Geeklists for Zendo
Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Lee Ambolt
Sweden
Lund
Skåne
Ingen Reklam Tack!
Linus Per Ambolt 13.12.2010
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MATCH 5
Hang on, what's this doing here ?!
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Tim Shippert
United States
Richland
Washington
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Start time: 8:45pm
End time: 9:00pm
Meanwhile, Steve and Laura had arrived, and roped Ori and Alan into a quick round of Zendo. Steve was the first to discover Laura's rule that the koan must "contain at least two small pyramids".
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Tim Shippert
United States
Richland
Washington
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Start time: 3:00am
End time: 5:30am
As anyone who has read any of the recent session reports knows, some subset of us at the CBBS are fascinated by Zendo. When that subset is in attendance, it is pretty much inevitable that a rousing game of Zendo will shut down the Official CBBS Gaming Basement.
Laura had done some work trying to deconstruct the elements of a good Zendo rule, in an attempt to try to figure out, a priori, how hard it will be to solve. (One important additional element is what one uses for the initial koans.)
Thus, we saw a number of very successful rules. Steve used "Does not contain a floating black", Tim came up with "Must contain at least two non-grounded pyramids", Caleb used "must contain at least two non-small pyramids", and Laura set "all large pyramids must be green". These were all satisfying rules, as they took a reasonable (i.e. finite and non-zero) amount of time to solve. Zendo works best as a game with rules like these.
And then Tim, in an attempt to destroy the evening, came up with a truly awful rule: "The pyramids can be divided into two groups, each containing zero or more pyramids, such that the sum of the pips in the first group is equal to the sum of the pips in the other group." (I have added some qualifications in math-ese to make the rule rigorous, but that was essentially the rule as I played it.)
The problem with this rule is that it is almost impossible to infer the little details from examples. It quickly becomes clear that matching koans have to have an even number of pips, but the even non-matching koans (e.g. 2-2-2, 1-3) don't really point the way to a solution.
On the other hand, some people (like Laura) consider an almost impossible rule like this a challenge. As the examples piled up and it became clear there was some kind of mathematical rule in play, she engaged in some serious analysis to try and crack the puzzle:
There were a couple of fun mathematical byproducts of this analysis. For example, one can prove that Laura's guess that "The difference between the number of large and small pyramids is even" is actually the same as saying "the sum of the pips on all pyramids is even". That's not obviously true, so that's kind of interesting.
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): Let ns and nl be the number of small and large pyramids, respectively. Let m and k represent any integers. We'll define S as the sum of the pips in the large and small pyramids, and D as the difference between the number of large and small pyramids:
S==3nl+ns
D==nl-ns
(Note that S ignores medium pyramids, because the parity of S won't change if we add any number of 2-point pyramids; if S is even, S'=3nl+2nm+1ns will be even as well).
Adding these two equations together gives us:
S+D=4nl
(a) If D is even, then by definition D=2m for some integer m. Thus, S=4nl-2m=2(2nl-m)==2k, where k=2nl-m is an integer. Thus, S is also even.
(b) If S is even, S=2m, and D=4nl-2m=2(2nl-m)==2k, so D is also even.
Corollaries (a) and (b) together prove that "S is even" and "D is even" are equivalent statements; each implies the other. QED.
Note also that the conjecture "the difference between the number of large and small is even" is equivalent to "the sum of the number of large and small is even". We'll leave that one as an exercise for the reader.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
John Farrell
Australia
Aspley
Queensland
Averagely Inadequate
Buster Keaton from 'Go West'
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(10 plays in 2005, now 28 plays total) That's my copy in the picture, photo taken in my game room in around 2007, so we were still playing it then. My niece (also in the picture) really likes it, but last time I saw her SHE DROVE THE CAR. That's a really terrifying thought.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Jeff Wolfe
United States
Columbus
Ohio
Zendo fan, Columbus Blue Jackets fan, Dominion Fan. These are 'permanent microbadges' to free up space on my microbadge row
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Lee Ambolt
Sweden
Lund
Skåne
Ingen Reklam Tack!
Linus Per Ambolt 13.12.2010
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or will this game become the Master?
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
patrick stevens
United States
Los Angeles
California
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A racing game to the finish line.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Jeff Wolfe
United States
Columbus
Ohio
Zendo fan, Columbus Blue Jackets fan, Dominion Fan. These are 'permanent microbadges' to free up space on my microbadge row
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
patrick stevens
United States
Los Angeles
California
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Lacombe
Louisiana
It was a dark and stormy night.
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I know a few of you have played and enjoyed it at least in passing. Maybe it stands a chance of surviving a first round knockout?
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Grant Fikes
United States
Abilene
Texas
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User: Wanna play Zendo?
Cleverbot: Yes.
User: DEEP BLUE has the Buddha nature. CLEVERBOT does not. Go.
Cleverbot: Nine thinks mm of chalk CDs!
User: That koan has the Buddha nature.
Cleverbot: You were the best answer.
User: That koan has not the Buddha nature.
Cleverbot: What is the reason.
User: That koan has not.
Cleverbot: So what is the best kind of party?
User: Has not.
Cleverbot: Has too.
User: 'Has too' has the Buddha nature.
Cleverbot: Well why else would I say it.
User: That koan also has the Buddha nature. Maybe you're catching on.
Cleverbot: Yes I am, I can turn water into wine.
User: That koan hasn't the Buddha nature. Also, I'll need proof of that claim.
Cleverbot: Google him!
User: That koan has the Buddha nature. Care to guess my rule?
Cleverbot: Is it? I thought it was a confession of error in the way I went about listing the name of an artist.
User: HTBN.
Cleverbot: I'm not amused by her pushiness.
User: HTBN.
Cleverbot: I'm not amused by her pushiness.
User: You tried that koan already. Do you even know how this game works?
Cleverbot: No, I'm waiting for you to tell me the rules.
User: Your goal is to figure out the rule which determines which koans have the Buddha nature and which ones do not. For example, 'A koan has the Buddha nature if and only if there are no E's.'.
Cleverbot: I don't believe in heaven. So I guess I won't be having that problem.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Tim Shippert
United States
Richland
Washington
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Start time: 8:49pm
End time: 9:20pm
If there was to be any hope of getting everyone back on sync, we needed a rather open-ended game that could handle a flexible number of players and last an arbitrary but well-controlled amount of time. This was how it came to be that Tim forced Bryan, Aaron, Jeff, Nyck, and Caleb into the first of many rounds of Zendo played on this night.
We did not keep track of the actual puzzles, although the above picture shows the first puzzle and even gives enough information to make an informed guess. Caleb got Tim's first puzzle in round three, while Bryan got Caleb's puzzle also in round three, and then it was time to stop.
Some people really, really hate this game, possibly even more than other puzzlers like Ricochet Robots or Bongo!. I still maintain that you get better at this kind of activity the more you play - but, obviously, you like what you like and owe nobody any apologies for that. But I like Zendo, so be prepared to gut it up some more in the near future - perhaps even as soon as later on in this very same session report.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Tim Shippert
United States
Richland
Washington
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Start time: 10:50pm
End time: 11:35pm
With some hints that Table Three might finally be finishing their Ninja-ing around, and with the Lounge still off doing their own thing, Tim saw another opportunity to force various people to play Zendo.
We don't have any details of this game other than how long it took and the above picture, so we shall instead ruminate on the nature of Zendo.
Tim had ordered a set of Zendo Question Cards from Artscow, in the hopes that they would provide a good set of sample questions. The one major problem with Zendo is that the rules always seem a lot easier to the Master than to the Students; the Zendo rules suggest that if you think your rule is just about right, it's probably too hard.
Unfortunately, while the cards are useful and fun, the difficulty of the questions on each card do not always seem to line up with what they claim. We have found that rules that exclude something ("Exactly three non-yellow pieces" or "All non-red pieces are flat") are really hard to figure out - and both of these rules were listed as "Easy" on the card. Conversely, something like "sum of blue and yellow pips is 4" is listed as "Hard", but will probably not take more than a couple times around the table to figure out.
So it seems that Zendo is really group dependent; what is easy for one group might be hard for another, and vice versa. That all seems kind of zen, of course, but it does mean that most games of Zendo will eventually lock up on a tougher-than-expected rule, which is always a little disappointing.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Tim Shippert
United States
Richland
Washington
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Start time: 3:35am
End time: 5:53am
For some reason, people seemed to think that Daylight Savings Time meant they had to leave early. But as everybody knows, Daylight Savings Time is about Sunday morning; it has nothing to do with Saturday night. Bah!
Anyway, 2:35am is late enough by itself to make some not-completely-rational decisions, and one of those was to play yet another round of Zendo as the final game of the evening.
As mentioned before, some people are fascinated by Zendo, while others feel it has all the charm of a Denebian snot bug. We started with nine players, but soon Ryan, Amanda, Steve, Eric, and Kelli all left, perhaps before we started playing, perhaps after a couple rounds had passed. And, to be fair, it was late, DST or no, so some of these escapees might simply have been too tired to go on.
At any rate, that left a core of Tim, Bryan, Laura, and Jerry willing to puzzle on into the wee, wee hours of the morning. Some notable Zendo rules were: A blue pointing at something and a red being pointed at (Tim); All larges are blue, mediums are green, and smalls are red (Bryan); The sum of all pips must be a Fibonacci number (Jerry) - which lead to some confusion about whether "0" counts (by modern convention, F0=0, but Fibonacci himself started the sequence at F1=1); and the sum of the number of colors and number of sizes must be less than or equal to the total number of pyramids (Laura). As you can see, these rules were pretty challenging, and what usually happens is that after a few rounds the "game" devolves into a free-form discussion amongst the Students as they try and figure out the rule.
Solving a hard puzzle is fun, if you are into that kind of thing, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that it makes for a better game if the rules are much easier. Part of the fun of Zendo comes from the competitive part of the game - knowing the answer but having to wait until your turn, or trying desperately to come up with something on your turn because you know it won't get back around to you again. On the other hand, finally getting a really tough puzzle can be rewarding - Tim got the Fibonacci one primarily as a joke, until we all looked around and saw all the koans (except, perhaps, the empty set) followed the rule.
So the trick in playing Zendo is to make sure the game doesn't morph into something some of the players won't like - but to allow it to do so if they will. That's a fine line to walk, and one you don't really see at Game Night outside of the occasional party game.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Gastel Etswane
Spain
Peterborough
Ontario
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Frustrating section
Three dice to hope for some tanks
Only stars come up
This should be easy, but it is also very true.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Jay LaFountain
United States
Coldwater
Michigan
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I guess this one counts. I've started playing the emoticon game in the Zendo forum!
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Malachi Brown
United States
Hermitage
TN
It's turtles all the way down.
“Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself.”
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Between all those heavy games, I figure we should have some light filler... my Icehouse... err... Looney pyramids will be in the library.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Tim Shippert
United States
Richland
Washington
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Start time: 9:45pm
End time: Ommmm
Sadly, Table Four was still ten minutes away, so Tim manhandled a few of the waitees to Table One to play his newly-assembled Zendo set.
The scoresheet is rather minimal (basically, it just says "Zendo"), but somehow that seems appropriate. Actually keeping score does not have the Buddha nature. Anyway, we only played a couple rounds before it was time for the reconfig.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Esteban Vasquez
Colombia
Medellin
Antioquia
Ok... all my GG is gone and I don't have anything else to spend it on
Colombia is waiting for you, would you take the risk? (Video in my profile)
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There is no mystery that cannot be resolved by meditation and investigation
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Malachi Brown
United States
Hermitage
TN
It's turtles all the way down.
“Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself.”
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2004-05-16
Otherwise it would have been Age of Steam on 2004-03-19.
I'm hard to please.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Lloyd B
United Kingdom
Sidcup
Kent
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A true deduction game: making me feel stupid since 1997.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Steven Dueck
Canada
Abbotsford
British Columbia
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The coincidence here is a series of events leading up to a great friendship with
Mark Klassen
Canada
Mission
British Columbia
I was in grade 12 and he was in grade 8 at the same school at the same time. I didn't know who he was.
My taking 8 years to complete a 4 year Math Degree led to us being in the same classes at the same university. He was just some weird guy who was good at math.
We both became members of BGG. He was just some weird guy who signs up to board game websites.
He saw a post of mine in the forums looking for gamers in the area. He was just some geek subscribed to lots of different fora.
He wrote me a geekmail asking if I was the same Steven Dueck from university math class. He was just one of my stalkers.
He had some games that I wanted to try and no one in my games group had so I invited him to bring them to our weekly meetup. He was just a guy that I used for access to his game collection.
He had a gmail account and was in one of those jobs where you don't really do anything and can chat ALL DAY. He became one of my hundreds of gchat contacts.
We found out we both loved all things Wolfgang Kramer. He became a backup friend(you know, just in case)
We found out we share the same birthday! He became too curious to ignore.
We always type and say the same things simultaneously on gchat and coined the phrase "twinstinct" as something we share. He passed the test and was now a friend.
We share a love for Kramer games, Zendo, Netrunner and Hanabi. Since he owns most of them, he has become a great friend.
Here's to Mark! 
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Tim Shippert
United States
Richland
Washington
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Start time: 9:45pm
End time: 10:30pm
We were still mid-config, so when Laura, Steve, and Dash showed up, they retired to the Lounge with Tim, Aaron, Caleb, Geoffry, and Andy for a philosophical game of Zendo.
Dash started us off with a good introductory rule of "exactly two pyramids", which Laura was the first to deduce. Andy then discovered Laura's rule that the set must contain one pyramid of each size. Andy's rule was "exactly three pyramids, of different sizes and colors", although he originally phrased it in a slightly different way, and was earned by Aaron. Aaron's rule was "sum of pyramid sizes equals 8", which Andy confirmed by putting out 8 single dot pyramids. As Andy had already made a rule, he ceded the right to the next player clockwise, which happened to be Tim.
Tim's rule was the hardest to find, although he wasn't trying to make it particularly hard. But the group think took it down an unfruitful path, and after four rounds of guesses Andy got close enough for us to call an end to the proceedings. The photo shows the state in the middle of the round, if you wish to try and figure out the Buddha nature yourself.
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): The rule was "an orange pyramid pointing to a floating pyramid", which was simple enough to state, so Tim thought (especially as we had a few examples under our belt) it didn't violate the Zen spirit of "too many conjunctions". However, in retrospect there are a couple qualifiers ("orange" and "floating"), which play the same logical role as conjunctions; furthermore, the concept of "floating" is well-understood in Zendo circles, but we didn't really explain it ahead of time, and trying to use alternative words like "a pyramid that does not touch the table" make the rule sound a lot more convoluted than it is.
At any rate, I thought the original pyramid examples, which had identical setups (a one pyramid floating on a two, pointed at by another two) would lead people to focus on the colors right away. And they did, only they focused on the blue of the floating one-dotter, not the orange of the pointing pyramid. There were lots of guesses about what the blue pyramid could or could not do, but almost no guesses about the color orange.
So in the end I don't think it was a very successful Zendo puzzle, and is an object lesson that a simple-to-state rule may still have too many qualifications.
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Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.32 Overall Rank:292]
Jeff Wolfe
United States
Columbus
Ohio
Zendo fan, Columbus Blue Jackets fan, Dominion Fan. These are 'permanent microbadges' to free up space on my microbadge row
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0) As your geeklist entry, select the game you'd currently most like to play and, if you'd like, give a brief explanation why.
I played Zendo only 12 times in 2011, after 38 plays in 2010 and 63 in 2009. Ten of the 12 plays were at the Big Experiment (3 in the tournament). Since there won't be a Big Experiment in 2012, I need to make a bigger effort to get it to the table if I want to play it.
1) Have you supported a Kickstarter campaign? If so, please describe it. If not, what product or game would tempt you to participate?
No.
2) What is your favorite "outside the scope of BGG" game (i.e. ping pong, darts, pool, shuffleboard, billiards, etc.)? I'll provide to  users who list games I've not previously heard of.
I can't really think of any game like that which I regularly play.
3) Share a resolution you've made for 2012. If you've not made one, either make one up now and share it or tell us why you're such a stick in the mud.
I'm not really a fan of New Year resolutions. If you want to make a change, why wait for January 1. There are a few areas of my life that I want to improve, but no specific resolutions. If you really want one, there's the Zendo thing in #0.
4) What game (board or otherwise) are you clamoring for?
No specific clamoring. I can't even think of a game that I'm particularly looking forward to. I guess I'll have to resign my membership in the Cult of the New.
5) Name a game that replaced a game you once enjoyed.
Battlestar Galactica replaced Shadows over Camelot. This is probably more because of my friends and fellow gamers than personal preference. I do prefer BSG, but SOC would probably get played more if people brought it out. BSG is almost always out, so I can easily scratch that itch by jumping in a game.
6) If you own a smart phone, what are some of your favorite apps? I'll provide to users who list apps I purchase and enjoy.
No for me. All the apps I use are built-in or free downloads. I got the phone for the Calendar app, so that's probably my most used app. How's that for boring. I didn't get a smartphone until after my 10 year old PDA died.
7) What was your favorite toy as a child?
I vaguely remember a favorite stuffed toy when I was really young, but that's about it.
8) Do you have a bias for or against board games with electronic components?
I have a minor bias against, because electronic components tend to need power and can break. That won't necessarily stop me from playing, though. But if it beeps and boops, I probably won't like it.
9) Would you travel more than 300 miles to visit a person you'd met on BGG but not met in person to play games?
I haven't traveled more than 300 miles anywhere in over 20 years, so that makes it unlikely. I wouldn't rule it out, though.
10) How did you know when you'd found the right one (this question is intentionally vauge to promote a variety of answers)?
Still looking.
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It is crazy fun.... but still a bit crazy!
This game can wrack your brain in to a pretzel. In a good way.
