Dork Scratchings

    I was given a new version of Dobble for Xmas called Dobble Connect.  Dobble consists of stack of cards with pictures on it where each pair of cards has one match, and each pair of symbols appears on one card.  This is a new version which has 91 symbols in total, 10 symbols per card, and 91 cards.  The fingerprint of the original Dobble was (57 symbols, 8 symbols, 57 cards). An additional innovation in Dobble Connect is that the cards are hexagonal and grouped into a colour per player.  Players build a tiling on the tabletop, placing cards next to each other as soon as they spot a matching symbol between their top card and one of the cards already placed.  The first player to get four of their own colour in a row wins. How is it possible for each pair of cards to have one and only one symbol in common, and for each pair of symbols to appear on one and only one card?  Does that have something to do with the strange number 91?  The answer i...

  Credit: Colony of Gamers/Flickr   My family settled down to a perfectly civil game of Risk this Christmas.  At one stage my wife, who controlled most of Asia, challenged my total control of Australia by attacking my territory of Indonesia from her territory of South East Asia, with about 100 armies. Attacks in Risk consist of a series of "battles".  In the initial battles two armies are always lost: either two attackers, two defenders, or one of each.  After enough battles either one defending army remains or two attackers.  From this point on only one army is lost per battle.  Eventually either the defender is completely obliterated or the attacker reduced to one army (which is needed to defend the originating territory) and the attack is over. In the initial battles (when the attacker has at least 3 armies remaining - not including one set aside to defend the originating territory - and the defender at least 2) the attacker rolls 3 red dice and the...

Programmers: first they ruined chess, now they ruin ... Wordle (Okay, so ruining chess is a bit harder) Step 4 was a sacrifice move I got stuck yesterday doing Wordle and I couldn't think of a single word that might work.  So... I wrote a short script to prompt me with suggestions.  I've noted that, so far, the solution has never been a plural.  So it's probably a good idea to take the first suggestion that doesn't end in 's'. And here it is:

I discovered the card game Dobble a few days ago whilst visiting relatives in Germany.  There are 57 cards with 8 symbols on each.  To play the most basic version of the game you deal the cards face down between the players such that one card remains (if there are an odd number of players you may need to hold back more than 1 card).  Then you turn face up the remaining card (or one of the remaining cards) and each person turns their top card face up. The first person to spot a symbol on their own card that matches one on the left over card shouts out the name of that symbol (e.g. "car!") and gets to move their card to the top of the shared stack; the others move their top card to the bottom of their own stack.  The winner is the person who gets rid of their cards first. At first sight this doesn't seem very mathematical.  However, after a while I noticed something odd about the cards: every card shares exactly one symbol with each other card in the pac...