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Games Entertainment

Boredom Chasers? 63

Posted by Cliff from the it-(may-be)-better-than-falling-asleep dept.
yuggler asks: "Ever found yourself in a boring meeting, class or lecture? Sure! Does anyone know of something to do to make time fly? I feel that somekind of simple game, at the most requiring paper and pen would be the ultimate soultion. So, my question to you is: Does anoyone know of a game with childishly easy rules, yet with a depth that can keep the player(s) spellbound for a small eternity? An excellent example of what I'm trying to describe is the game Sprouts which only takes 30 seconds to learn, but will take a good portion of your meetings to fully understand. I am currently being tormented in a Swedish highschool, and feel in desperate need of something to get me through classes like Swedish, and Chemistry, while waiting for the programming and technology-classes."
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Boredom Chasers? More

Boredom Chasers?

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  • This article is boring.

    Actually ... I take a laptop to meetings and read /. Really!

  • Looks interesting ... but isn't very suitable to meetings since it is 2 player. If I sat in a meeting giggling and passing paper back and forth with my friends then I'd get into trouble.

    Forget the "if", that does happen to me :-(
    One of our managers doesn't believe in fun.

  • ti calculators! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Radnimax ( 533758 )
    Get a ti calculator like a ti86 or ti89. I got the link cable for the computer and downloaded tons of games for my ti86. Tetris was the most played game. nd it was really easy to play games in math class ;) You can get games such as tetris, mario bros, galazian, othello, defender, boulder dash, and so many others all clones of course. Try to get the ones written in assembly (not ti basic) because they run fast.
    • Agreed! Back in high school (was it really that long ago?) I wasted many hours playing tetris on my ti-83. I could play by myself, or anyone else with a TI calculator, because the "networking" code was platform idependant. Now I waste time in my upper level CS classes playing the old bsdgames in slackware on laptop. I no the code, my assignments are done before they're even assigned, and my professors don't really care because they no I know my stuff. Nothing like paying $10,000/year for a small piece of paper.
    • Penguins [ticalc.org]: BEST GAME EVAR

  • Why not pay attention in class? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pxld ( 244458 ) on Sunday November 18, 2001 @08:08PM (#2582403) Homepage
    I can usually fight off boredom by thinking critically about the topics being covered. Then when I feel myself getting bored, I start to think of good points to raise or questions to ask. If those tactics don't work out, I recommend reading Flow : The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Amazon [amazon.com])

  • When I was a boy... (Score:3, Funny)

    by itwerx ( 165526 ) on Sunday November 18, 2001 @08:08PM (#2582408) Homepage
    ...all I had was a piece of string and a stick!

  • 3 Steps To Success (Score:2, Informative)

    by redhotchil ( 44670 )


    Step 1. Buy Handspring Visor or Palm Pilot

    Step 2. Download and sync Chessgenius

    Step 3. Enjoy

  • If you have another player, or you're able to play two player games by yourself, 3D Tic-Tac_Toe is a relatively entertaining game. Increase it from a 3x3x3 grid to a 5x5x3 grid and you'll be busy for a while.
  • Sounds like your priorities are a little skewed. You may not feel that you need to pay attention in certain classes, but the skills learned will come in handy. Just wait till you get into the real world and you have to sit through long boring meetings. Knowing how to pay attention will really come in handy. Especially when someone unexpectadely asks you a question!
  • Someone else mentioned a calculator, and it's a good idea, there are tons of games for HP calculators and some of those are really time-consuming. I had a platform game where the main character was an ant, i was playing that in vectorial calculus when a classmate commented the ant looked like a lump of shit. I started laughing so hard, that the teacher noticed, and i nearly got kicked out of the class. That, of course, would have been more entertaining than remaining in class, but would have hampered my graduation aspirations.

    No, seriously, perhaps you should try and focus on the class instead of publicizing your need to kill time? plus it's going to be pretty embarrassing when you get asked a question and can't reply because you've been busy playing a game. Yes, i can picture that: "hold on a second, professor, i'm trying to pass level 8 here.."
    • Not all classes require attention. Example: To graduate, I need to take a basic computer class. MS Office and junk like that. The prof has an attendance requirement, so I have to show, but would shoot myself if I had to pay attention. I can understandpaying attention in calculus. Unfortunatly, not all of us can take a bunch of Calculus. Also, only the the biggest prick of a prof would pick on you if he saw you weren't paying attention, especially if he knew you knew your stuff.

      • Re:hp calculator? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by terpia ( 28218 )
        Also, only the the biggest prick of a prof would pick on you if he saw you weren't paying attention, especially if he knew you knew your stuff.

        Wow. If that's true, I guess most of the teachers I had in High School qualify as BIG PRICKS. I always had a sneaking suspicion about this, but I wasn't sure until now.

        Want to know what to do in class? Hack. Classrooms are fun to hack. Back in school, I purchased the smallest universal remote I could find, and used it to mess with the TV/Projection Panels and VCRs in the classes I had. Now you could use something like these happy little devices http://www.quemex.co.uk/ [quemex.co.uk], http://www.surprise.com/likes_dislikes/gadgeteer/r emote_control_watch.cfm [surprise.com]. You can also use social engineering to cause all sorts of trouble. Or you could always resort to forging a doctor's note stating you have narcolepsy and get one of these free voicemail boxes [onebox.com] so they can call in and hear the "doctor's" anwering service, then return the call at your leisure. The whole bottom line I think, is that if you think you're so smart that you don't need to pay attention in class, then you should at least be smart enough to amuse/entertain yourself. Did you really need an Ask Slashdot for this?
        • The whole bottom line I think, is that if you think you're so smart that you don't need to pay attention in class, then you should at least be smart enough to amuse/entertain yourself

          Due to insane education requirements, not all of us can always be in an engaging class all the time. If I want x degree, I have to take the classes that correspond. This isn't a matter of being an elitist or know-it-all. Just looking for someway to entertain ourselves without causing a distraction to others. Also, if you noticed, it said prof, referring to a professor, not a high school teacher. In high school you have to pay attention. In college, the profs work a lot differently.

          Personal entertainment should not come at the expense of others, unless they are willing participants.

  • A solution and rebuttal (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Snafoo ( 38566 ) on Sunday November 18, 2001 @09:42PM (#2582682) Homepage
    First of all:

    * Paying attention in class is not necessarily necessary, especially if you already know the subject, /point finale/. Lectures in general, IMO, are rather pointless exercises in pseudo-education. For me at least, with a topic of anything more than nominal complexity, a textbook is invaluable while lectures, put simply, are a waste of time. I'm surprised that slashdot has turned up so many droids-in-training! Seriously, though. My suspicion is that people like the psychological kick in the ass associated with waking up early,going to class, etc.; it makes them feel as though they're sacrificing something to 'learn', and therefore that they have more to lose by slacking, and therefore they'll study harder on their homework, and therefore do better, and therfore attribute this to going to class, therefore, they go to more class, and the current educational model perpetuates itself. ( The model, I believe, is analogous to that used by many major religions to maintain piousness: Show up at place X at time Y every N days and you're saved! ) So long as you're disciplined enough to focus on the time on the homework w/o the psychological guilt-crutch, then you can skip almost unlimited amounts of time.

    But whatever works for you...

    * And as for your actual problem: Learn Go. (aka 'Wei Chi', which certainly yields more relevant hits in Google ;) You can write the rules to the game in about four instructions, and it can be played on any size of board or grid. Better still, each individual piece is never moved after being placed on the board (until removed -- which doesn't happen frequently enough to be annoying (unless the pieces are your own ;) ) ), which means that 'Go: Napkin Edition' can be played whenever you have a pencil handy.

    Oh, did I mention that the gameplay requires more thought than Chess? And that GNU-based Go servers and clients are available at all over the known Internet, as well as (passable) AI oppoents?

    Okay, so it's two players... but once you get good, you'll want to practice constantly, and it's the sort of game conducive to experimentation and situation-analysis. In particular, books of Go problems are quite fun... take a look at one of the problems, and go to your lecture. By the time lecture is over, you just might have solved it.
    • i find that in many cases of classes without labs (will discuss labs later) i have two options if i want to learn the material

      1. go to class once a week, to see whats happening, when tests are, etc and read the book, work problems etc.

      2. go to class (nearly) every day, and make some effort at paying attention (usually falling asleep, but hey... playing tapes while you are falling asleep is supposed to be great for memory).

      with the second method, i avoid buying the book, and save some money :)

      with lab courses, if the labs are relevant, it enforces working problems, so i can avoid a few lectures, but with irrelevant labs, i still have to attend classes. (at this school, you automatically get an f if you don't complete all lab assignments)
    • Not to dis your advice to skip class as I've certainly done my fair share of skipping irrelevant lectures, but there are those who find lectures valuable because that is how they learn, i.e., they learn far better by hearing than reading.
  • I sit with my Palm (A Sony Clie). If the meeting or class or lecture is big enough, no one notices. I play solitare, easy but always engaging. Space Trader is also quite good. They are simple, and allow you to jump back into what the group is doing easily if necessary. I do this mostly in my Intro C++ class (a real joke), but in other places also.

  • Sprouts info (Score:3, Informative)

    by martyb ( 196687 ) on Sunday November 18, 2001 @10:40PM (#2582857)

    The link to sprouts [everything2.com] mentioned in the original query seems to have an error in attribution.

    "Sprouts is an interesting paper and pencil game for two players. It was invented in Cambridge in the 1970's."

    Take a look at: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/4_5_97/mathlan d.htm [sciencenews.org] where it states "Sprouts was invented in 1967 by Princeton mathematician John H. Conway and by Michael S. Paterson, when both were at the University of Cambridge in England."

    There's a bunch more info on game play, theory, and mathematical background on the game at that link, as well as this link: http://www.forum.swarthmore.edu/news.archives/geom etry.research/article399.html [swarthmore.edu] to a strategy by John Conway on a strategy for game play.

    As an aside, I knew a guy at RPI [rpi.edu] who in 1981 or so wrote a program to play the game and graphically display the results... if you wanted it to, it would show all the possibilities as it tried different moves, too! Pretty amazing feat considering the capabilities of the computers we had available at the time.

  • My advice would be to pay attention and try to get what you can out of school. There is more to life than just computers and awesome and fun as they are, I'm glad I can speak somewhat intelligently to others about different topics. It is good to be well-rounded and to speak your language well. Everything you learn is what comprises who you are, in my opinion. Do you want to just be a techno geek, or do you want to be a techno geek who understands wonderful literature (great for talkin' with the ladies--hint, hint), knows what elements are used in fashioning chips, who can discuss current events, etc.
    Believe me, I have had regrets so many times for having the attitude you're expressing because I would like to know more about what I thought was a "waste of time". That's just some advice from a boring old 30 year old. If only I had listened to similar advice!!!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Pente (Score:2, Informative)

    by Lish ( 95509 )
    My friends play Pente in class all the time. It is a bit like Go. The rules are simple but strategy can get very complex. Here [gamerz.net] is a simple explanation.

    My solution is to get a Palm and play Patience, but that's beside the point.
  • Paying attention in class: Only about 1% of eveything I know came from lectures, and half of that is that lectures are dumb. How can you learn anything when you're half asleep? Memorization and regurgitaion BAD! Boredom: During my high school electronics class, my friends and I played AD&D using a system of hand signals. Two problems: You need plenty of people to play; dice rolling can be kinda tricky, and the 'dropped my pen' excuse only works so many times.
    • Only about 1% of eveything I know came from lectures, and half of that is that lectures are dumb.

      I slept through many of my lectures, mostly because they failed to sutain my interest. However, I did go to nearly all of mine, because occasionally, a topic came up that piqued my interest, and that made it all worthwhile. I remember troff being mentioned as an aside when someone asked how the lecture notes were formatted, and that prompted me to go off (outside the lecture, on my own time), and learn about it insude and out. That single comment made up for going to the other less interesting lectures. The end result was that I graduated with lesser marks than others in the year, but probably knowing more about Unix than pretty much all of them, and it's payed off later in my career.

  • Tree-fluid (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bazman ( 4849 ) on Monday November 19, 2001 @08:57AM (#2584133) Journal
    Another simple game. Can be played verbally or written on paper if silence is needed, or email if distance is a problem.

    First person {says|writes|emails} "Tree". Second person does "Fluid". First person does "Tree". Second person goes "Fluid". And so on.

    Until someone says "Sap!" at which point they are declared the winner.

    Of course you could win every round by just saying "Sap!" first time, but that would be boring. The skill is saying "Sap!" on the go before your opponent wants to say it, thus causing the maximum amount of annoyance to them! It is very rewarding to get through about ten echoes of 'Tree - Fluid' and then hit 'Sap!' and have the other person go "I WAS JUST GONNA SAY IT!!!". Ahh, satisfaction. Similarly there is great pain in being 'Sapped' just as you are about to say it.

    When played face-to-face there can be a lot of psychology and body-language involved. Look for any sign of hesitation in your opponent, that's normally a sign of an impending 'Sap'. Have no mercy, hit back straightaway.

    Strangely I cant find any web sites devoted to Tree-Fluid...

    Baz
    • Sounds kind of like Mornington Crescent...

      (for those who don't know: there was a BBC radio show called I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue. Think of it as Monty Python on the radio and you won't go far wrong. Anyway, they had a game called Mornington Crescent, where you had to traverse London by naming Underground stations in no particular order. The rules, like which station you could get to from which other station, were never documented and had nothing to do with the actual geography or topology of London - instead random rules were occasionally invoked, like "under the Shrewsbury conventions, going from Bakerloo to Covent Garden on the seventeenth Thursday after a new moon results in your opponent being sent to Tower Hamlets, unless you have already been to Embankment, in which case you may only go to Covent Garden via Kings Cross" which of course changed constantly. The winner was the first to reach/say Mornington Crescent.)
      • Although Mornington Crescent is played strictly for laughs, and the unknown 'rules' are part of the humour. Tree-fluid is played much more seriously, with deliberate malicious intent. The rules are also much simpler!

        Baz
  • Memorize a few origami patterns. That'll keep you entertained with just a piece of paper. I often leave a few cranes scattered around particularly boring meetings. If anybody notices and asks, I tell them the story of the thousand cranes (legend coming out of WWII, I believe, has it that a girl dying of leukemia after fallout from the bomb tried to fold 1000 cranes because she believed that you got a wish granted. She got into the 600's, I believe). So when people ask how many I'm up to I say I'm not counting, I'm just releasing free wishes into the wild.

    To make it a challenge for yourself, remember that classical origami does not allow for tearing ,cutting, or using flat surfaces to get a good crease! Once you pick up the paper, it doesn't leave your hands until your creation is complete. And the no tearing rule makes it particularly challenging because most patterns want a square piece of paper, and most of the paper you'll encounter in the wild isn't square. Folding cranes out of business cards without tearing off the extra bit is a particular hobby I enjoy because with the thicker paper it's hard to get the head to come out right.

    If you're really bored with that, and you want to play some tricks on your teachers, you can search around the net for some "adult" origami patterns to fold and leave on other people's desks.

    • Ahh, the many hours of meetings that I've spent folding paper. I did, however, tend to get in trouble for folding paper during middle and high school.

      For some serious challenges, try memorizing more complicated models like Kawasaki's rose. [wanadoo.nl] (diagram) [vancouver.bc.ca] (makes a nice tip, too. the rose in Origami for the Connoisseur is easier to learn...) Or learn to make modular origami stuff [gentleworks.com] (origami that uses multiple units that are [generally] all the same). (instructions) [merrimack.edu]

      A great place to start is Joseph Wu's Origami Page [vancouver.bc.ca].

      The myth that a thousand paper cranes will bring good luck and health is much older than Sadako's story, although she did try to fold 1,000 while she was sick with leukemia. She finished 644 before she died, and her classmates completed the rest. There are two books about her story: Sadoko and the Thousand Paper Cranes and Child of the Paper Crane .

      It's also not true that "classical" origami is extremely restrictive. Most of the rules mentioned were added by outsiders. There are many very old designs (such as connected cranes) that require cutting. It is an interesting challenge to follow those kinds of restrictive rules, but they are not really requirments with a long history.

      The Origami FYI [neu.edu] covers these and many other interesting points.

  • hmmm (Score:4, Funny)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworld@@@gmail...com> on Monday November 19, 2001 @10:17AM (#2584359) Homepage
    If you're in Sweden, isn't there some hot Swedish girl nearby you can stare at during the class?
  • This might not be that great in a graph theory class since most of what you need to master this game is being taught.

  • solve the degree-diameter problem for small graphs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by msouth ( 10321 ) on Monday November 19, 2001 @01:55PM (#2585560) Homepage Journal
    there are (or at least there were, last time I checked) some unsolved problems in graph theory that can be attacked with pencil and paper.

    Make a planar (in 2-d and no edges cross each other) graph where each node has no more than three connections. Each node also has to be no more than three hops from any other node. Can you get more than twelve nodes? Can you prove that nobody else can, either?

    I have scribbled away many an intriguing hour playing with this.
    • Wow! Great riddle! The answer is 22. Here's the proof (this is a full hour's worth of work): First, we find how many nodes you can theoretically connect to. Let's define a(n,i) to be the number of unique nodes accessible from node n with path maximum length i. Trivially, we can observe: a(n,0)=1 // Contains only n a(n,1)=4 // n's three children and itself. Now, by observing the propogation of children in this manner, we can derive this recursive function: a(n,i)=(a(n,i-1)-a(n,i-2))*2 + a(n,i-1)) This yields: a(n,0)=1 a(n,1)=4 a(n,2)=10 a(n,3)=22 Although we can probably show this function is true for all i>=2, I think it is sufficient to prove that is true at i=3. Draw a node with three children. Now draw two children for each child (already has one connection to parrent). Now do this again. You'll notice it's 22. Thus we establish that the theoretical maximum number of nodes that can be connected to any given node by 3 hops is 22. Now we need to prove that there exists a largest web of (22) nodes for which each node is connected by three or fewer hops to every other node. We prove this by example. Draw 22 nodes in a circle. Pick a node arbitrarily and label it 0. We will call this the level 0 node. Now draw three lines to other nodes and label those level 1 nodes. Now, for each level 1 node, draw TWO lines to other unconnected nodes. Label these level 2 nodes. Now, draw two lines from each level 2 node to unconnected nodes. Label these level 3 nodes. By now, all nodes should be connected by three or fewer hops to the level 0 node. Note that all nodes belonging to levels 0-2 have three connections, and all level 3 nodes have only one. This part gets tricky. Label the level one nodes a, b, and c. Group and circle each level 2 node with its level 3 children. Each level 1 node should be connected to two of these groupings, which you should label a1, a2, b1, b2, c1, and c2. For both a1 and a2, connect one level 3 node to a level 3 node in b1 and c1, and the other to b2 and c2. Do not refer to the same external node twice! Level 3 nodes in a1 and a2 should not be connected by any lengths shorter than four except via their level 1 grandparent. At this point, both our level 0 node AND our level 1 node "a" are connected by three or fewer hops to each other node. Repeat the above for the b1, b2 groups, excluding paths already drawn. Once this is complete, you have a largest (22 node) web as described above. To complete the proof, here is the example I drew, with 22 nodes {1,2,...22}: 1->2,12,22 2->1,3,17 3->2,4,5 4->3,9,20 5->3,6,14 6->5,8,9 7->8,14,16 8->6,7,22 9->4,6,11 10->11,18,20 11->9,10,12 12->1,11,13 13->12,14,15 14->5,7,13 15->13,16,19 16->7,15,17 17->2,16,18 18->10,17,19 19->15,18,21 20->4,10,21 21->19,20,22 22->1,8,21 QED -- Hal
      • My heartiest apologies. I should learn HTML.
      • ...the tricky part is that it has to be planar.

        which means that you have to be able to draw it out on a piece of paper without any of the lines crossing.

        But, don't be discouraged--it was fun to solve the problem that you did, right?

        I have worked on it for a while, keeping a list of "forbidden subgraphs", but I keep losing track of the work. Still, it's fun, and you can spend a lot of time (at least with my approach).

        What I am doing with it is starting with the maximal circuit (I don't know the terminology--the biggest loop in it that isn't directly short circuited) and the maximal one connected to that.

        Or something like that. LIke, draw a 4-sided figure with a triangle on top and see if you can stay planar, starting from there, and exceed 12 nodes. I think I might have proved (by tedious lists of drawings) that you can't, but I don't remember which ones i finished.

        Somewhere in this process you may end up with some clever insight into the problem. I don't think I have yet, but I do seem to remember something...

        Oh well, getting old.

        later
        • Wow. Messed up on that count. But I am determined! Hmm... no how to keep track of inaccessible nodes...
        • Ok, here's what I got. Its a hexagon with two pentagons attacked on opposite sides, with lines connecting the nodes on either side of the outwardmost node of the pentagon.

          If you had drawn a numbered circle of 12 nodes with 1 at the top and 7 at the bottom:

          2->6 (internal path), 12->8 (internal), 3->11 (external), and 5->9 (external).

          I cannot devise any other figure that works, and I cannot add to it. I like to think of the internal paths as "highways" and the external paths as "bypasses." One observation I made is that each node has within one hop either two highways, two bypasses, or one of each.

          If it can be proven that this is a requirement in order to have all nodes within three hops, we can show that +12 node graphs are impossible, since extending the graph at any point would keep at least one node from being able to reach two of the "special" paths, thus keeping at least one other node from being able to reach it.

          What do you think?

          • sorry, didn't see this. does /. have an option to get email sent to you when someone replies to your post? That would be nice.

            N-e-way, I'm still checking to see if that is a solution I have seen before. It looks different to me. One solution that is easy to describe is if you take a tetrahedron and chop off the tip of each corner (exposing a triangle). Use the vertices for nodes and the edges for edges.

            There is another one, more later.

            mike

  • Although everyone so far has answered the question in terms of being bored in class, it's usually much more of a problem in meetings, where attendance is often mandatory and content often entirely lacking.

    Fortunately, meetings provide the perfect setting for playing buzzword bingo, which can be played alone or in groups.

    1. Draw a 5x5 grid on a sheet of paper.
    2. Write a different buzzword in each square:
      • "proactive", "rightsizing", etc, for marketing meetings
      • "XSLT", "Java Beans", etc, for engineering meetings
      • Keeping them up to date is half the fun.
    3. Make sure that each person playing has a different grid.
    4. Now whenever the person doing the presenting in the meeting (or anybody who's not playing) mentions one of the buzzwords, check it off on your chart.
    5. First person to get five checkmarks in a straight line wins. (But saying "bingo" too loud could get you in trouble!)
  • If you sit at the back, get you and your buddies to each select a 'keener' - ie, a student who is known for asking inane, overly complicated questions in order to demonstrate their attentiveness, interest, and intellect at the expense of about 50 students to who just want to learn the material in under an hour.

    At any rate, each time your selected keener raises their hand, you get a letter; the goal, of course, is to spell bingo. You will be amazed at how attached you will become to your keener of choice.
    • In college, there were these 2 guys who had a knack for saying very stupid things. My friends & I would keep track each day to see which of them made the highest number of stupid remarks.

      Not so much a boredom chaser as it was a way to keep me from killing the two of them... :-)
  • I think this is why my students can't integrate by parts.

    Actually, I'm not sure if I'm joking.

  • When I got really bored in class, this is what I used to do. Draw out an 8x8 grid and pencil in step numbers in each square starting anywhere, and moving around the board with valid chess knight moves. The objective is to hit every square exactly once.

    Its not too tough, but it requires a bit of planning to get it right, and it keeps your mind occupied for a while.

    -Restil

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