Talk:Patterns II

Blank=zero

I haven't been back to the sources, but when I play this (rarely), it is allowed to hand in a final guess with blank cells, scoring zero for those cells.--Nø (talk) 12:59, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Rule-less patterns

The article states:

The Designer’s pattern can be based upon visual symmetries, mathematical algorithms, or other method (see example pattern).

But there is, I believe, no requirement that the "pattern" is based on anything whatsoever. E.g., the Designer may choose a very simple pattern but make one or a few deliberate "mistakes", so that players asking about the cell(s) with "mistakes" almost certainly will score poorly, and those not asking about those typically will get all-correct except for these few cells, thus - potentially - maximizing the scoring range and hence the score for the Designer. You might say that such a design goes against the spirit of the game, disrupts the analogy to scientific method, etc. - but the only viable alternative is to have a way to decide what qualifies as a proper pattern (or, of course, to accept that the rules of the game are open to interpretation).

I'm not sure what the best way to state this in the article is. The quoted passage could be amended thus:

The Designer’s pattern may e.g. be based upon visual symmetries or mathematical algorithms, or may obey no rule at all (see example pattern).

But one may also venture into a more lengthy discussion of rule-less patterns, such as what I wrote in the previous paragraph. I think Gardner discusses this simple-pattern-with-mistakes strategy - but I'm not certain; I don't have it at hand.--Nø (talk) 13:32, 3 December 2019 (UTC)