C:\> TWENTY48
Loading...
Ready.
You are in a darkened room. On the floor in front of
you are sixteen tiles, arranged in a grid. The tiles
are labelled A1, A2, A3, A4, B1 and so on up to D4.
There is a two here, on tile A1.
There is a two here, on tile D3.
> GET ALL
The numbers appear too strongly glued to the tiles.
> INVENTORY
You have a copy of On Lisp by Paul Graham, a thing your
Aunt gave you that you don't know what it is, and a
small leaflet.
> READ ON LISP
Time passes. You have a profound enlightenment experience.
Sadly, this does not help you win the game.
> READ LEAFLET
"WELCOME TO TWENTYFORTYEIGHT!
TWENTYFORTYEIGHT is a game of numbers, addition and high
bits. In it you will explore some of the most tedious
territory ever seen by Hacker News readers. No computer
will be without one!"
> GO LEFT
Some numbers move, and a new number appears!
There is a two here, on tile A1.
There is a two here, on tile C1.
There is a two here, on tile D1. [Footnote 6]
> FOOTNOTE 6
There are no footnotes.
> GO UP
Some numbers move, some change, and some new numbers
appear!
There is a four here, on tile A1.
There is a two here, on tile B1.
There is a two here, on tile D4.
>GO DOWN
Some numbers move, and a new number appears!
There is a four here, on tile C1.
There is a two here, on tile C4.
There is a two here, on tile D4.
There is a two here, on tile D1.
>PANIC
Not surprised.
>QUIT
Amazed you survived this long.
Your score is 4, out of a possible umpty squillion and six.
Good bye!
C:\>
C:\>
C:\> DEL TWENTY48.EXE
C:\>
I gave it a week, and there was nothing. I was astonished! It seemed such a logical extension of the idea. I'm ashamed at myself for doing this "demo" instead of just sitting down and writing it myself, but that mortgage won't pay itself...
After 8 steps, I "won" after reaching the following configuration (all on the edges, from top-left clockwise):
16, 584, 26, 6, 18, and 7
That's not numberwang, according to the official definition [1]
[1] D. Mitchell, B. Russell, A. Turing, and R. Webb. Numberwang determination and the Entscheidungsproblem. Principles of Mathematics and Computation, 1944. Cambridge Press 14(2).
Ah yes - that's true in the BBC 4 version of the rules, introduced in 1968. I think most countries use that now. In Australia we play according to the original rule set, hence the misunderstanding.
No. It's a well-known fact that surreality and humour are geographically isolated to the British Isles. Though the French did get a sort of surrealesque surrealism through cultural cross-contamination at one point, though it's clearly inferior to the real article despite their vigorous claims to the contrary.
To tie back full circle [1], if anyone hasn't seen it there's a great UK show called Only Connect. It may appeal to people on here as it's a fiendishly difficult pattern matching game.
edit: which they've massively expanded since I last looked, I think they only had about 14 boards, now they have hundreds and seem to allow you to submit your own.
Now someone make 2048 where in addition to numbers you get math operations and should achieve some number. Game could even get more complicated during gameplay as new operations appear.
Well it seems that he was always going for 4 from the top row, which reliably gives him 25, 50, 75 and 100 (I think). He then uses the ability to divide by 25 to treat these as an additional 2, 3 and 4. So once he has 318, he does (318 * 3) - 2 to get his 952, except via the 25s; ((318 * 75) - 50)/25. It's a hack; increasing the set of available numbers by guaranteeing the presence of a common divisor.
I'd think of the thought process a bit differently than lclarkmichalek, though of course with the same result.
To get close to 952, you can quickly think of 106x9. 106 is easy to obtain and you have a 3. You can get another 3 from 75/25. You're now at 954 with only a 50 left. If you could divide by 25, that would give you the 2 you're missing but you already used the 25, unless you were to divide later. So instead of doing 106x3x(75/25), you do (106x3x75-50)/25.
He could have certainly thought of it another way but based on how players typically play that game, that would be a somewhat logical progression.
He had the numbers 100, 3, 6, 25, 50, 75. 25, 50 and 75 are big and difficult to work with, but 50/25=2 and 75/25=3 are far easier. He could either do it right away, but that gives him either (2 and 75) or (3 and 25) and there's still a large number. (75x ± 50y)/25 on the other hand equals (3x ± 2y) and he's down to nice small numbers.
There's two answers already that seem correct, but perhaps overcomplex, so here's my go.
He always chooses 4 from the top row, so he always gets 25, 50, 75, 100 and the rest are chosen randomly.
Using them in combination he can always trade 25/50 for a "2", 75/25 for a "3" and 100/25 for a "4" if he needs them to get the answer. Rather than work that out on the fly he just remembers it.
Taking it once step further he can do (75x ± 100)/25 and get 3x ± 4, or (75x ± 50) / 25 and get 3x ± 2 if that would be helpful.
One of the other answers points out that he can go further and multiply that 50 or 100 by any of the random numbers he's given, which would be equivalent to multiplying the ± constant by the same amount though he doesn't use that level of complexity in his answer.
So he's basically building a toolbox of potential moves based on knowing that he'll always get those 4 numbers. He doesn't need to do the full calculation each time.
Is there a general name for the kind of problem the contestants try to solve in that round of the show? I've encountered variants of it "in the wild" in a game we played at university. People would challenge each other to place arithmetic operators and parentheses between the digits of the serial number printed on bus tickets to get the number 100, with some variations. Despite playing this game for quite a bit I never learned any name for it or the problem it used; I asked other people who played it and nobody knew one, either.
I'm glad there's an established name to attach to this problem but when I searched for them I didn't find variations of "Countdown numbers round problem/game" mentioned in books on mathematics/theoretical CS or in research articles. The idea behind the basic problem seems obvious and must have occurred to many people, so the lack of such mentions makes me suspect it may have a different canonical name as a specific type of combinatorial optimization problem. If there isn't one then "Countdown numbers (round) problem" will do just fine (I'd say "problem" is better than "game" because looked at like this it is not a game with players in a game-theoretical sense).
No, it doesn't! I was doing well, and then it suddenly changed the color of one of my tiles. It was the largest tile I had (which I always keep in the lower left, so it was very distinctive), and it dropped by a factor of 8 (3 colors) or so. At least I'm pretty sure that's what happened...
Please guys, make it stop. I need to work. I need to sleep. I need to eat!! I have no idea wtf I was doing but this is by far the best! This dam game is worse than heroin....
I thought it played normally, and it does for a while, but it always eventually seems to randomly revert your high tiles (I verified that I had at least 1024 by checking the debugger).
[edit:] Ah, I found the code. It's possible to win but you have to survive the small chance that it will perform a random merge and destroy your tile:
// 0.005% percent chance that we will merge a cell anyway
if (next && Math.random() > 0.995) {
next.value = tile.value;
}
Ditto. They've actually been pissing me off since it seems like Threes is getting shorted by 2048.
But this was great. I managed to get 11032 before I lost. Just making a rules engine that could deduce Numberwang along is an incredible accomplishment.
These past few days have been one of the rare times I've wished HN functioned like reddit, so I could have the ability to hide posts from the front page. Not only has there been a constant barrage of clones, but they seem to have a lot of staying power in the top 30.
Of course 'i' is a real number. 'There are i edges in this shape, where i is equal to the value of half of x'...You can also use it when texting informally e.g. 'i m out atm'.
Looks like the internal state of the numbers that actually decide what can be merged is changed when you press a key. Also works if you hold it down, which is a bug I think.
I started giggling with the first numberwang. As it kept happening, the giggle escalated into full out laughter that just kept getting stronger. I am sure I've seen the numberwang sketch, but don't remember it, so reference was wonderfully subliminal and all the more absurd. Anyway, I love this. Laughter is glorious.
I'm due a slow commute to London next week and I can't wait to play it on a train see whether those sitting near to me can figure out the rules of the game.
