If you look at Kory's rule page:
http://wunderland.com/WTS/Kory/Games/Zendo/HowToPlay.html
you'll see this section:
Koans
Over the course of the game, players will create different arrangements of
one or more pyramids on the table. Each arrangement is referred to as a
"koan," pronounced "KO-ahn." Koans can be set up in any fashion, as long as
they don't touch other objects or other koans.
Notice that a koan is an arrangement of one or more (not zero) pyramids.
Ryan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Timothy Hunt" <games@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Icehouse Discussion List" <icehouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2006 11:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Icehouse] tough Zendo rules
On 12/30/06, Dan Isaac 2 <disaac2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well, the trouble with the Null koan, and why it has been ruled illegal
in
the base rules of Zendo, is that people can interpret it differently.
I've looked through all of Kory's Zendo pages, and I find no such
prohibition...
So in your example:
> 1a) AKHTBNIAOI it has no red pieces (Null has BN)
> 1b) AKHTBNIAOI if only consists of blue or green or yellow pieces or
> any combination of those three (Null, as it does not contain at least
> one blue or green or yellow, does not have BN)
I could say that in 1b) the null koan DOES have the BN since it has no
pieces that contradict your rule. It has no pieces that are NOT Yellow,
Green, nor Blue.
Hmm... interesting interpretation, and I see your point.
P.S.> By the way, you could make most rules into your two-part style by
stating it one way as "must have at least one piece" (== "the null koan
does
NOT have the BN") and the other way without that condition. (Or force the
second version with the condition that "the null koan has BN".)
Yes, but that performs my wish trivially so.
Thinking further, I guess what I'm actually interested in exploring
are those rule-pairs where there is a single koan to distinguish them,
without having a trivial exception. Adding "must have at least one
piece" makes that distinction trivial, to my mind.
and yes, I could have a pair that is "contains no red" and "contains
no red, except for the koan that is a single piece and that piece is
an upright red queen". But that *trivially* distinguishes the two
rules by a single koan, and thus to my mind is uninteresting.
If we move away from using the Null Koan (as that can potentially be
interpreted multiple ways), do rule-pairs exist such that a single
koan distinguishes between the two, without that single koan being
explicitly or obviously stated in one (or both) of the rules? (For
some definition of "obviously" ;) )
And, just to note, I'm not necessarily planning on using such rules,
it's just a bit of mental masturbation to examine the possibilities.
Timothy
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