These are the initial rules which with Solitaire Nomic starts.

Adapted from http://www.nomic.net/~board/solitare.html.


'Immutable Rules'

1. 'Two classes of Rules.' There shall be two classes of rules: immutable and mutable. Immutable rules shall have numbers less than 20 and greater than 0; mutable rules shall have numbers 20 or greater. Immutable rules shall not be subject to mutation, death or division.

2. 'Objective.' The goal of this game is to eliminate all rules except this one from the ruleset. The player wins if and only if the goal is achieved.

3. 'Life Span.' All mutable rules shall have a life span of 8 turns from the time of their creation or transmutation to a mutable rule before they are subject to death except where they gain extra life span by subsuming another rule. A mutable rule's current life span is the time remaining until its death. A mutable rule's life span may never exceed 8 turns.

4. 'Rule Changes.' Rules may not be changed, except as stated by the immutable rules.

5. 'Death.' Death is the process of a mutable rule being removed from the ruleset.

6. 'Actions.' Each turn the player may perform exactly one action on exactly one rule. An "action" is one of the rule changes described in the immutable rules. Should there be less than 2 mutable rules remaining then the next action performed must be to divide, if "division" is defined in the immutable rules.

7. 'Transmutation.' Transmutation is the process of renumbering an immutable rule. The transmuted rule loses its old rule number, and gains a number greater than or equal to twenty, which is not the number of an already existing rule. An immutable rule cannot be transmuted if there exists another immutable rule with a greater number.

8. 'Mutation.' Mutation is the process where the player replaces up to 4 consecutive words or 2 non-consecutive words in a mutable rule with from zero to 8 other words. The rule number is part of the text of a rule, and hence it may be mutated; however the number may not be mutated to an already existing number or an illegal number.

9. 'Subsumption.' Subsumption is the process of a mutable rule appending the text of another mutable rule to its own text. The mutable rule that has been subsumed is subject to death. A mutable rule which subsumes another mutable rule gains one half (in turns; integer portions are rounded down) of the other mutable rule's remaining life span.

10. 'Division.' Division is the process of duplicating an rule and prepending a new number to the duplicate. The number prepended may not be an already existing number. Both the rule and its duplicate (if mutable) are given a life span equal to half the rule's life span before it divided, plus four turns.

11. 'Precedence.' Lower number rules always take precedence over higher number rules, without exception.

12. 'Rule Numbers.' Rule numbers must be integers greater than 0. A rule number is always at the start of an rule and is terminated with a full stop followed by a space.

'Mutable Rules'

100. ' Scoring.' The player shall gain 10 points by performing an action.

101. ' Permissibility of the Unprohibited.' Whatever is not regulated or prohibited by these rules is permitted.


I see one clear problem here. Rules are not required to be integers, so the first time I tried it I did the following: Turn 1. Mutate rule 100 by adding the text "A player may mutate or transmute any rule." Turn 2. Divide rule 100 into a rule 100.1 and a rule 100.2. 100.2 has only the new sentence. Turn 3. Mutate rule 100.2 by changing its number to 6.5

Then, I simply transmuted the rules one by one, ending with 6.5 and 7. At the end, I just had to divide them so they would go away faster and faster, and so I won. My proposed fix is to require integers as rule numbers, which makes the game much harder. - CraigDaniel

Actually transmutation is at the start only one-way, from immutable to mutable. -- DrDucker?


It seems to me that no action can be taken at all here, so the game ends as soon as it begins: you can't change anything in the immutable rules except to transmute them; transmutation does nothing but change the numbers; you can't alter the mutables to allow you to change the immutables, because only methods described in the immutables can alter the rules. How do you play at all? -- Wonko

If you transmute rule 12 into rule 21, it becomes a mutable rule, since it would then have a rule number greater than 20 -- DrDucker?

"Similarly, mutation allows the creation of immutable rules if you mutate their rule number below 20." -- NaNoMeTeR


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