Building Schemes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Monopoly_Game.jpg

In 1983, East Carolina University mathematicians Thomas Chenier and Cathy Vanderford programmed a computer to find the best strategies in playing Monopoly. The program kept track of each players’ assets and property, and subroutines managed the decisions whether to buy or mortgage property and the results of drawing of Chance and Community Chest cards. They auditioned four basic strategies (I think all of these were in simulated two-player games):

  1. Bargain Basement. Buy all the unowned property that you can afford, hoping to prevent your opponent from gaining a monopoly.
  2. Two Corners. Buy property between Pennsylvania Railroad and Go to Jail (orange, red, and yellow), hoping your opponent will be forced to land on one on each trip around the board.
  3. Controlled Growth. Buy property whenever you have $500 and the color group in question has not yet been split by the two players. Hopefully this will allow you to grow but retain enough capital to develop a monopoly once you’ve acquired one.
  4. Modified Two Corners. This is the same as Two Corners except that you also buy the Boardwalk-Park Place group.

After 200 simulated games, the winner was Controlled Growth, with 88 wins, 79 losses, and 33 draws. Bargain Basement players tended to lack money to build houses, and Two Corners gave the opponent too many opportunities to build a monopoly and was vulnerable to interference by the opponent, but Modified Two Corners succeeded fairly well. In Chenier and Vanderford’s calculations, Water Works was the most desirable property, followed by Electric Co. and three railroads — B&O, Reading, and Pennsylvania. Mediterranean Ave. was last. Of the property groups, orange was most valuable, dark purple least. And going first yields a significant advantage.

“In order for everyone here to become Monopoly Moguls, we offer the following suggestions: If your opponent offers you the chance to go first, take it. Buy around the board in a defensive manner (that is at least one property per group). When trading begins, trade for the Orange-Red corner as well as for the Lt. Blue properties. They are landed on most frequently and offer the best return. The railroads and utilities offer a good chance for the buyer to raise some cash with which he may later develop other properties. Finally, whenever your opponent has a hotel on Boardwalk, never, we repeat, never land on it.”

(Thomas Chenier and Cathy Vanderford, “An Analysis of Monopoly,” Pi Mu Epsilon Journal 7:9 [Fall 1983], 586-9.)

| Entertainment · Science & Math

Anamonics

https://pixabay.com/en/scrabble-game-board-game-words-243192/

A Scrabble player needs a way to recognize the potential in any collection of tiles. If your rack contains the seven letters AIMNSTU, for example, what eighth letter should you be watching for to create an acceptable eight-letter word?

If you arrange your seven letters into the word TSUNAMI, and if you’ve memorized the corresponding phrase COASTAL HARM, then you have your answer: Any of the letters in that phrase will produce an acceptable eight-letter word:

TSUNAMI + C = TSUNAMIC
TSUNAMI + O = MANITOUS
TSUNAMI + A = AMIANTUS
TSUNAMI + S = TSUNAMIS
TSUNAMI + T = ANTISMUT
TSUNAMI + L = SIMULANT
TSUNAMI + H = HUMANIST
TSUNAMI + R = NATURISM
TSUNAMI + M = MANUMITS

TSUNAMI: COASTAL HARM is an example of an anamonic (“anagram mnemonic”), a tool that tournament players use to memorize valuable letter combinations. Devising useful anamonics is itself an art form in the Scrabble community — one has to create a memorable phrase using a constrained set of letters. Some are memorable indeed:

GERMAN: LOST TO ALLIES
NATURE: VISIT GOD’S SCHOOL
SENIOR: OLD MVP JOGS WITH A CRUTCH
WAITER: A MAN RAN PANS

“One of the first anamonics I ever read, back in 1998, was PRIEST: EVERYONE COMPLAINED OF THE SODOMY,” wrote Jeff Myers in Word Ways in May 2007. “I couldn’t believe it. The letters in that phrase — no more and no less — could combine with PRIEST to make 7-letter words.”

When the word list TWL06 appeared, PERITUS became a legal word. That’s PRIEST + U, so the mnemonic phrase now needed to include a U. “One simple fix is: EVERYONE COMPLAINED OF YOUTH SODOMY,” wrote Myers. “Now maybe even more startling.”

John Chew maintains canonical lists of anamonics using the official Tournament Word List and the alternate SOWPODS list.

| Entertainment · Language

In a Word

altivolant
adj. high-flying

aspectable
adj. capable of being seen, visible

terriculament
n. a source of fear

John Lithgow’s eyes pop out of his head momentarily at the climax of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” the final segment in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). In the segment, a remake of the famous television episode from 1963, Lithgow plays a nervous air passenger who discovers a gremlin on the wing of his plane. At the moment when he lifts the shade, the edit shows the monster for 17 frames, then Lithgow’s face for 10 frames, then the monster for 42 frames, and then a 5-frame shot of Lithgow’s head incorporating the eye-popping effect.

Of these 5 frames, the first three show a wild-eyed Lithgow, the fourth shows bulging eyes, and the fifth is shown below. “This 5-frame sequence is on the screen for 1/5 second, but the most distorted image is only visible for 1/24 second,” writes William Poundstone in Bigger Secrets. “Blink at the wrong time, and you miss it. But if you watch the shot carefully at normal speed, the sequence is detectable. Lithgow’s eyes seem to inflate with an accelerated, cartoon-like quality.”

Here’s the frame:

twilight zone movie

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Misc

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ZZ_Top_Live.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons
  • ZZ Top’s first album is called ZZ Top’s First Album.
  • Supreme Court justice Byron White was the NFL’s top rusher in 1940.
  • LOVE ME TENDER is an anagram of DENVER OMELET.
  • Every palindromic number with an even number of digits is divisible by 11.
  • “In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” — Cassius

From English antiquary John Aubrey’s 1696 Miscellanies: “Anno 1670, not far from Cyrencester, was an Apparition; Being demanded, whether a good Spirit or a bad? Returned no answer, but departed with a curious Perfume and a most melodious Twang.”

| Entertainment · Language · Oddities · Quotations · Science & Math · Trivia

Misc

  • Consecutive U.S. presidents Grant, Hayes, and Garfield were all born in Ohio and served as Civil War generals.
  • Travel due south from Buffalo and you’ll reach the Pacific Ocean.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. shook hands with both John Quincy Adams and John F. Kennedy.
  • This false statement is not self-referential.
  • “When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.” — Cicero

In the 2004 film Shark Tale, the shark Lenny coughs up several items onto a table. Among them is a Louisiana license plate, number 007 0 981. The same plate is retrieved from sharks in both Jaws and Deep Blue Sea.

| Entertainment · History · Quotations · Science & Math · Trivia

Okay Then

Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 feature The Great Train Robbery was distributed with a special segment that the projectionist could insert at the beginning or end of the film. In it, actor George Barnes fires his pistol directly at the audience.

The shot was labeled “REALISM.”

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Parenthood

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bob_Feller_1953.jpg

On Mother’s Day, May 14, 1939, Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller took his mother to Comiskey Park to see him pitch against the Chicago White Sox. Lena Feller, who had traveled 250 miles from Van Meter, Iowa, with her husband and daughter, sat in the grandstand between home and first base and watch her son amass a 6-0 lead in the first three innings.

Then, in the bottom of the third, Chicago third baseman Marvin Owen hit a line drive into her face.

Feller was following through with his pitching motion and saw it happen. “I felt sick,” he wrote later, “but I saw that Mother was conscious. … I saw the police and ushers leading her out and I had to put down the impulse to run to the stands. Instead, I kept on pitching. I felt giddy and I became wild and couldn’t seem to find the plate. I know the Sox scored three runs, but I’m not sure how.”

The injury was painful but not serious. Feller managed to win the game (9-4) and then hurried to the hospital. In his 1947 autobiography, Strikeout Story, he wrote, “Mother looked up from the hospital bed, her face bruised and both eyes blacked, and she was still able to smile reassuringly. ‘My head aches, Robert,’ she said, ‘but I’m all right. Now don’t go blaming yourself … it wasn’t your fault.'”

| Entertainment · Oddities

Progress

The world’s oldest operating roller coaster, Leap-the-Dips, in Altoona, Pa., was built in 1902. It’s 41 feet high and has an average speed of 10 mph.

New Jersey’s Kingda Ka, below, opened a century later. It’s 456 feet high and accelerates to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds.

What’s next?

| Entertainment · Technology

Practice

Charlie Chaplin demanded 342 takes for one three-minute scene in City Lights. Actress Virginia Cherrill played a blind flower girl who mistakes Chaplin for a wealthy man. Her only line was “Flower, sir?”

Chaplin later called Cherrill an “amateur”; he’d hired her as the love interest without even talking to her. Asked why so many takes were necessary, he said, “She’d be doing something which wasn’t right. Lines. A line. A contour hurts me if it’s not right. … I’d know in a minute when she wasn’t there, when she’d be searching, or looking up just too much or too soon … Or she waited a second. I’d know in a minute.”

But it’s also true that Chaplin often worked out a scene on the set, rather than relying on a finished script. “Chaplin rehearsed on film — he’d try out an idea and do it over and over again,” film historian Hooman Mehran, who narrates the segment above, told CNN. “And since he was the director, he couldn’t see his performance, so he had to record it.”

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A House Afire

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poster_-_Gone_With_the_Wind_02.jpg

If box-office receipts are adjusted for inflation, Gone With the Wind is still the highest-grossing film of all time, with earnings of $3.4 billion in 2014 dollars.

After the film’s 1939 premiere in Atlanta, playwright Moss Hart wired producer David O. Selznick:

OH, ALL RIGHT, GO AHEAD AND HAVE A VULGAR COMMERCIAL SUCCESS!

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