On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 4:13 PM, Buddha Buck
<blaisepascal@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
As near as I can tell, your house rule is "Bad rules are invalid".
Can you clarify if that's the case (or give a better phrasing of it?)
Presumably that is sarcasm. A bit insulting, but I'll assume that that's unintentional. Clearly that would be no rule at all. Like "a pig is an animal that looks a bit like a pig".
The point I have been trying to make is that **irrespective of what my own house rules are**, if enough players find themselves crafting house rules that ban the scrabble rule, then *maybe* that is an indication that the core Zendo rules should do so too. (Unless, of course, the core rules already ban it, which might arguably be the case.)
I personally think it would be useful to have a discussion about the best way to form a house rule to ban the scrabble example, for those players that feel inclined to do so. As it happens it has never come up in this house because in order to do so (amongst our players) they would have to be playing in the spirit of "lets make a really hard rule that no-one can get". And we don't. Amongst other groups of players such a rule might be created in a completely different spirit, of course.
I've already said that I think the scrabble rule accesses an external object, the scrabble dictionary. That's close enough to a house rule that covers it for me.
Or shall we play a game of Zendo? As I understand it, two suitable
initial koans are:
The koan "akhtbni it consists of a single stack where the initial
letters of the colors of the 'mids, reading from top down, spell a
word in the current edition of the Official Scrabble Dictionary as of
the start of the game" is marked "black"
Agreed, I'd mark that black too. (I mark your marking it black with a white stone....)
The koan "akhtbni the total pip count of the koan is prime" is marked "white".
Yep, me too.
Nice way to reduce the discussion to the important things, BTW. I hope others follow it up. Here's one from me:
The koan "akhtbni is consists of a single stack where the pip count, reading from the top down, make up a valid US zip code." is marked "black".