April 23, 2012

  • Set Patterns

    A friend was staying with me the last three nights, and what does one do with a friend for three nights? Get into a lot of arguments and play a lot of Set. Let's call this friend Puff (the Magic Dragon).

    So there we were, arguing and playing Set and arguing some more, and then he suggests an experiment. We sit across from each other and deal cards in four rows of three, and if there are no sets on the board, then we deal two more cards. We each keep two separate piles of sets: those taken from our own side of the board, and those taken from the other person's side. This was to see if we favored one side over another. Puff hypothesized that we'd favor our own sides of the board more.

    It turned out that we both strongly favored his side of the board. Now that I think about it, I guess I do start at the top of the board and scan down, like starting at the top of a page. I never noticed that before. It was an interesting thing to notice.