Zendo, play by forum

[ccexplore]

enlightened:
XRAY
HOXI

unenlightened:
LITHE
MOLE

[Timballisto]

NONPAREILL

[ccexplore]

^ lacks Buddha nature

[Timballisto]

INDISPENSABLE

[ccexplore]

^ also lacks Buddha nature

[Nepster]

EE
EEE
AAK
AKK
K
KK

[Timballisto]

AMALGAMATION

[mobius]

FOF
OFO
FOOOOF
FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF
FOFO
OOF
OFF
OF
FO
HH
III
MMM
ZZZ

[ccexplore]

Has Buddha-Nature:

AAK
AKK
K
KK
AMALGAMATION
HH

lacks Buddha-Nature:

EE
EEE
FOF
OFO
FOOOOF
FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF
FOFO
OOF
OFF
OF
FO
III
MMM
ZZZ

[mobius]

It seems very interesting to me that "HH" is buddha and not "EE" or "III".
Anybody have any thoughts on numbering the letters from 1 to 26 like Proxima's earlier round? Obviously which letters chosen is directly important. [suppose everyone already knew this]

more guesses:

NFL
NBA
KKK
XLO
ZHX
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[ccexplore]

Has Buddha-Nature:
NFL
KKK (D'oh! http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/embarrassed.gif" alt=":-[" title="Embarrassed" class="smiley" />)
ZHX
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

lacks Buddha-Nature:
NBA
XLO

[Clam]

I've been following this, but haven't contributed much in the way of koans, probably because others have posted so many already http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/XD.gif" alt=":XD:" title="XD" class="smiley" />. But thanks to the large number of koans (and MS Excel!), I'm able to make a guess at the rule with some confidence:

AKHTBN iff it contains one or more of the letters {A, K, H, T, B, N}, and they occur only in that order.

[ccexplore]

Woo!  Go Clam! http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/thumbsup.gif" alt=":thumbsup:" title="Thumbs Up" class="smiley" /> http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/cool.gif" alt="8)" title="Cool" class="smiley" />  'scuse me I mean "thou hast enlightened". http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/winktounge.gif" alt=";P" title="Wink-Tongue" class="smiley" />

Curious that MS Excel helped out, were you doing some sort of statistical analysis with the frequency of letters or something? http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/huh.gif" alt="???" title="Huh?" class="smiley" />

[In case people are still unclear on the ordering condition:  for example BLACK disobeys the ordering because the B appears before the A (and also before the K) in the word.  LAB is okay since A is before B just like in "AKHTBN"--not having K, H or T in "LAB" is fine, the ordering condition is only on the "blessed" letters that are present in the koan.  AAKK would be okay while AKAK would not.  AABB good, ABAB bad.  And yes, BUDDHA is ironically not okay. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/undecided.gif" alt=":-\" title="Undecided" class="smiley" />]

==========

In hindsight perhaps I should've forgo the ordering condition, but then again, we previously did a round already (geoo mastered) where Buddha nature is conferred simply by inclusion of a set of blessed letters, so I guess I thought it would be too much of the same, and thought the little twist would be a good idea.  Or maybe I should've kept the twist but use a smaller set of blessed letters instead (people were at least eventually picking up on A, B and K, even though everyone also seemed to have forgotten by then that the initial white koan of WHITE has none of those three letters).

And in my defense, generally speaking the way people were going about this often didn't help, with so many long-length koans which are bound to disobey the required ordering.  If people did like I did with geoo's round and say, do the 26 single-letter koans, I imagine things would've been much clearer.  People were drawing some good theories, but often got hung up by examples where the koans have more special letters than the ones they were suspecting, which ends up confusing people as to why those koans don't seem to fit.  Testing out smaller koans might've helped in those cases.

Had someone went the "hint" route and post an obviously incorrect rule guess, I have planned out these fun koans to reveal (amongst other possibilities like literally AKHTBN):

AKIDHELPSTIMBUYNOODLES (white)
TIMHELPSAKIDBUYNOODLES (black)

I also early on wrote a computer program to check people's koans, so if at any point someone bring up whether I could've made a mistake somewhere along the way with so many koans at play, the answer would be a firm "no" (other than copy-paste errors when inputting into computer program, but I had been very careful with that).

=============

Anyway, Clam can do the next round, or call open floor and have someone else do it.  Or maybe we can all use a break and play some other forum game instead?

[Ramon]

Wow, you really stumped us there.  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/tongue.gif" alt=":P" title="Tongue" class="smiley" /> A very interesting rule though, wouldn't have come up with that.

do the 26 single-letter koans

Personally, I find that really cheap  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/tongue.gif" alt=":P" title="Tongue" class="smiley" /> but it's just me.

Anyhow, people don't have to play Zendo if they don't want to, but those who do could still continue of course  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/huh.gif" alt="???" title="Huh?" class="smiley" />

[Simon]

do the 26 single-letter koans

Personally, I find that really cheap  http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/tongue.gif" alt=":P" title="Tongue" class="smiley" /> but it's just me.

This is a phenomenon of turnless Zendo.

In the turn-based game, you do this per turn: Make a new koan to be marked, possibly earn guessing attempts, and then use as many guessing attemps as you like. It takes several turns to test every 1-element koan, so you should conduct only the most needed ones.

Testing all 1-letter koans should be acceptable, even if it's not 100 % according to the process of the turn-based game. If you deem it unspiritful, it's your right to test only some. I don't want to impose any limit by rules here. :-)

-- Simon