Zendo, play by forum

[Clam]

Curious that MS Excel helped out, were you doing some sort of statistical analysis with the frequency of letters or something?

Yep . I suspected (as others did) that there was a set of special letters that all white koans had in common. The existing koans with only one letter type gave an initial list of "white" and "non-white" letters. Then (with an Excel formula) I counted the "white" letters in each white koan, and added other letters not in the "non-white" list until every white koan had one or more. Thanks to the size of the koan list, there was no guessing required, and there was a eureka moment when the letters AKHTBN dropped out

It was the koan AKAK that prompted me to think about the order of the white letters.

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New round!

Initial white koan: CLAM
Initial black koan: SPAM

[Simon]

CLIX
CPLUSPLUS
SPROUT
SCHPAM
CLAMSPAMMER

-- Simon

[ccexplore]

Regarding guessing single-letter koans:

To be fair, even in geoo's round I wasn't really relying on guessing all 26 1-letter koans.  I actually had a theory that I initially tested with a single koan containing all the letters that I thought are "good".  Only when I wasn't sure whether the letter must be the first letter in the koan is when I apologetically asked for testing individual letters on their own, and even then only the individual letters from my koan (the one with what I thought were all the good letters--as it turned out some weren't because my theory of goodness was slightly off, and the individual letter koans immediately point out the bad ones).

Still, it's good input to know that some people may be aversed to certain classes of guesses, I'll be sure to try taking that into account somehow if I master any future rounds.

============

koans for Clam's round:

CL
SP
AM
MALC
MAPS
AMCL
AMSP

[Ramon]

CLAMSPAM
SPAMCLAM
CLAMCLAM
SPAMSPAM

[Clam]

White:
SPROUT
CLAMSPAMMER
MALC
AMCL
CLAMSPAM
SPAMCLAM
CLAMCLAM

Black:
CLIX
CPLUSPLUS
SCHPAM
CL
SP
AM
MAPS
AMSP
SPAMSPAM

[Simon]

CA
CM
OP
OR
RS

-- Simon

[Nepster]

I make the following guess at the rule:

AKHTBN iff it contains two consecutive letters of the alphabet.

[Proxima]

In hindsight perhaps I should've forgo the ordering condition, but then again, we previously did a round already (geoo mastered) where Buddha nature is conferred simply by inclusion of a set of blessed letters, so I guess I thought it would be too much of the same, and thought the little twist would be a good idea.  Or maybe I should've kept the twist but use a smaller set of blessed letters instead (people were at least eventually picking up on A, B and K, even though everyone also seemed to have forgotten by then that the initial white koan of WHITE has none of those three letters).

I'd worked out that T was a significant letter as well    And well done, that was a very nice rule.

[Clam]

I make the following guess at the rule:

AKHTBN iff it contains two consecutive letters of the alphabet.

Correct

SPROUT was rather a giveaway, wasn't it?

[Nepster]

Actually CL and AM being both black was more helpful. SPROUT was too different from the other test koans to be of much use for me.

NEW ROUND:

Word with Buddha-nature: YELLOW
Word without Buddha-nature: BLUE

[Ramon]

YELLOWYELLOW
BLUEBLUE
YELLOWBLUE
BLUEYELLOW
YELLO
YELL
YEL
YE
Y
BLU
BL
B

[Nepster]

White:
YELLOWYELLOW
YE

Black:
BLUEBLUE
YELLOWBLUE
BLUEYELLOW
YELLO
YELL
YEL
Y
BLU
BL
B

[Proxima]

RED
GREEN
CYAN
MAGENTA
WHITE
BLACK
BELLOW
WOLLEY
WBLUE

[Nepster]

White:
WOLLEY
CYAN

Black:
RED
GREEN
MAGENTA
WHITE
BLACK
BELLOW
WBLUE

[Clam]

YA
YL
YO
YW
YOLO