Boredom Chasers?

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."

Comments

Why not pay attention in class?

[pxld]

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)

A solution and rebuttal

[Snafoo]

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.

solve the degree-diameter problem for small graphs

[msouth]

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.

YES! (and two small nitpicks)

[Mr.Mustard]

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. (diagram) (makes a nice tip, too. the rose in Origami for the Connoisseur is easier to learn...) Or learn to make modular origami stuff (origami that uses multiple units that are [generally] all the same). (instructions)

A great place to start is Joseph Wu's Origami Page.

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 covers these and many other interesting points.