“Are we there yet?” groans the Sand Griper.
“Do we have to do this?” asks the Dumb Bunny. Meanwhile the Eagle has no cause for complaint as she gracefully soars across the air.
“It’s good exercise,” I reply. Even a Spider Solitaire tragic like me has to get out once in a while.
I sit on a rock, giving myself a brief rest as the rest of the gang catches up. Ninja Monkey does a quick head-count and confirms I haven’t lost any of my students.
“If you judge this fish by its ability to climb a mountain it will live its whole life believing it is stupid,” quips the Smart 65,83,83.
“You’re not helping!” growls the lion. The long trek has clearly taken its toll and even the Bad Idea Bears are not in the mood for jokes. I allow a few minutes break for everyone. We have only another 400 metres to go.
“Are we there yet?”
I turn to the Sand Griper.
“Okay, to make this trip a bit more entertaining I will let you play a game called 20 questions.”
The Sand Griper perks up – not something I see every day.
“The rules are simple,” I say. “You can ask as many questions as you like – except ARE WE THERE YET can only be used twenty times”.
The Sand Griper returns to being his usual grumpy self. Apparently he’s also not in the mood for jokes.
Finally I see a wooden sign and everyone soon reaches the top of the mountain, including the stockfish.
We immediately enter a tunnel. We follow the path and soon find ourselves at a large Games Room. All the animals marvel at the immense variety of board and card games, ranging from the prosaic Snakes and Ladders to the ever-popular Die Siedler von Catan or the ethereal strategic complexity of Risk. Not surprisingly the usual suspects are keen for a game of Texas Holdem after a long trek up the mountain.
“This is different,” says the Stockfish.
Stockfish is looking at a chessboard, except there is something unusual about the Black pieces.
“White has a large advantage” says the letter Alpha.
“Not so fast,” says the Dumb Bunny. “Black only needs to capture the King to win, but White has to capture everything.”
“I say White is completely winning,” replies the letter Zero.
The Eagle notices something unusual about the adjacent Backgammon board: one of the Green dice has the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,5 instead of the usual 1,2,3,4,5,6.
“Oooh look!,” I squeal. “My favourite game!”
Even better – the cards are already dealt, sparing me the arduous task of setting up the start position.
The Wise Snail seems pleased with the initial position. There are four guaranteed turnovers and two guaranteed in-suit builds.
“Jack of Clubs onto the Queen,” says the Elephant. “It’s in-suit and we also have a spare Queen.”
“Well done,” I reply. “You’re learning fast – no wait, I think this game could be rigged.”
“Why is the game rigged?” asks the Eagle. “Yes, there are two exposed Aces but …”,
“My favourite card!” squeals the letter Alpha. Clearly, he is new to the game. But from what I’ve heard these Letters and Numbers are capable of learning a new game with only four hours of self-training.
“But you have taught us many times the initial position is a poor indicator of whether a game will be easy or difficult,” continues the Eagle. “Besides you have four guaranteed turnovers and two in-suit builds.”
“There are other indicators,” I reply. “Remember the backgammon board with the faulty Green Dice, and what about the chessboard with unequal armies? If that’s not rigged then I’m challenging RIGGED whenever somebody plays it in Scrabble!”
“Look at this!” squeals Minnie Mouse. “Texas Holdem is also rigged. Take the Queen of Spades from the deck. Hold the back of the card to your nose. It should be blurry. Focus as though you are looking through the image into the distance. Very slowly move the card away from your face until the letter Q appears …”
Meanwhile the Bad Idea Bears are engaged in a fierce battle of Snakes and Ladders. They eventually realise that every square between 83 and 88 (inclusive) contains a snake and no ladder reaches a number higher than 88.
“So does that mean every single game here is rigged?” asks the Eagle.
“I will assert with 95% confidence every game is rigged, including Spider Solitaire,” I reply. “Welcome to Peak Stupid. But at least we know the game is rigged before moving a single c-”
“But that’s outrageous!” says the Eagle. “I refuse to play”.
“I know you are one of my top students but I want you to understand carefully: I have no problem with the game being “rigged” if the player knows in advance the cards are not properly shuffled. Think of it as an extra challenge – we already know it is possible to beat four-suit Spider Solitaire without boop if the cards are properly shuffled.”
It takes some convincing, but my students eventually agree to play the game out.
< several moves later >
- Round 1: three Kings appear simultaneously
- Round 2: A very awkward Q84KA84Q20 with lots of evens.
- Round 3: three Threes
- Round 4: four Fours
- Round 5: at least I didn’t draw five Fives. But three Sevens and three Tens are awkward.
“You’re right,” says the Eagle. “You correctly predicted the game would be rigged. I’m not sure whether trips and quads in every round is a true indicator of difficulty and we haven’t even considered the permutation of unseen cards in the tableau but it is apparent someone did put in the effort to rig the cards”.
“Despite our best efforts we couldn’t win without the help of boop,” I say. “We obtained two empty columns at one stage and came close to completing the Heart suit. Pity that both Jack-of-Hearts were hiding behind two Kings in Column Four though.”
Hang on, I think to myself. Stockfish’s fishbowl has somehow moved right by a good half-a-meter when nobody was paying attention. I soon figure out this mischief was due to Ninja Monkey (thanks to his extremely fast metabolism and lightning reflexes he was able to avoid suspicion for quite a while). But at least I’ve worked out how the stockfish was able to ascend the mountain without violating the laws of physics.
Edifying Thoughts of a Spider Solitaire Addict 