Happy birthday to me

[simont]

Today I am 27. Coo, gosh etc.

And I have a present for everyone reading this. Partly in the Hobbit tradition of giving rather than receiving presents on one's birthday, but mostly because it happens to be today that I have it just about ready to roll.

Over the past week or so, I've been starting my own small collection of puzzle games, of roughly the Minesweeper class (i.e. things in tiny windows which you can pop up on your desktop and give yourself a two-minute break from whatever else you were doing). That collection is now working well enough for me to put it up on the web for other people to have a play with and try to break it.

So if you're bored with Minesweeper, or bored with work, or just generally bored, or if you just feel like selflessly helping me to beta-test some newly written software (ho ho wot a good excuse), you can point your browser at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/, and have fun. (Windows and Linux are both supported; anything more exotic than that is currently not, but could easily be if someone contributed some effort).

Bonus points to anyone who suggests a good overall name for the collection as a whole. It's currently called ‘puzzles’, which somehow just doesn't have that snappy sound to it…

(This is still beta software; there might well be really silly bugs in it. Feel free to test and play the games, but I'd rather people didn't start linking to the web page until I'm reasonably convinced it all actually works properly.)

Comments

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Ah, custom-size net :-)

Thankyou (but also, when am I going to get any work done now? ;-)

Happy Birthday!

[taimatsu]

We used to have a Mac program called 'Compendium' which had assorted games and puzzles somewhat along these lines. I always thought that was a good name - perhaps something along those lines?

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday!

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday Simon *huggle* :)

[emperor]

Happy birthday :)

Just don't mention it to atreic until after her e**ms, right? :)

[angua.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday :)

I think the games should collectively be called 'Jam'.. or maybe 'Nuns'.

[mpinna.livejournal.com]

Whee, those are a lot of fun! Thank you for the present, and happy birthday :-)

[joshdavis]

The best my morning-brain can come up with is Simonisms.

Happy birthday youngster!

[philipstorry.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday!

As for names, my suggestion is "Bunyas". The Bunya is an Australian tree related to the monkey puzzle. (It bears large cones which contain edible seeds - sounds like a snack tree to me!)
I'm not a horticulturalist. I got the name by firing up my copy of the Electronic Concise Oxford Dictionary, and searching all entries for the word "puzzle". Bunya was the nicest sounding word in the results.
An alternative would be "Araucarias", - the Araucaria is the monkey puzzle tree. But that's nowhere near as snappy as Bunyas, I think.

[ottah.livejournal.com]

Birthday happiness and joy wishes to you!

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday! (-:

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday, and Oooh! Shiny!

[joshdavis]

What about moving enigma to that page and adding a dos/winders binary?

[velvetfox.livejournal.com]

I've said it already, so I'll stick with "thanks" and "bored of minesweeper?"

Have a party icon :)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday.

[karen2205]

You're an evil, evil man......I've not got anything done since I read this early this afternoon:-)

Thanks:-)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday! I wasn't online yesterday to post!

[j4.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday, only one day late... (sorry!)

Your puzzles are cool, but I can only think of daft names for them. ("Tatham's teasers"?) And do you have any plans to add the game "Simon" to the site? :)

[simont]

And happy birthday to you too :-)

(I often get confused when people give me good wishes for things they're not having as well. When my colleagues say "have a good weekend" or someone says "happy Christmas", the natural reaction is "thanks, and the same to you". When I take time off work and a colleague says "have a good holiday", I have to almost physically bite my tongue to stop myself reflexively saying "you too", because it takes me a moment to remember that they're not having a holiday at the same time. So it's rather nice to be able to respond to "happy birthday" with "same to you" this once :-)

[simont]

Well, in that case, happy birthday to you too, only one day early ;-) That should preserve the Cosmic Symmetry. Or something.

"Simon". Let me see. Is that the one where one of a small number of lights flashes, and you have to remember the whole sequence of flashes so far, and every time you type the entire sequence back in, another single light flashes and you have to add it to the end? A sort of electronic version of "I'm going on a trip and I'm bringing". (Should there be a "something Colin will never remember" button?)

[j4.livejournal.com]

That's the one. In the versions I've played there's usually a different tone and a different colour for each light, so you can remember the 'tune' if you're that way inclined.

I find it increasingly bizarre that people who weren't even there remember the daft sequence of things from a game which took place in 1997! 8-)

[simont]

I don't remember the entire sequence, but "something Colin will never remember" in particular always appealed to me in a Hofstadterian use-mention sort of way. "Quick, while he's out of the room, let's add something Colin will never remember to the list." And lo, it was so, rather more literally than it might have been :-)

I think implementing a "Simon"-like game in this framework would be something of a challenge, since it involves the computer essentially making moves. All the current games have a common structure, which is that the user performs an action and the game display updates as a result, and although there's a pretty animation between the initial and final states, the animation is very much unnecessary and will be skipped if the user makes another move while it's still happening. In "Simon", the animation (of the next light flashing) is absolutely vital and can't be left out, so I'd have to do some sort of violence to the framework to make it reliably playable...

Were you mad keen to play that particular game, or did you just think it would be fun if Simon's Puzzle Collection contained a game called Simon? :-)

Belated Happy Birthday...

[(Anonymous)]

Rolling octahedra around makes by brain hurt- good thing too. In return, I can only say: "Find a word to finish the sequence: camper, simple, chapter, chapter, spine, bleeper, spline, ?"

As for a collective name, how about 'Mental floss'.

Tom of days past