Genesis

Recently I was in an interview and I was asked questions about this game. Yeah! It has a mention on my resume. Yes! I will soon put it up on my webpage: “http://nikunjlahoti.com/cv” (Looks good!? Well this might not work as yet). Or wait! Let me go put it up… an under-construction page at least. Done!!

So where was I!? Yes Mr Interviewer noticed interesting things on my resume which even I started to forget.

He was pretty interactive and I patiently explained the game to him. He proved that he was very smart when he asked me to change the game.

How would I have the computer make educated guesses and finally reach that word the user thinks?

Ah! I was stumped. Well not because I couldn’t think of that but because I didn’t think of that. I mean why would someone want to outsmart a computer and let it play while you sit down and wait and give hints to the application. But it turned out I could say a few fancy words and think of a possible way to make it work. He said, “In that case you would need an extensive dictionary“. I said “Indeed“.

I just noticed that if we search CowAndTheBull on google, My blog comes in the results!! Yes on the first page. 😀 (No not this blog but the http://nikunjlahoti.com where I have posted some info about this one). Feels good eh!?

Anyway I found this page: http://boardgames.about.com/od/paperpencil/a/bulls_and_cows.htm

It introduces another flavor of the game and info about its origin.

And I figured I had to “bolt it” and so it did. (Let’s never lose a web page again)

In the meanwhile, I was told my someone recently that “I should focus on things that really matter”. And it hit a nerve. (Think: there may be some more delay in the Android App that I promised).

Talking of which. I upgraded my Galaxy S2 I9100G to ICS 4.0.3 today. It is very pretty. I have fallen in love with it all over again (I think I should keep that line handy 😀 I might say that to a real person ;-)).

 

Later gator.

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Git Repository Created!

Well Well.. I am lazy (or maybe always into a lot of things; Round-Robin is still in fashion huh!?) but I do remember.

So I am back and have two Public Repositories in my name (created today).

Check out: GitHub and Cow-and-The-Bull.

As soon as I am done with the Monkey Business, I will come back!

Ciao for now!

https://github.com/nikunjlahoti

github repository

Prep the Env (tick)

Yeah I know it has already been decades since I decided and confessed in Public that an App is in the making.

But I got caught up at work and doing some stuff (to upgrade an friend’s Android I did a lot of Mashakkat)

Finally I spent another few days 😀 setting up Android SDK.

Phew finally did it….

The awesome face unlock! 😀

btw this is my Number!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope I will set up one SourceForge.net project soon & keep you apprised.

Bye Bye.

 

Hello world!

Cow and the Bull.

The History:

Back in the summer of 2005, I attended my cousin’s wedding. It was amazing. There was so much going on. Got my boards results. To everyone’s surprise and my shock, I got a 90+ in three major subjects. Yeah right… Chem and Physics aren’t really considered. LOL. And yeah, I got single again.. 😀 Good Times!!

There at the wedding, my cousins introduced me to this brand new game called Cow and the Bull.

It was addictive!

We played it like so many times that even now I remember the rules of the game.

The Game:

Originally a two player game.

prerequisites>>

Player A, Player B (and their sanity), Pen and a Paper, Knowledge of English alphabets.

play>>

#1

Player A thinks of a 4 Letter word.

These 4 letters must be unique. No repetitions allowed.

Be Honest (at least after the first few runs 😀 .. more on this later)

#2

Player B has a pen and paper and a head to guess the word Player A has thought of in his head.

Player B writes the first guess on the sheet of paper. In the game, B has a total of 10 (Configurable) chances to guess the word that A thought.

#3

Player A examines the guesses from Player B and provide hints.

There are predefined rules for the Hints (=Value of Cow and Bull).

Lets look at some examples:

Sl.	A (Unknown)	B (Guess)	Cow	Bull	Remark
1	FORK	LAME	0	0	This will be random. Choosing a high on vowel word makes it easy. {0,0}: Ergo, none of the alphabets(L,A,M,E,) are present in the target word. Trying other vowels.
2	FORK	SOUL	0	1	One hit. Now determine which one is the correct alphabet.
3	FORK	FOUL	0	2	Taking a similar guess to eliminate options. F is surely in the Word and One of {O,U,L} is correct.
4	FORK	FRET	1	1	One of the alphabets is not correctly placed and the other is F. E has already been eliminated above.
5	FORK	FOUR	1	2	All good. In the next run we may be able to guess the correct word.

Cow: Alphabet is present in the word that Player A thought but it is not at the correct position.

Bull: Alphabet is present and is in the correct spot.

 

After I got back from the wedding:

I had my parents entertain me throughout the journey, but when we got back home there was no one to appreciate the game anymore.

So I figured, why not have computer do the work of Player A – think of a random word, Let us guess, Provide meaningful hints and finally, after the game gets over, give the meaning of the word.

I knew VB6 well then. 🙂

 

The Future:

This blog will be dedicated to the development of the Application. Rest is unknown.

 

Why now!? The game is lame

#1

Honing my Android development skills. So have created an entirely new blog for the development of the Application.

And who knows .. people may want to contribute and create the game for other platforms.

#2

Game 🙂 isn’t lame. It is definitely fun. and people just don’t know about it.

AWARENESS. huh! 😛

This one is for the cause of humanity.

 

Prost.