Clik here to view.
Simulating Rule 110 in Opus Magnum
In my previous posts about the 2022 Opus Magnum tournament, I mostly left out the final puzzle. It deserves a post of its own. The puzzle concept shares ideas with the “making a computer” puzzle, so...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Breaking “Crypt of the Necrodancer” for profit
Crypt of the Necrodancer is an indie game that recently celebrated its 7th birthday. I have played it for several thousand hours over the past 5 years, and have a handful of world records and former...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Excelling at DIVE via number theory
If you’ve been on the internet in 2022, you have probably encountered Wordle. And if you were on the internet in 2014, you probably encountered 2048. The stories of Wordle and 2048 are remarkably...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Battling the entire world in Opus Magnum
This is the story of “biggie vs the world,” an experimental challenge for the Opus Magnum community. Background The idea began a little over halfway through the 2022 tournament. Some competitors began...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Keeping Classic Tetris Interesting
In 1989, Nintendo released their take on Tetris, the concept of which had been revealed 5 years previously by Alexey Pajitnov. Some quick math says that 1989 was… a long time ago. There have been many...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Building arbitrary Life patterns in 15 gliders
The Conway’s Game of Life community celebrated a landmark achievement on November 9th, 2022. An idea years in the making, the “Reverse Caber Tosser” design finally had all of the pieces it needed to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Memorializing Babble Royale
This blog is now 2 years old. I am still here, and you can expect a few backlogged posts to come out soon. This post is how I am choosing to get back into writing. The free-to-play word game “Babble...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Matching Patterns using Opus Magnum
Hi all, and merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it! Here’s a present from me, a long-awaited blog post about the computation puzzle from the 2023 Opus Magnum tournament. The previous post...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Looking Beyond the NES Tetris Game Crash
It’s been an incredible week for the NES Tetris community. After Blue Scuti’s legendary game 2 weeks ago, stories started to circulate. The narrative eventually became that this Oklahoma teenager...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Defeating Refined Bronze (and losing a cow bet)
This post will talk about the game Opus Magnum, the puzzle Refined Bronze, old and brand-new records, and a long standing bit of community lore. Before I get into any of that though, I want to...
View Article