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2048 Numberwang

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Re: 2048 Numberwang

#111

Post by chris_wot »

lclarkmichalek wrote: post #44
mistercow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really interested to know what his process was, since he didn't seem to actually know the product he was subtracting 50 from.

Well it seems that he was always going for 4 from the top row, which reliably gives him 25, 50, 75 and 100 (I think). He then uses the ability to divide by 25 to treat these as an additional 2, 3 and 4. So once he has 318, he does (318 * 3) - 2 to get his 952, except via the 25s; ((318 * 75) - 50)/25. It's a hack; increasing the set of available numbers by guaranteeing the presence of a common divisor.

Well, obviously.

Re: 2048 Numberwang

#112

Post by networked »

mhaymo wrote: post #103
networked wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a general name for the kind of problem the contestants try to solve in that round of the show? I've encountered variants of it "in the wild" in a game we played at university. People would challenge each other to place arithmetic operators and parentheses between the digits of the serial number printed on bus tickets to get the number 100, with some variations. Despite playing this game for quite a bit I nev…

Any problem with the Countdown Numbers Game as a name? Any variations on it could simply be called Modified Countdown Numbers Game.

I'm glad there's an established name to attach to this problem but when I searched for them I didn't find variations of "Countdown numbers round problem/game" mentioned in books on mathematics/theoretical CS or in research articles. The idea behind the basic problem seems obvious and must have occurred to many people, so the lack of such mentions makes me suspect it may have a different canonical name as a specific type of combinatorial optimization problem. If there isn't one then "Countdown numbers (round) problem" will do just fine (I'd say "problem" is better than "game" because looked at like this it is not a game with players in a game-theoretical sense).

Re: 2048 Numberwang

#113

Post by etfb »

snicker wrote: post #92
etfb wrote: post #56

C:\> TWENTY48 Loading... Ready. You are in a darkened room. On the floor in front of you are sixteen tiles, arranged in a grid. The tiles are labelled A1, A2, A3, A4, B1 and so on up to D4. There is a two here, on tile A1. There is a two here, on tile D3. > GET ALL The numbers appear too strongly glued to the tiles. > INVENTORY You have a copy of On Lisp by Paul Graham, a thing your Aunt gave you that you don't know…

I give it until tomorrow before we see a text-adventure-based version of 2048

I gave it a week, and there was nothing. I was astonished! It seemed such a logical extension of the idea. I'm ashamed at myself for doing this "demo" instead of just sitting down and writing it myself, but that mortgage won't pay itself...

Re: 2048 Numberwang

#114

Post by lotsofmangos »

jerf wrote: post #86
buro9 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do HN users outside of the UK get the surreality and humour of this entire conversation? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornington_Crescent_(game) You can tell it's currently morning in the UK and night-time in the USA.

No. It's a well-known fact that surreality and humour are geographically isolated to the British Isles. Though the French did get a sort of surrealesque surrealism through cultural cross-contamination at one point, though it's clearly inferior to the real article despite their vigorous claims to the contrary.

L'œil existe à l'état sauvage.

Re: 2048 Numberwang

#115

Post by TophWells »

meric wrote: post #65
zyx321 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did get an 'h' once. It's simply less common than numers like 3 or √7. It's even got 'i' (and everyone knows that's not a real number).

Of course 'i' is a real number. 'There are i edges in this shape, where i is equal to the value of half of x '...You can also use it when texting informally e.g. 'i m out atm'.

i is a real number, it's one-fifth of v.
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