Zendo, play by forum

[Simon]

I've put zendofmt, my koan formatter, on github.

Attached is a Windows executable of it. Run it from a console without arguments. It looks for the two files koans-w.txt and koans-b.txt in its directory; the files should have one koan per line. When you add new koans, make a blank line in the file, then list new koans below the blank line; these koans will get asterisks in zendofmt's output.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

This was a very interesting round. Run on a random sample of koans, that rule would produce a huge majority of black, but we actually had a slight majority of white because we found partial patterns and kept experimenting with them to try to find koans that broke the apparent pattern. And indeed, the thread that revealed everything was BNNNNN being black, which made me realise that total number was relevant and not alternating patterns.

New rule:

White koans:
LEMMING

Black koans:
LIME

[Simon]

Thanks! Yes, I hoped that the pattern would eventually appear, and it did quickly indeed. You found long white koans even before you found that all 2-letter koans (except AA, BB, ...) were white. The emergency fallback was that APPLEP, a prefix of the black starter, would have been white.

LEMING
LIMENG
LIMEN

LEMMINGE
LEMMINGS
LEMI
L

-- Simon

[Proxima]

White koans:
LEMMING
LEMMINGE
LEMMINGS

Black koans:
L
LEMI
LEMING
LIME
LIMEN
LIMENG

[Simon]

A koan is white iff it contains the substring LEMMING.
A koan is white iff it starts with the substring LEMMING.

EE
MM
EMMING
MMING
MMEMM

-- Simon

[Proxima]

White koans:
EMMING <-- disproves both rule guesses
LEMMING
LEMMINGE
LEMMINGS
MMING
MMEMM

Black koans:
EE
L
LEMI
LEMING
LIME
LIMEN
LIMENG
MM

[namida]

LMMNG
EI

[Proxima]

White koans:
EMMING
LEMMING
LEMMINGE
LEMMINGS
LMMNG
MMING
MMEMM

Black koans:
EE
EI
L
LEMI
LEMING
LIME
LIMEN
LIMENG
MM

[Simon]

MMIN
MINM
MMI
MIM
MMM
MLEINGM
MIMIMIM
EEING

-- Simon

[Proxima]

White koans:
EMMING
LEMMING
LEMMINGE
LEMMINGS
LMMNG
MIMIMIM
MLEINGM
MMING
MMEMM

Black koans:
EE
EEING
EI
L
LEMI
LEMING
LIME
LIMEN
LIMENG
MIM
MINM
MM
MMI
MMIN
MMM

[Simon]

A koan is white iff it has 5 or more letters, and at least 2 of them (anywhere) are M.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

Counterexample: MMMI is white.

[WillLem]

CUDDLE
MAGIC
FISH
PARALLELOGRAM

[Proxima]

^ all white

[WillLem]

For a word to be assigned a white koan, it must contain at least 4 total letters, and then either >1 "M" or at least 1 vowel.