, which is a prime example of an elementary cipher. Make of that what you will.

NaNbHeVRbNbNaLuKVHoHeTc

HoBiNaPmHeLuCuNbIRbTaNbNb

NaPmHeLuHeAgRbNAgLuBAgNb

Attika and design

2007-11-27T10:20:00.000-05:00

Having played just four games of Attika now, I’ve decided that I’m very impressed with the design of Attika’s modular board. What I really like about it is not so much that it is modular, but that the game can’t even be completed without adding more sections to the board. You must draw building tiles in order to be able to place new map sections (so you can place more buildings). You can also control when you place the new section by manipulating your draws. Being able to place your new map sections anywhere you like adds a new level of complexity to the game that wasn’t there at the beginning. And they do add a lot of complexity - new sections can be used offensively or defensively and will also affect the cost of further buildings for you and/or your opponents.

The amphoras have a similar effect. You have none at the beginning of the game (though in theory you could get one on the first turn). Having an amphora adds to your options, especially in so far as you are able to threaten to win by connecting two temples. If your opponent has one or more amphoras, you have to be more diligent about defense.

In both cases complexity is added as the game progresses, which helps new players learn the game and still be competitive during their first play. One of the things I don’t like about certain games (e.g. Settlers of Cataan) is that the decision with the biggest impact on your success in the game is made at the very beginning. Your first impression of a game can easily be soured when you realize that the very first decision you made has now made it virtually impossible for you to win. In short, games where the complexity ramps up as you go really helps out new players, and in turn those of us who end up teaching them how to play.

Wednesday night games - Attika, San Juan

2007-11-26T14:13:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday night (Nov. 21st), I was able to squeeze in a few pre-Thanksgiving games with Doug and Paul. I brought my fairly recent acquisitions of Attika and San Juan, which neither of them had played.

The first game of Attika ended when each of us had about two-thirds of our buildings on the board. By saving two amphora and using a couple of turns building up resource cards, I was able to lay down a new hex and make a sudden move at the temple Paul was guarding. Although I didn’t get the draw I needed to build all the way there on the first turn, Paul only had a couple of resources and couldn’t manage to block. I’m not sure if Doug could have blocked the spot, but if so he chose not to form a new (and permanently unconnected) settlement and I was able to connect two temples shortly thereafter.

Both wanted to try Attika again, so we played a second game. Doug made an early move towards the center and allowed me to connect to the temple behind him. From that point it was very hard to block me. It was over in about five turns.

Next we opened up San Juan. It was their first and only my second game. I opened strong, getting an early library and a quick lead. Doug went strong on production buildings and Paul got an archive and then a library a bit later. I got a number of cards with the poor house and began to stock my chapel with quite a few cards. I missed some builds though, and Doug got a guild house and edged me out by one point.

Doug is going to borrow both games so I’m hoping for some more tightly contested games of Attika in the near future. After having played four times now, I’m very impressed with the design. Despite drawing tiles, there seems to be little luck and many tactical options.

Review - Hollywood Blockbuster

2007-11-01T11:12:00.000-04:00

Today I want to offer a review of a game that is relatively new to me, Hollywood Blockbuster. Hollywood Blockbuster is a remake of the Knizia game Traumfabrik for an English-speaking audience and is published by Uberplay. It is an auction game where players take the roles of movie producers trying to collect movie components and assign them to films in production. Completed films give you points and let you vie for the many movie awards given out during the course of the game.

Every player starts the game with a number of ‘contracts’, the currency used in the game, and three movies that they are trying to complete. The layout of the board consists primarily of eight spaces, each of which represents an opportunity to acquire tiles which show directors, stars, guest stars, cameras or special effects. Each of these tiles also has from zero to four stars, which add to the quality of the film to which they are assigned. Who gets the tiles from each space is usually decided by auction, but two of the eight spaces feature ‘parties’, in which each player gets to choose one of these in turn at no cost (the player who won the previous auction gets first pick and play proceeds clockwise). The players will traverse the board four times, each trip around representing one year of movie-making. That means there are only 24 auctions and eight parties to make as many movies as you can.

One of the interesting features of this auction game is that it features a closed economy. All contracts paid out by the auction winner are divided up equally by the remaining players. Any contracts that can’t be equally divided are left in the center of the board and divided along with the proceeds of the next auction. Spending money means it goes somewhere else so how it’s even more important to pay attention to how much you spend on an auction (and how much will be left in the middle).

The movies that players are trying to make are either blue, green, or yellow which correspond roughly to the action, comedy, and drama genres. Every movie requires a director and includes a spot for an optional guest star. Other requirements may vary greatly. Every movie also comes with a number of stars, based presumably on the quality of the script. When a player places all of the required tiles on a movie, it’s “in the can” and he counts up the total number of stars on the movie and the placed tiles and takes a corresponding scoring tile. Finishing a movie also means you get a new movie card, if there are still any left. There are a limited amount of scoring tiles (two for most values) and if they are already gone, he will have to take the next lower tile and score less points. Finishing first will often score you more points and counts as a tie-breaker when deciding who wins awards.

Speaking of awards, they are one of the most thematic and entertaining parts of the game. Awards for the first movie in each category reward you with five points, as do “best movie” awards for the first three years. The major awards are worth ten points each and are all given out when the game ends after year four. These awards are for best blue, green, and yellow film, best film overall, worst film, and best director (all of a player’s director stars for finished movies are added together). Everyone adds their awards to the amount of stars they garnered from finishing movies and the highest score wins.

The thing that I like most about this game is that it lies in the sweet spot of having enough strategy to entertain true gamers, while not being so daunting that family members would never dare to play. The theme of the game lies more in the board design and the names the game uses than in the actual game mechanics, but it is an inviting one and adds to the enjoyment of the game. The fact that the actors and movies are puns on those that are well-known adds to the appeal of the theme. The game is well-produced and easy to learn and play. Overall I score this game a 7.5 out of 10.

A game geek writes

2007-09-25T14:14:00.000-04:00

Hi. My name is Jeff Plummer and I'm a game geek. My mind is often distracted by thoughts of board games, computer games, puzzles, thought experiments, etc. I'm interested in playing games, designing games, and keeping up-to-date on new types of games.

Until quite recently I worked part-time for Ravenchase Adventures preparing and running treasure hunts in Charlotte, NC. Now I'm looking for something else to occupy my creative mind and hopefully someday replace my boring day job.

I really enjoy reading other peoples' blogs, especially when there is some thought put into them. Here I will write about thoughts I have about games of every sort including game reviews, playing sessions, new ideas, or games that I'm working on. If you're into that sort of thing, then welcome..sit down and stay a while.