Hangaroo Games
Down at the Zen and Tao Acoustic Café the hit for the week seems to be Hangaroo, which is basically Hangman with a Kangaroo who is mildly insulting when you pick the wrong letter. Apparently the game was made in 2003, with most of the answers current as of 2002.
Regardless of the age, it's a fascinating game, and it's caused the various employees and hangers-out at the Z&T to print out copies of the Periodic Table of Elements and memorise the various names of the ages of Earth's geological history. And any game that encourages people to learn various bits of useless scientific trivia is a damn fine find, in my book.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the day was when Gloria got the category "Car Makes and Models" with a two word answer, first word six spaces and second word 5 spaces. She hit the first letter, "a" which popped up in 2nd word, space 2. Then she thought that first word would probably be "Toyota" so she tried "a," which popped up only in 2nd word, space 1.
That's when she paused, and had to go get table B26 another Viennese Cappy. So she left me to try to finish it.
So I cheated, of sorts, in a way. I consider it "using what's available," which in this case, was the Internet. I did a Google search for Car Makes and Models, which revealed too many hits and too many wayward sites, so I just looked for a list of car makes - which gave me all the car makes. Now, I searched the list for all makes that had six letters, but no "a" or "e" and eventually narrowed it down to Lincoln and Suzuki. So I tried Suzuki first (just a feeling that the makers would use a foreign car just to mess with the American players) and came up with the model "Aerio."
Trying an "i" filled in first word, space 6 and 2nd word, space 4 and we were on our way.
But what amazed me is how the human brain figures out puzzles. It's really simply using a list of that which is known, and then narrowing down (or rather, "winnowing out") all other possibilities, until you are left with a "relatively good guess" which, if correct or not, will give you more information from which to determine if your idea is correct or not.
I know it's a simple thing, really, and not terribly interesting, with the regular course of a regular day, especially since our minds are usually so filled up with things like where we're going to eat tonight or whether we should apply for that position that just opened up on the fifth floor or if we should take out a second mortgage or where we're going to go on this year's vacation or whatnot. And I know that this thought about how the brain solves puzzles isn't splitting the atom or mapping DNA, but to me it's fascinating: tracing the paths that our brain takes to solve all these puzzles.
Gloria was happy with my solving the puzzle, however, enough to slide me a free danish.
They really treat you well, down at the Z&T.
Regardless of the age, it's a fascinating game, and it's caused the various employees and hangers-out at the Z&T to print out copies of the Periodic Table of Elements and memorise the various names of the ages of Earth's geological history. And any game that encourages people to learn various bits of useless scientific trivia is a damn fine find, in my book.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the day was when Gloria got the category "Car Makes and Models" with a two word answer, first word six spaces and second word 5 spaces. She hit the first letter, "a" which popped up in 2nd word, space 2. Then she thought that first word would probably be "Toyota" so she tried "a," which popped up only in 2nd word, space 1.
That's when she paused, and had to go get table B26 another Viennese Cappy. So she left me to try to finish it.
So I cheated, of sorts, in a way. I consider it "using what's available," which in this case, was the Internet. I did a Google search for Car Makes and Models, which revealed too many hits and too many wayward sites, so I just looked for a list of car makes - which gave me all the car makes. Now, I searched the list for all makes that had six letters, but no "a" or "e" and eventually narrowed it down to Lincoln and Suzuki. So I tried Suzuki first (just a feeling that the makers would use a foreign car just to mess with the American players) and came up with the model "Aerio."
Trying an "i" filled in first word, space 6 and 2nd word, space 4 and we were on our way.
But what amazed me is how the human brain figures out puzzles. It's really simply using a list of that which is known, and then narrowing down (or rather, "winnowing out") all other possibilities, until you are left with a "relatively good guess" which, if correct or not, will give you more information from which to determine if your idea is correct or not.
I know it's a simple thing, really, and not terribly interesting, with the regular course of a regular day, especially since our minds are usually so filled up with things like where we're going to eat tonight or whether we should apply for that position that just opened up on the fifth floor or if we should take out a second mortgage or where we're going to go on this year's vacation or whatnot. And I know that this thought about how the brain solves puzzles isn't splitting the atom or mapping DNA, but to me it's fascinating: tracing the paths that our brain takes to solve all these puzzles.
Gloria was happy with my solving the puzzle, however, enough to slide me a free danish.
They really treat you well, down at the Z&T.
posted by Verble Gherulous at 1/12/2006 09:30:00 am
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