Subject: ackanomic Digest V4 #184
From: [email-masked]
To: ackanomic digest users <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 00:00:00 -400 (EDT)

ackanomic Digest	Sunday, July 11 1999	Volume: 04  Issue: 184

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: JT Traub <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: *Ping*
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 12:15:00 -0400 (EDT)

Today is Sunday the 11th day of July, and the Machine That Goes *ping*
has gone *ping* today.  Since I have been scholar, the Machine has
gone *ping* 4 times.

--Dragon Mage

-- 
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
[ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]

------------------------------

From: "Andrew Quizzan" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Shrubbery!
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 12:51:41 -0400 (EDT)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Matt Miller <[email-masked]>
To: Ackanomic <[email-masked]>
Sent: Saturday, July 10, 1999 9:20 PM
Subject: Acka: Shrubbery!

> I zap Andrew Quizzan.

I'm a shrubbery, not a lightning rod, so there.

------------------------------

From: "Gavin Logan" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: Educational Hearing
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 15:58:17 -0400 (EDT)

With apologies to /dev/joe I call an Educational Hearing on his thesis
below.Valid responses are "Burn the Heretic!" and "Students who THINK? What
will they come up with next...".

Reply to vote.

King Felix
(drunkard)

***
>Why There Are No More Interesting Treasure Hunts
>by /dev/joe
>
>
>At one time, there were quite a few interesting treasure hunts in
>Ackanomic.  In the last year, though, it seems people have needed
>significant prodding to even attempt to solve treasure hunts.
>The primary reason this is so is that most of the interesting ideas
>for treasure hunts have already been done.
>
>Many of the early treasures in Ackanomic asked treasure hunters
>to perform relatively simple, well-defined tasks.  For instance,
>Treasure 101 [1] asked players to win three different sub-games,
>each of which had three or more players.  At the time, the sub-game
>system was rather new (this was October 1996) and this was probably
>intended to prod the system along, both to encourage players to play
>games and to encourage the creation of more games playable by three
>or more players.  It's not clear how well it accomplished this
>purpose; it was quite some time before anybody accomplished this feat,
>despite the introduction of several new games and quite a few instances
>of the games being played.  However, many of the multi-player games
>take months to play, and as it can get confusing to have multiple
>instances of the same game in progress, only in a couple instances
>(Eleusis, Game of Pure Skill) have there been two instances of the
>same multi-player game in progress at once; three is unheard of. [2]
>Since this time, the winning-subgames mechanic has been used elsewhere
>with the rules [3] and as part of another treasure [4] but the idea
>of making another treasure with just this condition seems passe.
>
>Treasure 102 asked players to submit proposals to define new ways of
>winning Ackanomic.  This was an overwhelmingly successful treasure,
>in that players continued doing so long after the treasure was found,
>perhaps to the extent of creating too many ways to win.
>
>Treasure 103 was the first of a long line of encoded treasures.
>If anything has been overdone in treasures in Ackanomic, encodings have.
>This first encoding was a relatively tricky one, a book code using
>proposal numbers and word offsets from either end of the proposal,
>which also shifted all the proposal numbers by 300 to hide the fact that
>they were proposal numbers.  This took a good three months to be found.
>Treasure 111 (snowgod's treasure which gave the word "Hubert" its
>Ackanomic meaning) sparked the series of (mostly much easier) encoded
>treasures.  This treasure's map was simply presented as hexadecimal
>ASCII, and several players figured it out quickly.  Treasure 112 was
>encoded by obfuscation; what appeared to be a uuencoded file was actually
>a text message scattered throughout the "encoded" data.  Treasures 113,
114,
>118, 121, 124, 127, 129, 132, 133, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 147, 151,
>and 155 were other encodings.  In general, these were either found very
>quickly (when they were variations or combinations of "standard"
encodings),
>or tended to stay buried for a very long time.  Treasures 121, 129, 133,
135,
>and 147 have apparently never been decoded, though 129 and 133 were found
>due to a rule which allowed for an alternate method of finding treasures
>which have been without map custodians for a long time.  Treasures 114,
139,
>and 141 took three to five weeks to decode, 132 took about two months, 118
>took four months, and 155 took over a year.  The others in the list above
>were found within a day or two of being buried.  In recent times, there is
>still the occasional treasure which consists of nothing but an encoded
>message, but usually now codes are combined with other activities; codes
>that have been done before are generally too easy to decode, and ones that
>haven't are generally too difficult.
>
>Treasures 105 and 106 continued the idea in treasures 101 and 102,
>by asking players to perform various normal game actions (normal,
>like burying treasure, winning duels, etc., as opposed to solving a
>puzzle or decoding a message and posting the result).  This theme also
>proves to be an oft-repeated one.  This can be thought of as the basis
>behind the "hidden agenda" concept later implemented as Agenda Hats.
>
>Treasure 107 was the first of a type of treasures I'm calling "collect
>and win" treasures.  This example is actually not typical of the style;
>finding it required owning trinkets buried in two other treasures.
>The real prototype for these treasures was the Runestone of Jukkasjarvi,
>treasure 122.  Here, there were a bunch of small puzzles, some of them
>codes, some puzzles, and some game actions, and each treasure hunter had
>only knowledge about one or a few fragments until they put their
>knowledge together.  This would probably never have been found had the
>map custodian not chosen to divulge certain details upon the play of a
>map shard on the treasure; while it did not really require knowledge of
>all the pieces and the map shard information, it did require knowledge
>of most of the pieces and an alternate form of the map shard info which
>was given as concealed clues in messages which apparently no player ever
>found until after the treasure was found.  This sort of contest did not
>catch on for a while, perhaps because the Jukkasjarvi one was seen as so
>hard as to be uninteresting.
>
>Treasures 109 and 110 began another genre of treasures, ones which
>ask players to perform some significant non-game action.  In this case,
>it was learning the Python language well enough to write interesting
>programs.  I am calling these treasures "personal agenda" treasures;
>they ask other players to either do something to the buryer's benefit
>(outside of Ackanomic), or to engage in some activity the buryer
>enjoys.  Treasures 115 and 116 would continue this theme, this time
>asking players to write self-printing programs in a language created
>by the buryer.  This theme tends to blend in with the puzzle-solving
>theme which becomes popular later; treasures 115 and 116 can be
>considered puzzles as much as they are asking players to learn a
>programming language.  Treasure 119 is very much a puzzle.  Treasure
>120 gets back to the original idea in this theme, in this case,
>basically setting up an in-game payment for whoever completed a certain
>bit of out-of-but-related-to-Acka work first.  Treasure 125 continues
>the puzzle theme, and 126 continues to straddle the line between
>puzzles and personal agendas, asking players to find and post the
>location of hidden contests in Games Magazine.  Treasure 126 would
>later see a sequel in treasure 181, and the apparent lack of interest
>in T181 seems to support the idea that repeating old treasure ideas is
>uninteresting.  (T126 may well have generated more interest *outside*
>Ackanomic than T181 did *inside* it.  Eric Berlin, one of the co-authors
>of the Orion's Crystal story from the April 1997 Games, recently noticed
>me on the weekly National Puzzlers' League chat, and asked me to
>explain Ackanomic to him well enough to give him a vague idea how I
>was using his idea here.  I think he was intrigued that anybody else
>used Orion's Crystal to refer to anything beyond his story.)  Treasure
>167 was also firmly in this realm; a hard puzzle that really seemed to
>require some research into past endeavors in that field, though the
>actual solution seemed to be a new technique.  The puzzle-like treasures
>have proven to be popular, and genuinely new puzzles are likely to be
>candidates for good new treasures; however, such puzzles are rare and
>difficult to invent, and as a result, it is not likely that we will
>see a huge number of these.  However, it is entirely possible to do
>such puzzles outside of Ackanomic; indeed, I have been doing so, and
>even winning some small (real-world) prizes for doing so. [5]
>
>Treasures 104, 128, and 152 are examples of treasures in perhaps the most
>boring class of all: those which appear to be intended to remain buried
>forever.  In these cases, no apparent clues about how to find the treasures
>have come forth.
>
>Treasures 169 and 173 started another series of treasures, which were
>based on trivia and often quotations from books, movies, song lyrics, etc.
>Treasures 183, 189, 190, 210, 239, 255, 259 and 274 continue this theme.
>The problem with these is that they are either too easy, or web-searchable
>easier than to get them from memory, or if not even web-searchable, so hard
>that nobody can reasonably be expected to find them.
>
>With the exception of the puzzle theme, most of these themes seem to be
>already played out to the point of boredom.  This is why there are
>no more interesting treasures these days.
>
>
>1. Most of the burial announcements and other relevant messages about
>treasures referenced in this thesis may be found at K 2's Treasure
>archive, either at http://www.ackanomic.org/~k2/treasure/found.htm if
>they have been found, or http://www.ackanomic.org/~k2/treasure/treasure.htm
>if they have not been found.
>
>2. The histories of subgames can be found at the Ackanomic Subgames page
>at http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~dcr24/Nomic/Acka/subgames/index.html
>and the many pages referenced on that page.
>
>3. Rule 8-7, "Le Grand Fromage", awards a gouda for winning Grab A Donkey,
>Party Chess, or three Games & Contest games with at least five players
each.
>
>4. June 9, 1999, in a message from T. T. Ren on the ackanomic list; one of
>the conditions needed to receive one piece of the map is to win a subgame
>with at least five players.  As of this writing, not on K 2's Treasure
page.
>
>5. See http://www.mathpuzzle.com/parity.html and
>http://www.maa.org/features/mathchat/mathchat_7_1_99.html for two such
>puzzles, and the http://www.mathpuzzle.com site as a whole for many
>puzzles of this type and links to other appropriate sites.
>
>
>

------------------------------

From: "Gavin Logan" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Acka: My nose
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 15:58:19 -0400 (EDT)

My nose is a nose of type: Shiftless Bum. It is green. It is shaped like a
Star Wars toy of type: Obi-Wan Kenobi and speaks in an Irish accent. (Often
commenting: "How about a pint of Alec Guinness?", "Hic.", "I love you..."
etc.)

A nose of type Shiftless Bum is immediately placed off-board where it
perpetually staggers from side-to-side except when it is being sick. A
Shiftless Bum has no game effect other than being pointed at by other
players and mocked.

King Felix
(...and then I got off the bus...)

------------------------------

From: [email-masked] (Dice server)
Subject: Acka: Ackanomicon Determination
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 15:58:43 -0400 (EDT)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Dice rolls requested by: "Gavin Logan" <[email-masked]>
Rolls also sent to:
    [email-masked]

# Player: Emperor Ai! Pedrito!
# Ackanomicon Determination
# based on the following (using a 54 sided die)
#  1 - 16 Arcane Trivia
# 17 - 21 Vile Prophecies
# 22 - 27 Inner Workings
# 28 - 33 Arcane Lore
# 34 - 36 Terrorizing Pages
# 37 - 38 Mutation
# 39 - 40 Dark Domain
# 41 - 42 Long Lost Treasure
# 43 - 43 Forbidden Fruit
# 44 - 47 Not so Forbidden Fruit
# 48 - 48 Ancient One
# 49 - 54 Strange Object

No. of sides on every die:     54
No. of dice for every roll:     1
No. of dice rolls requested:    1
No. of rolls per line:          1

     37

Information on the dice server:
   DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE!
   Replies to [email-masked] vanish into a seldom-read mailbox.

   For instructions on using the dice server, send a message with
   subject "help" to [email-masked], or see http://www.pbm.com/dice/

   The dice server is provided by:

      Shadow Island Games
      http://www.pbm.com/

=================================================
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Original message follows:
> From [email-masked]  Sun Jul 11 13:24:39 1999
> Received: (from smtp@localhost) by xkey.com
>       id NAA03478 for <[email-masked]>; Sun, 11 Jul 1999 13:24:39 -0700
> Received: from mail2.svr.pol.co.uk(195.92.193.210) by xkey.com via smtp (V1.3)
>       id sma003474; Sun Jul 11 13:24:38 1999
> Received: from modem-84.astelin.dialup.pol.co.uk ([62.136.53.212] helo=default)
>       by mail2.svr.pol.co.uk with smtp (Exim 2.12 #1)
>       id 113Pjv-0001Ro-00
>       for [email-masked]; Sun, 11 Jul 1999 20:58:19 +0100
> Message-ID: <011701becbd7$8c7d9480$d435883e@default>
> From: "Gavin Logan" <[email-masked]>
> To: <[email-masked]>
> Subject: Acka: Ackanomicon Determination
> Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 20:51:26 +0100
> X-Priority: 3
> X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
> X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.5
> X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3
> 
> #P [email-masked]
> #S 54
> #D 1
> #R 1
> #L 1
> #T Acka: Ackanomicon Determination
> #C Player: Emperor Ai! Pedrito!
> #C Ackanomicon Determination
> #C based on the following (using a 54 sided die)
> #C
> #C  1 - 16 Arcane Trivia
> #C 17 - 21 Vile Prophecies
> #C 22 - 27 Inner Workings
> #C 28 - 33 Arcane Lore
> #C 34 - 36 Terrorizing Pages
> #C 37 - 38 Mutation
> #C 39 - 40 Dark Domain
> #C 41 - 42 Long Lost Treasure
> #C 43 - 43 Forbidden Fruit
> #C 44 - 47 Not so Forbidden Fruit
> #C 48 - 48 Ancient One
> #C 49 - 54 Strange Object
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

------------------------------

Subject: Re: Acka: Impeach the Dean!
From: Joseph DeVincentis <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 16:45:32 -0400 (EDT)

Joseph DeVincentis wrote:
> 
> This is an impeachment paper to remove King Felix from the office of Dean.
> He has been lax in performing his duty of calling an Educational Hearing
> on my Thesis!  Vote YES or NO on the matter of removing em from this
> office in the public forum in the next three days.

I was going to retract this IP if he posted the hearing within 3 days
but since he took longer, here are the results:

IdiotBoy, BLMP, Dragon Mage, and EAP voted YES, and no other votes were
cast.  Since this is fewer than 25% of the active players, the IP is
rejected.

Of course, I haven't read the rules carefully enough to see who is supposed
to post this officially, so I don't know if this message matters for anything.

/dev/joe

------------------------------

Subject: Acka: IdiotBoy's lost treasure
From: Joseph DeVincentis <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 20:24:37 -0400 (EDT)

IdiotBoy was complaining on the moo/irc today about one of his treasures
not being listed on K2's page.  I found it.

Matt Miller wrote:
> Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 21:44:35 -0400 (EDT)
> X-Sent-At-Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 21:44:23 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Matt Miller <[email-masked]>
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Acka: Paella Anyone?
> Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
> 
> Heh, just kidding.
> 
> But I am burying a Bonus Vote (since I have one) and A$100 as treasure.  I
> am revealing this portion of the map.  Or something.
> 
> SnVzdCBzYXkgV29vZiEK
> ====
> 
> Yours truly-
> IB

------------------------------

Subject: Acka: Woof!
From: Joseph DeVincentis <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 20:44:10 -0400 (EDT)

Woof!
Woof! Woof! Woof!

I say "Woof!" in case the above was not clear.

/dev/joe

------------------------------

End of ackanomic Digest V4 #184
*******************************