Magic And A Game Of Hangman
"The hand is quicker than the eye," right? That's what they say. That's how magic, sleight of hand, and misdirection work. The hand does something so fast and smooth than the eye never spots it.But there's something even quicker than the hand. A computer. So if you can fool people with your hands you ought to be doubly successful at fooling people with a computer.
If you've ever visited my website "The Problem Site", you may have discovered my Online Game Of Hangman It has a dictionary of about 18,000 words, many of which are very obscure. So it's quite challenging.
But my older brother tells me (and I only vaguely remember doing this...) that a few years ago I created a computerized version of hangman that was even more challenging. In fact, it was almost unbeatable.
Because I made the computer cheat.
How, you ask? How do you cheat at hangman? Good question!
In this version of hangman (using the same dictionary of 18,000 words that's on The Problem Site) the computer does not pick a word at the beginning of the game. Here's how it worked:
- The computer decides how long the word is going to be, and makes a list of every word in the database that has that many letters
- When the player guesses (let's say he guesses 'E') the computer then goes through the list and crosses out every word containing an 'E'. Now the computer tells you the word doesn't have an 'E'
- Now you guess another letter, and the computer does the same thing, crossing out all words that contain that letter
- Of course, the computer's list is getting smaller and smaller with every guess. Eventually, it'll have to pick a word, but by the time it does, you'll have already made four or five wrong guesses, making it nearly impossible to win
Yeah. So, my brother tells me that I came up with this twisted idea and programmed it.
But really, I'm not that devious, twisted, and sneaky.
Honest.
Posted On Apr 28, 2005 at 4:04 AM
On Apr 28, 2005 Beth P wrote: Doug! I can't believe you'd ever do something like that!? And you're teaching a group of jr. high kids? Way to be a role model.
Doug Replied: Well, don't tell any of them, for cryin' out loud!
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