Friday Fun! - Where did you get your Alias?

Of course it will work well in the blues medium where, like Jazz, scat singing is a well-respected technique.

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- xongsmith

Xongsmith is my craft? My bailiwick? Well, as a singer/songwriter who has been involuntarily retired from the computer industry, the pun on songsmith works fine. But Xong, pronounced "zong", is the game that appears in the current (9/23/09) avatar. I invented that game in 1996. I had narrowed the name of the game down to Xong and Xoix. Being played on hexagons, there had to be an X. The game is played by building a new piece out of the sides of hexagons and giving it to your opponent. So it's sort of like american baseball, in that the defense begins each play in possession of the ball. If you have had anything to do with Abstract Games, you will be familiar with the various methods to overcome the advantage of going 1st. By building your opponent's piece, this game's mechanics seem to have erased that problem. So I'm asking my wife which she likes better, Xong or Xoix. She takes a fraction of a second and says "Xong!". I google xong on the internet and it is a Vietnamese word meaning the end of a test. At the end of the game, when no more new pieces can be formed that will fit, the player instead gives his opponent the 1 Xong point. Since all surrounded hexagons are worth 2 points, this means that one player will have an even score and the other will have an odd score with the Xong point - eliminating tie games, which was another bugaboo in designing abstract games. By the way, the pieces formed often resemble little creatures and are collectively referred to as "xoids", which sounds like "zooids", not "roids". And "zooids" is not pronounced to rhyme with "fluids"!

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- xongsmith

There are 2 ways now.The first way is rather solitary-ish:http://users.net1plus.com/greystone/xong/xonghome.htmlThere are some hopefully simple pages there. You'll find the Rules (8) and Beastiary and an illustrative game with several different background jpgs in the still images. You can play it with someone else who is willing to take turns sitting down at the same computer connected to the same running applet. But this is not so fun.Someday I will figure out how to do it right, but for now I am too dumb and I always get access permission errors trying to change anything. And my java over the net for some reason doesnt let me put a background jpg behind the hexagons.The second is through email with the latest Random Xong applet. For that you will need to download the java player applet (not the obvious one on the website), a background jpg and enter into some email with me for further details. In a way, this is better for me anyway, as I can keep up with the game without worried about staying connected 24/7/365.greystone@net1plus.comIn all cases you will be best advised that having the file below handy is both allowed & recommended - especially for old guys like me who forget!http://users.net1plus.com/greystone/xong/xoid.txtRemember: my slogan for abstract games goes something like this:I dont want to win by forcing my opponent into a stupid mistake - I want to win by forcing my opponent into an intelligent one.ALSO remember: I feel like the spider inviting flies into my lair. RAZD kneauxz what I speak of. So I will try to be low key.For example I could mediate a game between 2 others and post the move images up on the xong website somewhere. Along with comments....
Each move image would be about 170K and the html page holding it & my comments less than 1 more k.

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- xongsmith

See message 103!

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- xongsmith