July 27, 2007--Fanaticism LXXXV: King Me
Last night after dinner, at a lodge on the northwest shore of Lake Superior, just miles from the fabled Mesabi iron mines, Rona and I settled in by the fire to sample some the board games that were available to guests.
We began with Chinese Checkers. Though I am not certain about the origins of the game or the political correctness of its name, it was a childhood favorite of each of ours. You remember it—the object is to move all 15 of your color-coded marbles from their triangular home base across the board and into all the vacated spaces of your opponent’s base. The first one to do that wins. Which I did—three times in a row.
And so we moved on. To tic-tac-toe. Less demanding for certain but with an even more intriguing name—I leave it to you to Google its origins. Since we are in the Northwoods pretty much everything here is made of wood or wood products—even, I think, the bread we had with dinner last night. (It does though do wonders for your system, if you catch my meaning.) Thus there was a wooden t-t-t playing field and carved wooden Xs and Os. Rather than drawing a version of a big pound sign on a pad and marking the resulting spaces with pencils or crayons, up here one slaps one of these tactile Xs or Os onto the board, with a clacking sound. It takes about 45 seconds to play a game and it almost always ends in a draw. The only time it doesn’t is when you play speed tic-tac-toe, allowing 10-15 seconds for an entire game thus making one prone to errors—which is the only way you can manage to lose.
Therefore we moved on to the greater challenge of Checkers. The non-Red Chinese kind. We played two games, the rules coming back to us as we made our diagonal moves, and I won both games. By now Rona had had enough of games and me, me winning I suspect, and said, “Tomorrow night we play Scrabble,” knowing I can’t spell even easy words like seperate [sic] or publically [sic].
Back in the room, not talking to each other in spite of the calming calls of the loons glad that the heat had at last broken, I did some catching up with an accumulated stack of NY Times. And wouldn’t you know it, from about a week ago there was an article (linked below) about how a computer called Chinook, up in Canada of course, had “solved” Checkers. Before this Chinook was capable of beating any human player but it could be mastered by other, more powerful computers. But now, Chinook’s inventor has made it so extra-powerful that it can master all 500 billion billion (this is not a typo) possible Checker configurations and thereby assure that every game, just like tic-tac-toe, must end in a draw.
The article notes that in contrast to all of these Checker patterns, lowly tic-tac-toe has a mere 765—also not a typo. No wonder it only takes a few seconds to wind up in a draw. And here I thought we were playing at the grand master level. Oh well. Back to lounging on the lawn.
But next week, when back in the New York combat zone, we plan to move onto chess with its gazillions of possible combinations and permutations. Let’s see how well Rona does with that after trouncing me tonight in Scrable [sic].
PS: Wouldn’t you know it-- tonight at 8:00, in the lodge, they’re having a Chinese Checker Round-Robin; and you know who won’t be competing? Wrong . . . me.
We began with Chinese Checkers. Though I am not certain about the origins of the game or the political correctness of its name, it was a childhood favorite of each of ours. You remember it—the object is to move all 15 of your color-coded marbles from their triangular home base across the board and into all the vacated spaces of your opponent’s base. The first one to do that wins. Which I did—three times in a row.
And so we moved on. To tic-tac-toe. Less demanding for certain but with an even more intriguing name—I leave it to you to Google its origins. Since we are in the Northwoods pretty much everything here is made of wood or wood products—even, I think, the bread we had with dinner last night. (It does though do wonders for your system, if you catch my meaning.) Thus there was a wooden t-t-t playing field and carved wooden Xs and Os. Rather than drawing a version of a big pound sign on a pad and marking the resulting spaces with pencils or crayons, up here one slaps one of these tactile Xs or Os onto the board, with a clacking sound. It takes about 45 seconds to play a game and it almost always ends in a draw. The only time it doesn’t is when you play speed tic-tac-toe, allowing 10-15 seconds for an entire game thus making one prone to errors—which is the only way you can manage to lose.
Therefore we moved on to the greater challenge of Checkers. The non-Red Chinese kind. We played two games, the rules coming back to us as we made our diagonal moves, and I won both games. By now Rona had had enough of games and me, me winning I suspect, and said, “Tomorrow night we play Scrabble,” knowing I can’t spell even easy words like seperate [sic] or publically [sic].
Back in the room, not talking to each other in spite of the calming calls of the loons glad that the heat had at last broken, I did some catching up with an accumulated stack of NY Times. And wouldn’t you know it, from about a week ago there was an article (linked below) about how a computer called Chinook, up in Canada of course, had “solved” Checkers. Before this Chinook was capable of beating any human player but it could be mastered by other, more powerful computers. But now, Chinook’s inventor has made it so extra-powerful that it can master all 500 billion billion (this is not a typo) possible Checker configurations and thereby assure that every game, just like tic-tac-toe, must end in a draw.
The article notes that in contrast to all of these Checker patterns, lowly tic-tac-toe has a mere 765—also not a typo. No wonder it only takes a few seconds to wind up in a draw. And here I thought we were playing at the grand master level. Oh well. Back to lounging on the lawn.
But next week, when back in the New York combat zone, we plan to move onto chess with its gazillions of possible combinations and permutations. Let’s see how well Rona does with that after trouncing me tonight in Scrable [sic].
PS: Wouldn’t you know it-- tonight at 8:00, in the lodge, they’re having a Chinese Checker Round-Robin; and you know who won’t be competing? Wrong . . . me.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
7:01 PM
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