[extropy-chat] Petals around the rose: underdefined games

[Spike]

> Dan Clemmensen
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Petals around the rose
> 
> 
> Spike wrote:

> >I claim to tie your record Dan.  I got it on the first try... spike
> > 
> >
> Yeah. I formulated a hypothesis and got a correct answer on the first 
> try. I continued to use the hypothesis for an additional 5 or 
> six tries, and got a correct answer each time...

Dan, I speculate then that you are at least 40 yrs old, and
here is why I suspect so: you and I are of the generation
that had to play our computer games back before graphics
were common.  We played Mansion and Dungeon and such 
related games that were full of these kinds of puzzles,
but many of the games really didn't explain to you what
it was you were supposed to do there.  Myst is a more
modern example: you kinda wander along, solving puzzles
and looking around, trying to figure out what the point
of all this might be.  In some cases you figure it out,
often one doesn't, yet its a lot of fun anyways.

Example, in 1981, I was playing Mansion with an attractive
18 yr old woman, the one to whom I have been married for the 
past 20 yrs.  We had one of the old amber screen monochrome 
monitors, running on an HP 3000 mainframe.  

The game was going well: we had the Star Trek transporter, we 
had the crystal goblet, we had the food and the gold.  But when 
we got to the very narrow passage (my fellow geezers may recall this)
one must drop *everything* to get thru, everything including ones
clothing.  Then we could find the map and get back around
to our stuff, but in the mean time everyone was laughing
at us because we are naked.  The game keeps reminding
one of this constantly.  We were doing really well, finding
the stuff we needed to solve the mystery, but my blushing
girlfriend was completely obsessed with getting back to our
clothing which (turns out to be a mere distraction after
one finds another Star Trek transporter).  Eventually we
had Scotty beam us up, and theres the whole crew, including
the ordinarily somber and stoic Spock, laughing at us, so we 
had to beam back down for the clothing.  It was a hoot, even 
if we didn't actually solve the mystery.

Is there anything analogous to Mansion these days?  
Whats it called?  Do they still have Dungeon?  Myst?   

spike