11 ms·

I did really well in school, and am a professional developer now, and my wife utterly destroys me at this game. She can find sets in real time as the cards are

by pnut 10y ago

I did really well in school, and am a professional developer now, and my wife utterly destroys me at this game. She can find sets in real time as the cards are being dealt, while singing along with music, it's maddening.

exacube 10y ago
there are many forms of intelligence!
- treehau5 10y ago
  Reminds me of Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk
hinkley 10y ago
Our friend is so jarringly good at Set and Scrabble that nobody will play with her anymore. She has to play people on the internet and they frequently disconnect mid-match.
- knodi123 10y ago
  > and they frequently disconnect mid-match. Speaking solely of scrabble, this happens pretty often regardless of skill level. ;-) I try to keep 3 games going at a time, but my last 5 have quit in the first three turns! And I'm using a matchmaking algorithm, so they're players of my approximate skill level too!
- Nadya 10y ago
  If you want to lose friends and be disowned from your family - learn to play Monopoly by the actual rules and follow this strategy: http://imgur.com/a/vX3zm http://imgur.com/a/vX3zm I can confirm that it works and nobody wants to play Monopoly anymore. Instead we play more fun board games
  - rconti 10y ago
    That's awesome, thanks. Also introduced me to Georgism which I naturally relate to Piketty. Now I've got a lot of reading to do.
  - tamana 10y ago
    This strategy works when one person plays by the complicated rules and everyone else plays for fun. When you go pull out some BGG game, you'll have the same problem: the board game geek rules lawyer playing strategy and trouncing players who play for fun.
    - chongli 10y ago
      This is why it's better to go to a YouTube channel like Rahdo Runs Through [0] than BGG's ranking page. Rahdo plays with his wife and they prefer games with a lower interaction level than the typical BGG forum power user. This means strategies based on blocking the other players' access to the resources they need are not included or emphasized in the games they play. Though you will find exceptions, of course. The current number one game on BGG is Pandemic Legacy [1], a purely cooperative game. [0] https://youtube.com/user/rahdo https://youtube.com/user/rahdo [1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/161936/pandemic-legacy-season-1 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/161936/pandemic-legacy-s...
    - lmm 10y ago
      In any competitive game the majority of players will be losing. So a good game is one that's fun even when you're losing.
    - Nadya 10y ago
      To be fair - Monopoly is a partially luck-based strategy game. And while having fun is certainly a big part of board games - so is winning and winning is pretty fun for most people. I see it as a split between "casuals" and "competitive" players. Competitive players find fun in attempting to win or giving it their best shot while casual players see winning as a bonus and just want to have fun. Which may or may not involve playing with the best strategies or giving it their best. I also agree entirely with lmm. The best games are games that are fun even when losing. If you can't have fun while losing (eg: Monopoly) then I don't consider it a good game.
dhekir 10y ago
Could it be somehow related to better peripheral vision? I met a woman once who could gather four-leaf clovers nearly instantly, at the same spot where me and my male friends had spent minutes searching. I've seen written in some places (but could not find a worthy source) that women might have better peripheral vision due to food gathering in prehistoric times, but this might just be some old sexist construct (if anyone knows a good source to confirm or refute this, please tell me).
- lettergram 10y ago
  I don't know if that's a male/female trait. I literally find four leaf clovers so often/fast that I don't even consciousnessly know how I do it. I'll just reach down and grab them. I'm a male btw
  - tgb 10y ago
    As a kid I would find them all the time. These days if I end up standing around a clover patch with nothing to do, I always look for them but never find them. I can't imagine I had the patience to look for them as a kid for very long, so I feel that my ability must have gone down hill OR that the patches I'm by now just don't have as many of them. I was always convinced that the ones at the house I grew up at had an abundance of four (or higher) leafed clovers and that patches at school, for example, were relatively poor. Perhaps that ability decline is just my current reluctance to get down on my hands and knees and leaf through them by hand.
- imglorp 10y ago
  I bet it's closer to the pattern matching part of the brain that counts objects at a glance. This is a different skill than counting with words.
  - theoh 10y ago
    From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing "Subitizing is the rapid, accurate, and confident judgement of numbers performed for small numbers of items. [...] The accuracy, speed, and confidence with which observers make judgments of the number of items are critically dependent on the number of elements to be enumerated. Judgments made for displays composed of around one to four items are rapid, accurate and confident."
matwood 10y ago
Sounds like she would be an amazing NFL QB if she can also throw a football :)
cwmoo740 10y ago
My family is ultra-competitive and this used to be one of our go to games until my sister mastered it. My brother-in-law wrote an android game to help her practice and after about a month she was down to sub 1 minute clears. We had to give up the game after that.
- natdempk 10y ago
  Is the android app available for download anywhere?
  - cwmoo740 10y ago
    He got a cease and desist from the manufacturer so he took it down unfortunately.
jackhack 10y ago
Synesthesia? Perhaps her brain sees those sets and identifies them in such a way that it takes no conscious effort? A group might appear in a different color, or "taste" or feeling, for example... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
pmichaud 10y ago
My wife also is amazing at this game and destroys me every time :)
Agentlien 10y ago
I'm also a professional software engineer who did very well in high school and at the university and, similarly, my wife consistently beats me at this type of games. Granted, my wife is well-educated and I believe she is smarter than I am, but it's like she immediately sees the solution while I see the input and have to work out the solution. I usually attribute this to my deficient color vision, since that's the property that usually trips me up. Alternatively, I've wondered if I'm focusing too hard and if the best approach might be reacting on instinct and relying on my subconscious to solve the problem before I'm consciously aware of having parsed the input.

by pnut 10y ago

exacube 10y ago

there are many forms of intelligence!

treehau5 10y ago
Reminds me of Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk

hinkley 10y ago

Our friend is so jarringly good at Set and Scrabble that nobody will play with her anymore. She has to play people on the internet and they frequently disconnect mid-match.

knodi123 10y ago
> and they frequently disconnect mid-match. Speaking solely of scrabble, this happens pretty often regardless of skill level. ;-) I try to keep 3 games going at a time, but my last 5 have quit in the first three turns! And I'm using a matchmaking algorithm, so they're players of my approximate skill level too!
Nadya 10y ago
If you want to lose friends and be disowned from your family - learn to play Monopoly by the actual rules and follow this strategy: http://imgur.com/a/vX3zm http://imgur.com/a/vX3zm I can confirm that it works and nobody wants to play Monopoly anymore. Instead we play more fun board games
- rconti 10y ago
  That's awesome, thanks. Also introduced me to Georgism which I naturally relate to Piketty. Now I've got a lot of reading to do.
- tamana 10y ago
  This strategy works when one person plays by the complicated rules and everyone else plays for fun. When you go pull out some BGG game, you'll have the same problem: the board game geek rules lawyer playing strategy and trouncing players who play for fun.
  - chongli 10y ago
    This is why it's better to go to a YouTube channel like Rahdo Runs Through [0] than BGG's ranking page. Rahdo plays with his wife and they prefer games with a lower interaction level than the typical BGG forum power user. This means strategies based on blocking the other players' access to the resources they need are not included or emphasized in the games they play. Though you will find exceptions, of course. The current number one game on BGG is Pandemic Legacy [1], a purely cooperative game. [0] https://youtube.com/user/rahdo https://youtube.com/user/rahdo [1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/161936/pandemic-legacy-season-1 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/161936/pandemic-legacy-s...
  - lmm 10y ago
    In any competitive game the majority of players will be losing. So a good game is one that's fun even when you're losing.
  - Nadya 10y ago
    To be fair - Monopoly is a partially luck-based strategy game. And while having fun is certainly a big part of board games - so is winning and winning is pretty fun for most people. I see it as a split between "casuals" and "competitive" players. Competitive players find fun in attempting to win or giving it their best shot while casual players see winning as a bonus and just want to have fun. Which may or may not involve playing with the best strategies or giving it their best. I also agree entirely with lmm. The best games are games that are fun even when losing. If you can't have fun while losing (eg: Monopoly) then I don't consider it a good game.

dhekir 10y ago

Could it be somehow related to better peripheral vision? I met a woman once who could gather four-leaf clovers nearly instantly, at the same spot where me and my male friends had spent minutes searching. I've seen written in some places (but could not find a worthy source) that women might have better peripheral vision due to food gathering in prehistoric times, but this might just be some old sexist construct (if anyone knows a good source to confirm or refute this, please tell me).

lettergram 10y ago
I don't know if that's a male/female trait. I literally find four leaf clovers so often/fast that I don't even consciousnessly know how I do it. I'll just reach down and grab them. I'm a male btw
- tgb 10y ago
  As a kid I would find them all the time. These days if I end up standing around a clover patch with nothing to do, I always look for them but never find them. I can't imagine I had the patience to look for them as a kid for very long, so I feel that my ability must have gone down hill OR that the patches I'm by now just don't have as many of them. I was always convinced that the ones at the house I grew up at had an abundance of four (or higher) leafed clovers and that patches at school, for example, were relatively poor. Perhaps that ability decline is just my current reluctance to get down on my hands and knees and leaf through them by hand.
imglorp 10y ago
I bet it's closer to the pattern matching part of the brain that counts objects at a glance. This is a different skill than counting with words.
- theoh 10y ago
  From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing "Subitizing is the rapid, accurate, and confident judgement of numbers performed for small numbers of items. [...] The accuracy, speed, and confidence with which observers make judgments of the number of items are critically dependent on the number of elements to be enumerated. Judgments made for displays composed of around one to four items are rapid, accurate and confident."

matwood 10y ago

Sounds like she would be an amazing NFL QB if she can also throw a football :)

cwmoo740 10y ago

My family is ultra-competitive and this used to be one of our go to games until my sister mastered it. My brother-in-law wrote an android game to help her practice and after about a month she was down to sub 1 minute clears. We had to give up the game after that.

natdempk 10y ago
Is the android app available for download anywhere?
- cwmoo740 10y ago
  He got a cease and desist from the manufacturer so he took it down unfortunately.

jackhack 10y ago

Synesthesia? Perhaps her brain sees those sets and identifies them in such a way that it takes no conscious effort? A group might appear in a different color, or "taste" or feeling, for example... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

pmichaud 10y ago

My wife also is amazing at this game and destroys me every time :)

Agentlien 10y ago

I'm also a professional software engineer who did very well in high school and at the university and, similarly, my wife consistently beats me at this type of games. Granted, my wife is well-educated and I believe she is smarter than I am, but it's like she immediately sees the solution while I see the input and have to work out the solution. I usually attribute this to my deficient color vision, since that's the property that usually trips me up. Alternatively, I've wondered if I'm focusing too hard and if the best approach might be reacting on instinct and relying on my subconscious to solve the problem before I'm consciously aware of having parsed the input.