Getting over oligarch shaders: examining the Islands of Insights test.

I don't think Islands of Insight has a market. The casual puzzlers are on phones and tablets. Unless I'm forgetting something, all PC puzzle games that sold well this century can run on integrated Intel chipsets. If you're reaching, as heavily implied, outside the bubble to social gamers, whether on CoD, WoW or Satisfactory, their games offer at least one of

1. monumental tasks to achieve, or
2. emergence/chaos to keep things fresh and requiring assistance.

Puzzle Pirates, which seems to be the closest value proposition out there, mostly rides on vs and shipbuilding as I understand from the outside. It's very unclear what you're to do with your friend once you rope them in. I do have to acknowledge Internet comments are much more enthusiastic, and the accounts I checked seemed genuine, so I may end up looking very stupid about this.

Wrt to puzzles themselves, the 2D, gridded ones seem like a labour of love. They're elegant designs with ideas to convey, and are presented pretty well. The 3D ones feel incredibly repetitive. Each genre is very similar to each other, and every puzzle in the style is near indistinguishable to each other. There is potential in some variations, but I don't see either forward nor carceral lateral development of the ideas themselves. There's no sign of any greater mysteries to uncover either; of the various attempts at multiplayer puzzlers over the years, the ones that failed less - like Uru or Perplexity - had something to work as a community on, and that maintained engagement for the part of the audience that cares enough to make a wiki for a game.

You could prebake 85% of each level into a single object, and no interactivity would be lost. You can work for an hour, turn back, and nothing would look different. You haven't so much as opened a door, not even cleared your view from puzzle detritus. I find it incredibly disheartening. It doesn't help that the world is incidental, lolrandom. There's a couple of movement tutorial areas, some puzzles put the geometry there is to use, and it's hard to get stuck, but that's the limit of sense. The puzzles are extrinsic, you can't put your understanding of humans, physics, geography, history or architecture to work, and neither can you apply your understanding of symbols, language and art. You spend your time in asset flip noise.

Finally, movement lives in a dead man's land. That matters because it's most of your play time. For players of Cyan games or the Witness, the speed, complexity and occasional need of precision are deal breakers, as are the menu systems, infinite notifications and the occasional need to change cameras. For the average computer gamer, the movement looks and feels janky, and it's not novel, expressive or amenable to much mastery. I don't think the middle ground the game is on right now is very populated.

I wish the developers the best of luck. Somebody has to take a chance on something that's not a variant Sokoban or Portal but dull, and uncharted waters might just hide hungry dragons. This is written in the spirit of not being eaten. 

🪿

Cyberpunk 2021

 I was introduced to the gene shop through the dark web. I went through the gap between the buildings, took the elevator down. The fluorescent starter and motion sensor failed to light the hall until after I exited to the car park. The electrical closets were buzzing, and bad music from the business above was echoing. The plain white cab was in the shadows of the furthest corner.

 She came out from behind the car masked, suited from head to toe. I flashed her my cell. She opened a bag, and I dropped the agreed cash in. She picked up the probe from the car hood, and I took a deep breath of basement fumes. She looked up at my face through her screen, and quickly jammed the probe up my nose. It wriggled, and I felt pain in a new place.

 The probe was just as quickly removed, and I noticed a lady in her forties to our side. She tried to look put together, forcing herself to keep a discreet distance. Most didn't want to be known as a customer, and I respected that. I moved away from them both. Now all I had to do was wait.

Elegant

I've been of the opinion that in genres where clues and givens differ, constructors are tempted to avoid the latter. I understand how the restriction, much like symmetries, allow the setter to enjoy himself and play with the rules, and then share a beautiful by-product of his fun with others. But it has been my  experience that, in making this an expectation for handmade puzzles, both authors and solvers often suffer: ideas are compromised, brute force and bifurcation enters the picture, and completing the grid becomes unfun and laborious.

I further claim that one of the genres that suffers the most from this is Skyscrapers, where often eliminating one problematic possibility inserts multiple new clues, which then undermine the existing logic chain. This is all a very long-winded to say that I don't care for my street cred enough not to post a neat, easy Skyscrapers puzzle. I do find it telling of the attitude that the otherwise excellent pzv doesn't even consider allowing me to offer solvers a given. Thus, if you use the solver linked through the image, you're going to have to carry the 1.


Skyscraper rules

Place one number between one and the side length of the grid in each empty cell. Numbers in the same row, or the same column, should differ. Clues outside the grid indicate how many cell numbers are larger than any preceding cell number.
Alternative, equivalent rule description.


Remember to carry the given 1 through to the automated solver offered by clicking the image.

Purging

There is a giant, growing file on my desktop; I vomit anxiety into it. Financial graphs and calculations, on both personal and macro matters. Incoherent dissertations, aborted blog posts and morose entries for a non-existent diary. Stuff like this week-old gem:

I told you so. Right down to the date. I wish I was wrong.

"You" in this case refers to those who suffer me in meatspace. I had been going on about the breakdown in Greece's arrangements with its lenders' Troika, and the subsequent imposition of a bank holiday and capital controls. I listened to the official announcement while sitting in my balcony, enjoying a lovely breeze, a glorious sunset, and some delicious pastry after a quick game of Carcassone. Lunch was a rather rich mousaka. I went full stereotype.

Greece has had an interesting week after defaulting on the International Monetary Fund. If you need a quick summary on how the last several years ended up here, here's a quick recap of the state of play, in three charts and thirty-three hundred words. Hey, Greeks are supposed to be rather fond of both endless epics and tragedies.

Today is Deeply Sketchy Plebiscite Day, and, at 7 in the morning, I was so very ready to yell FRIST! to the confusion of all present. As on the Internet, somehow two people had beat me to it. Yes, Sherlock, our ballot boxes are indeed made of acrylic glass. So I prayed in the form of marking a tiny cross by the Erised question, and cast it to preserve the nationwide illusion of control.

Here are the de-obfuscated choices:

• Honour, Dignity and Rationing FTW! In practical terms, the re-introduction of a national currency, and a giant nominal devaluation to follow the giant current internal devaluation. But after that unpleasantry, our heroic, muscular government will lead us to Socialist Utopia. Venezuela is often cited as an example, unironically. Supported by the ruling radical left party, and a couple of shades of regressive right, including national socialist black.
• Telling Mutti we're very sorry to have upset her, that we'll really like our new bank haircut, we'll do all our immigrant beating chores, and that we understand our naughtiness is the reason she has to take all state assets and sovereignty from us. In practical terms, inescapable and permanent depression is the best of possible outcomes of this path. Supported by the parties that got us into the mess in the first place, and their cronies, clients and bosses.

So I vomited democracy into a clear box first thing in the morning. Tomorrow, a close result of questionable validity will be making the day interesting again.

Bag of post on Greece

Rules of this Bag / Corral / Cave / whatever puzzle. Par 2:25. You might need your eraser.

As you probably noticed, Greece lives in interesting times. This makes it fodder for the chattering classes across the globe. Chatter with rather shoddy factual basis as it turns out. So please ask me any questions, of any specificity, you may have on Greece, its economy, and the crisis, and I'll do my best to answer.

Turkey troubles

Yesterday, Serkan Yurekli posted a concise description of demonstrations and the harsh crackdown unfolding in Turkey. This is a courageous act, given the continuing arrests of protest information disseminators, and the horrors which threaten detained dissenters. Consider this post an expression of solidarity, and a call for police brutality to cease.

You can get a detailed picture of events and their direct drivers all over the web. I suggest Gawker (of all places) for a conversational overview, and this well-linked Ryan McCarthy piece as an introduction to current discussion.  Acemoglu has a few big-picture pieces on Turkey written prior to the events which seem to be on point. Finally, this video covers the government perspective of events.

Greek Sudoku and Puzzle Championship writeup

This post ended up as a wall of text, so look under the fold at your own peril.

TL;DR version

I did much better at sudoku and much worse at puzzles than I anticipated. Puzzles were of modest difficulty but rather neat. Test format leaves a lot of room for improvement, including typesetting, problem type selection, and examination format. Still, fun overall.