My grandson and I spent about 2 hours playing Garten of BanBan 3 this morning, trying to get through the room where you have to revive Nabnaleena by injecting her with compounds you create by mixing colors.This requires going through multiple loops of the same actions within a time limit and maybe some other conditions.

It’s very annoying. Neither of us could complete the tasks quickly enough even when we seemed to have done so with maximum efficiency.

Here’s the secret — although it contradicts in-game instructions and guides by other players.

You are led to believe that the sequence of events is:

1. Grab the hypodermic
2. Go across the room to see what color compound you have to make, and press the two right colors to make it. (Check the chart to the left.)
3. Click the button to start the mixing. At the end, it will fill t he hypodermic.
4. Click on the unconscious Nabnaleena to rouse her.
5. Scurry to the other side of the room and click on the drone controller.
6. Click whichever of the three red wall lights are on.
7. Go back to where the drone controller was and pick up the wrench-y looking object. (It turns out that it’s “surgical tongs.”)
8. Go over to the wall with the twelve tubes of many colors, and click on each to turn it green. (It takes three clicks to turn a red tube green, two for yellow, and one for blue.)
9. Return to step 1
10. Repeat until you have completed the right number of cycles. The room will go green and the door will, at last, open.

If you think that’s annoying, there’s also the fact that at least for us the cycle would never complete.

One of the walkthroughs I watched finally revealed the solution: Never do steps #7 or #8; ignore the wall of tubes. That will give you enough time to complete the required number of cycles — four in our case . Despite the instructions on the wall, the tubes section plays no part in the game.

At least not for us.

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There’s a new version of Wordle called Semantle — not one that I “predicted” — that wants you to find the target word by looking not for a chain of spellings but a chain of semantics. For example, if you started with the word “child” you might get to the answer as follows:

1. Child
2. Play
3. game
4. Chess
5. Square
6. Circle
7. Donut
8. Homer

In short, you’re playing word associations except the associations can be very loose. It’s not like Twenty Questions where, once you get down a track (say “animals”), you’re narrowing the scope until there’s only one thing left. In Semantle, the associations can take a sudden turn in any of a thousand directions at any moment.

Which means it’s basically impossible to win.

It is, however, a good introduction to how machine learning “thinks” about words. Or at least one of the ways. Semantle is based on word2vec, which creates text embeddings derived from an analysis of some large — sometimes very very large — set of texts. Text embeddings map the statistical relationships among words based on their proximities in those texts.

In a typical example, word2vec may well figure out that “queen” and “king” are semantically close, which also might well let it figure out that “king” is to “prince” as “queen” is to “princess.”

But there are, of course, many ways that words can be related — different axes of similarity, different dimensions. Those are called “vectors” (as in “word2vec“). When playing Semantle, you’re looking for the vectors in which a word might be embedded. There are many, many of those, some stronger than others. For example, “king” and “queen” share a dimension, but so do “king” and “chess”, “king” and “bed size”, and “king” and “elvis.” Words branch off in many more ways than in Wordle.

For example, in my first game of Semantle, after 45 attempts to find a word that is even a little bit close to the answer, I found that “city” is vaguely related to it. But now I have to guess at the vector “city” and the target share. The target could be “village”, “busy”, “taxi”, “diverse”, “noisy”, “siege”, or a bazillion other words that tend to appear relatively close to “city” but that are related in different ways.

In fact, I did not stumble across the relevant vector. The answer was “newspaper.”

I think Semantle would be more fun if they started you with a word that was at some reasonable distance from the answer, rather than making you guess what a reasonable starting word might be. Otherwise, you can spend a long time — 45 tries to get “city” — just generating random words. But if we knew a starting word was, say, “foot”, we could start thinking of vectors that that word is on: measure, toe, body, shoe, soccer, etc. That might be fun, and would stretch our minds.

As it is, Semantle is a game the unplayability of which teaches us an important lesson.

And now I shall wait to hear from the many people who are actually able to solve Semantles. I hate you all with a white hot and completely unreasonable passion.[1]

[1] I’ve heard from people who are solving it. I no longer hate them.

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There’s Wordle for Jews: Jewdle. There’s Wordle for Star Wars enthusiasts: SWordle. And lord knows how many variants are now online or are being developed by anyone who knows how to edit a word list.

So let’s just get it over with. Here are upcoming versions, some of which probably already exist but I am too lazy to check.

Aordle: Wordle for cardiologists

Boardle: Wordle for millennials taking a break from playing Settlers of Catan

Boredle: Wordle for people playing Wordle

Cawdle: Wordle for crows

Chordle: Wordle rhythm guitarists

Clawdle: Wordle for manicurists

Cordle: Wordle for electricians

Coredle: Wordle for people taking Antarctic ice samples

Corridordle: Wordle for people hanging out in hallways

Crawdle: Wordle for eyes, ear, and throat doctors

Dawdle: Wordle for dillydallyers

Depordle: Wordle for ICE

Doordle: Wordle for doormen/doorpeople

Drawdle: Wordle for gunslingers

Eeyordle: Wordle for depressed people

Floordle: Wordle for linoleum salespeople

Flourdle: Wordle for bakers

Fordle: Wordle for F-150 owners

Fodordle: Wordle for travel advisors

Frodordle: Wordle for hairy-footed denizens of Middle Earth

Glowdle: Wordle for nuclear power plant employees

Growdle: Wordle for people who are cultivating marijuana for personal use

Hoardle: Wordle for hoarders

IOrdle: Wordle for computer engineers

Ignordle: Wordle for people who don’t do Wordle puzzles

Jordle: Wordle for kingdoms bordering Israel

KOrdle: Wordle for boxers

Lordle: Wordle for evangelical Christians

Majordle: Wordle for Army officers

Maordle: Wordle for Chinese Communists

Mayordle: Wordle for leaders of cities

Mayordle: Wordle for lovers of fatty white sandwich condiments

Minordle: Wordle for underrepresented populations

Mordordle: Wordle for the inhabitants of the Dark Kingdom of Middle Earth

Motordle: Wordle for car mechanics

Murdordle: Wordle for serial killers

Nordle: Wordle for Scandinavians

Nordle: Wordle for naysayers

Oordle: Wordle for the over-enthusiastic

Phylordle: Wordle for biological taxonomists

Poordle: Wordle for those who cannot afford a NY Times subscription to do a stupid word game

Pourdle: Wordle for sommeliers

Psuedordle: Wordle for people with imposter syndrome

Repordle: Wordle for journalists

Rappordle: Wordle for empathists

Rupordle: Wordle for the Murdochs

Rumordle: Wordle for gossips

Sawdle: Wordle for carpenters

Slaudle: Wordle for merciless mass killers

Sordle: Wordle for first-time horseback riders

Sprawdle: Wordle for suburban real estate developers

Strawdle: Wordle for scarecrows

Tordle: Wordle for turtle and turtle relatives

Thordle: Wordle for Asgardians

Vaulde: Wordle for gymnasts

Worldle: Wordle for geographers

XORdle: Wordle for machine language programmers

Yordle: Wordle for turtle monarchs

Zoordle: Wordle for imprisoned animals

Zorrordle: Wordle for fencers

The comments are open for your additions. (Note: Keep ’em unhurtful.)

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Someone on Twitter asked for movie titles with one letter removed that changes the movie altogether. Fun! And I’d link to the tweet but I’ve only been on Twitter since near its beginning so of course I don’t know how to go back from liked comments to the original. (If you know who came up with this movie challenge, please put in a comment to this post. Thanks.)

Anyway, here are mine:

• Gentlemen Refer Blondes
• Oceans Elven
• Inglorious Basters
• Lose Encounters of the Third Kind
• West Side Tory
• The Ride of Frankenstein
• The Plane of the Apes
• One with the Wind
• Ear Window
• The Evil Dad. Sequel: The Walking Dad.
• And, for the age of social distancing: The Apartmen

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Digital Extremes wants to break the trend of live-service games meticulously planning years of content ahead of time using road maps…’What happens then is you don’t have a surprise and you don’t have a world that feels alive,’ [community director Rebecca] Ford says. ‘You have a product that feels like a result of an investor’s meeting 12 months ago.'”

— Steven Messner, “This Means War,” PC Gamer, Feb. 2020, p. 34

Video games have been leading indicators for almost forty years. It was back in the early 1980s that games started welcoming modders who altered the visuals, turning Castle Wolfenstein into Castle Smurfenstein, adding maps, levels, cars, weapons, and rules to game after game. Thus the games became more replayable. Thus the games became whatever users wanted to make them. Thus games — the most rule-bound of activities outside of a law court or a tea ceremony — became purposefully unpredictable.

Rebecca Ford is talking about Warframe, but what she says about planning and road maps points the way for what’s happening with business strategies overall. The Internet has not only gotten us used to an environment that is overwhelming and unpredictable, but we’ve developed approaches that let us leverage that unpredictability, from open platforms to minimum viable products to agile development.

The advantage of strategy is that it enables an organization to focus its attention and resources on a single goal. The disadvantages are that strategic planning assumes that the playing field is relatively stable, and that change general happens according to rules that we can know and apply. But that stability is a dream. Now that we have tech that lets us leverage unpredictability, we are coming to once again recognize that strategies work almost literally by squinting our eyes so tight that they’re almost closed.

Maybe games will help us open our eyes so that we do less strategizing and more playing.

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I’m at the STEAM ed Finland conference in Jyväskylä where Ulla Richardson is going to talk about GraphoLearn, an adaptive learning method for learning to read.

NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small matters. Paraphrasing badly. Not running a spellpchecker. Mangling other people’s ideas and words. You are warned, people.

Ulla has been working on the Jyväskylä< Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD). Globally, one third of people can’t read or have poor reading skills. One fifth of Europe also. About 15% of children have learning disabilities.

One Issue: knowing which sound goes with which letters. GraphoLearn is a game to help students with this, developed by a multidisciplinary team. You learn a word by connecting a sound to a written letter. Then you can move to syllables and words. The game teaches by trial and error. If you get it wrong, it immediately tells you the correct sound. It uses a simple adaptive approach to select the wrong choices that are presented. The game aims at being entertaining, and motivates also with points and rewards. It’s a multi-modal system: visual and audio. It helps dyslexics by training them on the distinctions between sounds. Unlike human beings, it never displays any impatience.

It adapts to the user’s skill level, automatically assessing performance and aiming at at 80% accuracy so that it’s challenging but not too challenging.

13,000 players have played in Finland, and more in other languages. Ulla displays data that shows positive results among students who use GraphoLearn, including when teaching English where every letter has multiple pronunciations.

There are some difficulties analyzing the logs: there’s great variability in how kids play the game, how long they play, etc. There’s no background info on the students. [I missed some of this.] There’s an opportunity to come up with new ways to understand and analyze this data.

Q&A

Q: Your work is amazing. When I was learning English I could already read Finnish, so I made natural mispronunciations of ape, anarchist, etc. How do you cope with this?

A: Spoken and written English are like separate languages, especially if Finnish is your first language where each letter has only one pronunciation. You need a bigger unit to teach a language like English. That’s why we have the Rime approach where we show the letters in more context. [I may have gotten this wrong.]

Q: How hard is it to adapt the game to each language’s logic?

A: It’s hard.

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According to an article in PC Gamer (August 2014, Ben Griffin, p. 10), Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament 2014 will make “Every line of code, evert art asset and animation…available for download.” Users will be able to create their own mods and sell them through a provided marketplace. “Epic, naturally, gets a cut of the profits.”

Steve Polge, project lead and senior programmer, said “I believe this development model gives us the opportunity to build a much better balanced and finely tuned game, which is vital to the long-term success of a competitive shooter.” He points out that players already contribute to design discussions.

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At the Tel Aviv headquarters of the Center for Educational Technology, an NGO I’m very fond of because of its simultaneous dedication to improving education and its embrace of innovative technology, I got to try an Oculus Rift.

They put me on a virtual roller coaster. My real knees went weak.

Holy smokes.

 

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Earlier, I gave a talk at the Israeli Wikimedia conference. I was reminded — not that I actually need reminding — how much I like being around Wikipedians. And what an improbable work of art is Wikipedia.

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A British game show that I never heard offers a version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. As the host explains at the beginning, if both contestants agree to split the pot, they split it. If one chooses to split and the other to steal, the stealer gets the whole thing. If they both choose to steal, they get nothing. So, here’s the clip in which one of the players injects a new variable. [SPOILERS IN THE REST OF THIS POST]

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Why does the guy on the right (Mr. Right) finally choose the way he does?

If Mr. Left believes that Mr. Right will Steal, then Mr. Left will Split, so Mr Right might as well Split. If Mr. Left thinks that Mr. Right will Split, then Mr. Left will Steal, so Mr. Right can either Split (so Mr. Left gets the pot) or Steal (so neither gets anything); might as well Split. If Mr. Left believes that Mr. Right will steal and will break his promise to split the pot afterwards, then Mr. Left might Steal just to screw Mr. Right, in which case Mr. Left might as well let Mr. Left get the money rather than foregoing it for both of them, so Mr. Right should Split. No matter how you slice it, Mr. Left should Split.

If that’s right, and if Mr. Left were given time to work it through, then Mr. Left should have Stolen (assuming his aim is to maximize his share). But I’m pretty sure that I’m wrong about that.

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I still don’t know why I started getting a free subscription to Game Developer magazine, but I sure enjoy it. The technical articles are over my head and frequently completely over my head, but I enjoy reading articles written from a hard-core developer point of view. (The magazine comes to me under the name Johnny Locust at Wild West Ware — not a pseudonym or anynym of mine. I find traces of him on the Net, but none that lets me contact him directly. Johnny, if you find this, I’m enjoying your subscription!)

The magazine opener this month (Sept.) comes from Eric Caoili. It”s about The Difference Engine Initiative, an incubator to encourage and enable women as game developers. Two sessions are planned in Toronto.

One of the founders, Mare Sheppard, says in Game Developer:

“There’s this huge, homogenous, very insular, established set of developers right now in the game industry, and it happens to be mostly white and mostly male. From that, you can really only get a certain amount of innovation…If we had more voices and more opinions and more people coming in, then we would be able to take bigger steps in releasing games that represent different people, because they’re involved in the development process.”

As for the incubator, says Sheppard, “It’s like a crafter’s circle. It’s loose and low-key, and it’s about peer mentorship.” She sees it as just one step that might help some people get over the initial hurdle.

The project is named after Ada Lovelace’s contribution to Babbage’s Difference Engine, but I enjoy the implicit endorsement of difference as a source of innovation. In fact, difference is the source of all value, isn’t it?

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