Mischief via agora-discussion [2024-06-24 17:10]: > On 6/24/24 10:39 AM, juan via agora-discussion wrote: > > > HIGHEST NUMBER GAME > > Some thoughts... > > 1. To avoid turning this into a contest of who can type the most nines into an > email or abuse Knuth notation the most, maybe make the winner the player with > the median number (higher of the two middlemost if an even number of players). > Or the *second* highest number, and if only one valid player remains, e > automatically wins the round.
If those are the only two ways you can think of writing big numbers, than your point is moot. There's much creativity and ingenuity in naming large numbers, and there's also effects of iterative games. But now that I think about it, we could also look into restricting the number of characters in the description of the number. > 3. What if each time someone bets or raises e also picks and answers a > Boolean question about eir number. To call or raise, one must first answer > all > the previous questions. Agorans being Agorans, we'd probably need to put some > reasonableness bounds on it -- e.g., provided someone's secret number is X > or less, and given a math background of Y, one must be able to determine the > answer by hand without unreasonable effort, for suitable X and Y. (Someone > can pick a number above X at eir own risk.) Questions that can be answered > by checking against a table of known results online would also qualify. I… can't find holes in this. But I haven't thought too much about it. I like that you have to answer previous questions. It's a balance between giving away too much and receiving information in the future. > 4. Explicitly disallow any conditionality, randomness, or external > references in the secret number, even if clearly described. I think this can be done simply with the “reasonably unambiguously” standard. > Overall, I like this: a simple, elegant concept. Hopefully I'm not ruining > that too much! Thank you! Certainly not. -- juan Wearing a green eyeshade Invulnerable 1 bang
