grams88 Blog

[grams88]

Thanks Mobius, We have a few more kids going to be joining the family, my cousins wife is due around November time, my other cousin's wife had a baby just this month. If I have that right I think that would be my second cousin myself to the baby. 

I have two challenges but the bad thing is you can only do one at a time sort of. You'll remember this game which is (Peg Solitaire) a game where you have to remove marbles by jumping over them. Now my challenge is either (one or two), Challenge one is to basically try to solve it without cheating and by seeing if you can make it to leaving just one marble left over. Challenge two is you cheat and solve it but wait to see in a years time if you can remember how you solved it. Usually after a year or two you tend to forget the solution so this is testing to see if you can remember the solution after so many years, that can be an interesting challenge itself, this might be testing our memory rather than skill maybe. I like to apply this logic, its like you remember a solution to something when you were a kid but you forget now. (You could apply lemmings to this).

https://www.webgamesonline.com/peg-solitaire/

You could apply the same to the rubix cube, you might want to have a look at the solution but then you try to test yourself a year or two and see if you can still remember what the solution is. This can be an interesting challenge itself.  I've ordered a rubix cube and I'm planing on doing a challenge two on it. I want to see if I can remember the solution for life so I can impress people, I like doing that sometimes. It makes life interesting I feel. It will be a very hard challenge as you do tend to forget solutions after so much time has passed. If you do forget the solution you are allowed to look it up on the youtube or wherever you can find a solution.

Hope everyone is doing okay today.

grams88

[Simon]

Challenge one is to basically try to solve it without cheating and by seeing if you can make it to leaving just one marble left over.

Peg solitaire is such a classic, I wouldn't search for a solution without sinking all teeth into it first. I've never attacked it seriously yet. Interesting idea.

After solving with one marble left, the harder task asks to finish with the lone marble in the center.

see in a years time if you can remember how you solved it. Usually after a year or two you tend to forget the solution so this is testing to see if you can remember the solution

We forget about solutions unless the puzzle is special:

• Both puzzle and solution come from your childhood, and leave a strong memory. Probably the solution is more memorable, easier, and our brains were softer.
• You routinely apply similar tricks to variants of the puzzle. This happens for contemporary Lemmings players, and for high school/early-university math students.
• You've endlessly ground it. Rubik's Cube is too hard without looking up solutions. During late high school in 2003 to 2005, I speed cubed with averages around 30 to 40 seconds, and learned the full Fridrich route. I forgot nearly everything for the later stages and would nowadays solve with beginner tech that has stuck to mind, and which is the core part of Fridrich.
• geoo will never forget the solution to Lemmings' Ark in Genesis Lemmings, and envies me because I either don't know it yet, or have forgotten it. (I don't even know which of these two.) I'd need a proper installation of vanilla Lemmix though to re-attempt. >_>

Anyway, the Cube is quality leisure time, and it's booming even more than 15 years ago when I learned it. Enjoy!

-- Simon

[grams88]

You make a good point there Simon with sinking all teeth into the peg solitaire before checking up a solution, it's quite a tricky one to solve on itself and even harder probably to get the marble finishing on the centre. There were some other websites such as the cool math website which has some peg solitaire puzzles, it had your standard one as well as other ones, some are easier and some are harder than the standard one.

You do tend to notice that you remember things or puzzles from your childhood especially it was something you really enjoyed as a child. I've never heard of the fridrich route  before but look forward to checking that one out, I wonder if that is one of the main solving methods. Even looking a solution very quickly just to get the feel of whats to come with the rubix cube. My rubix cube moves quite smoothly as I remember the old one I had felt as if it got stuck while moving it.  I liked shuffling this cube around it feel really cool, was randomly shuffling around and trying to make it hard for myself, I was probably mainly focusing on how flexible the cube seems at first then I will probably start to attempt to solve it while looking it up on the internet. Welldone Simon for solving the cube back in your high school years, 30 seconds is actually really good time.   

Recently I've just completed lemmings chronicles for the first time, a really good game and the puzzles are great I feel. I must say that you are committing a crime if you don't try lemmings chronicles. I might attempt lemmings revolution maybe next but I Do hear that it tends to be harder to install on a newer operating system. I might try to get round to lemmings 3d as well. I don't think I completed that one as a child. I might as well attempt to finish tomb raider anniversary, I'm on the second last level. I'm in a video game phase at the moment trying to complete games that I haven't done yet.

This is probably more a thought experiment but I was thinking that we could think about it a little bit, I might as well as I've been talking about video games above. An experiment now as I've been talking about video games, could you name most of the  video games you have completed through out your life time. I bet the list would never end, now I need to be strict for it to be mentioned like for example if you believe you completed the game that's evidence itself or if you have not quite 100% a game but you have completed it otherwise still counts. Thinking about that myself I know my list would be big me thinks. We could probably actually try this maybe one time and write all the games that come to mind that you have completed. We have to be strict with older games as a lot of them might rely on the one attempt or if the game has a password system.

I don't really anyone to attempt this for real unless you really want to.

For example think about all the lemmings games you have completed, that would get you off to a good start.

[namida]

geoo will never forget the solution to Lemmings' Ark in Genesis Lemmings, and envies me because I either don't know it yet, or have forgotten it. (I don't even know which of these two.) I'd need a proper installation of vanilla Lemmix though to re-attempt. >_>

https://www.neolemmix.com/?page=download_list&program=42

These are all just download-and-run (should work fine with WINE). Enter "CHEATCODES" as a password (or just change cheat mode to on in the INI file), then you can type eg. "GENESIS45" as a password (which I think is the actual position of Lemmings' Ark, though I could be wrong).