Zendo, play by forum

[ccexplore]

QJRGLPFAB, ABZ, ABNS all have Buddha-nature

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Let's do this:  if no one posts guesses (koans or rules) for over 24 hours after the latest response from master, consider this round abandoned and someone can start a new round?

[Minim]

I like this idea. And then after the 24 hours expire the master may reveal the answer.
What we know so far is that most of the koans tend to be short lettered words. TURQUOISE and DIRIGIBLE were the longest. I still have no idea so this is my last set of koans to try. (Don't know if this is helpful , maybe I should be writing the letters of the alphabet as koan guesses instead)

NEWPORT
CARDIFF
SWANSEA
GLASGOW
BRISTOL
NORWICH
PRESTON
SALFORD
CHESTER

[ccexplore]

Buddha:
CARDIFF
GLASGOW
PRESTON
SALFORD
CHESTER

not Buddha:
NEWPORT
SWANSEA
BRISTOL
NORWICH

[Ramon]

GREYGRAY
ABK
ABAKAK
QACK
QQ
X
AX
EX

[Nepster]

No new koans right now, but a discussion about properties of the Buddha-nature. Given the tested koans so far, the following three rules seem to hold:
R1: The Buddha-nature does not depend on the order of the letters in the koan.
R2: The Buddha-nature only depends on whether a letter occurs in the koan, but not how often it occurs.
R3: Letters that have neither vertical nor horizontal mirror symmetry (i.e. FGJLNPQRSZ) have no impact at all on the Buddha-nature.
I am fairly sure of R1 and R3, but I wouldn't bet on R2 as we have only few test strings for this one.

Here a list of all koans testet so far, after ordering the letters alphabetically and removing all non-symmetric ones.

EDIT: List removed because of disproved rules.

[Proxima]

Let's do this:  if no one posts guesses (koans or rules) for over 24 hours after the latest response from master, consider this round abandoned and someone can start a new round?

I don't know why you think that because it's taking a while to reach the answer, we're not having fun. We are Lemmings fans, after all.

We can have a rule that if a majority of active players want to end the round, the master reveals the answer, but I strongly object to the idea that the round could be ended prematurely just because someone was busy and didn't get round to posting within 24 hours -- especially when this is the first really good puzzle we've had in this game.

Anyway, as we've reached a new page, here's another recap of koans so far. White on the left, black on the right.

Code: [Select]

AB                  AKAK
ABNZ                BEREAVEMENT
ABZ                 BLACK
AYGR                BRISTOL
BLUE                C
CARDIFF              ESTABLISHMENT
CHESTER              FGSFDS
CYAN                FREY
DIRIGIBLE           FRY
FORTRESS            GOLD
FRAY                 GREY
GARY                GREYGREY
GLASGOW             GRIY
GRAAY               GROY
GRAM                GRUE
GRANGE              GRUY
GRAY                GRY
GRAYGRAY            HORRIFICALLY
GRAYGREY            LIME
GRBY                 MAGENTA
GREEN               NEGOTIABLE
INDIGO             NEGOTIABLEQ
MAROON              NEGOTIONABLE
ORANGE              NEWPORT
PRESTON             NORWICH
QJRGLPFAB           PINK
QUACK               RED
QUICK               REY
QUIT               RYE
RAY                 SWANSEA
RUBY                 TEAL
SALFORD             TRAY
SET
TRY
TURQUOISE
VIOLET
WHITE
YGRA
EDIT: Nepster posted at the same time as me. His idea of ordering each koan alphabetically is interesting and may be helpful (since it does seem to be the case that this rule isn't affected by internal order -- all the anagrams of GRAY we tested all had buddha-nature). But I don't like the idea of removing information -- your rule R3 may turn out to be right, but at the moment it's only a guess. I doubt that symmetry is really the key to this rule, since GRAY has buddha-nature but GRUY does not.

* * *

New guesses:

FOLD
OLD
FORD
FORT
GGRAY
GGREY
G
A
E
R
Y
GAY
GEY
GRA
GRE
LET
NEGOTIBLE
NEGOTIAABLE
NEGOTIABLEA

[Proxima]

May as well share some of my thoughts about the possible nature of the rule.

I was thinking along similar lines to Nepster -- the GRAY/GRY, FRAY/FRY and TRAY/TRY pairs suggest that A is a significant letter whose addition changes a string's buddha-nature, while F, G and Q are insignificant. However, GRAAY also has buddha-nature, so adding a second A is not significant. That suggests that the rule could take the form "A koan has the buddha-nature if it contains an even number of distinct significant letters" (for some set of significant letters yet to be determined).

However, it's impossible for a rule of this form to work. I would have to be both a significant letter (because of QUICK/QUACK) and insignificant (because of GRAY/GRY/GRIY). It could be a similar but more complex rule -- but ccexplore thought we would get this one easily, so I don't think it can be. I think these thoughts must be along the wrong lines altogether 

[Timballisto]

HINDENBURG

[ccexplore]

I don't know why you think that because it's taking a while to reach the answer, we're not having fun. We are Lemmings fans, after all.

We can have a rule that if a majority of active players want to end the round, the master reveals the answer, but I strongly object to the idea that the round could be ended prematurely just because someone was busy and didn't get round to posting within 24 hours -- especially when this is the first really good puzzle we've had in this game.

Okay, it's all up to you guys, majority sounds fine to me.  I merely want to make sure I don't end up killing the thread.

but ccexplore thought we would get this one easily

Please ignore that, as I'm pretty sure my brain totally farted when I thought that would be the case. I now would say this is clearly harder than any of the previous rounds, due at least in part to the crazy way the rule came about (even though it is still fairly straightforward to describe verbally in a sentence or two, maybe).

Even ignoring all the guesses, I myself have quickly recognized how unreasonable it is for me to think this rule would be easier.  On hindsight I should've eliminate one part of the rule so it is truly easier, but doing so would affect the initial koans as well.  On the previous round I mastered, I already started considering which classes of rules are intrinsically more difficult to deduce/induce/recognize patterns for, yet I totally failed to take that into consideration when I started this round.

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

"koan has..." True:

GREYGRAY
QACK
AX
FORT
GGRAY
A
GAY
GRA
LET

"koan has..." False:

ABK
ABAKAK
NEGOTIBLE
NEGOTIAABLE
NEGOTIABLEA
HINDENBURG
QQ
X
EX
FOLD
OLD
FORD
GGREY
G
E
R
Y
GEY
GRE

[Ramon]

ACK
AK

[ccexplore]

^ Both koans have the Buddha nature.

[Proxima]

ANEGOTIBLE
NEGOTILE
HINDENURG
ALE

[Nepster]

I removed the list in my previous post as the koans AK and E disproved at least some of my rules there.

I doubt that symmetry is really the key to this rule, since GRAY has buddha-nature but GRUY does not.

My thoughts actually went more in the direction of rules like "AKHTBN if if contains two vertically symmetric letters that have distance at least 10 in the alphabet."

Some new koans:
AA
AAA
AAAA
AAAAA
AAAAAA
GRAYL
ABL
TRYL
REDL

@Proxima: I noticed two typos in your list: ABNZ should be ABNS and NEGOTIONABLE should be NEGOTIATIONABLE.

[ccexplore]

Buddha:

HINDENURG
ALE
AA
AAA
AAAA
AAAAA
AAAAAA
GRAYL
ABL
TRYL

not Buddha:

ANEGOTIBLE
NEGOTILE
REDL

[Nepster]

XRAY
LITHE
MOLE
HOXI