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Comment by webkike | Hacker News Reader

So you can beat this game by using the "sleep sort" method: starting at minute 0, every minute play the card that has the same number as the current minute

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The way people actually play is this:

Let’s say we’re in the second round and all the players have 2 cards. If you have a 1 obviously you’re playing it immediately. Of course everyone knows that so if you have a 5 for example, you’ll wait to see if someone plays something immediately. You notice someone starting to play a card somewhat tentatively. But if they had a card lower than five they’d be more confident about it so you rush to get your card down first, and you’re right, the tentative player had an 11. And on the game goes.

All of which is to say that there is a lot of information in the game beyond the passage of time and it’s about developing a theory of mind of all the people you’re playing with— how would they play if they had a card lower than yours?

Like playing with my wife, I’ve noticed she waits longer per number as the gap gets larger — so she might wait 5 seconds for a 10 gap and then 30 seconds for a gap of 20 cards. So I’ve had to adjust my timing to match. And of course she adjusts to adapt to my adjustment to her. Eventually you get into some kind of agreed upon internal clock without ever actually talking about it and you can drop 20 cards in order without so much as sighing.

How is that beating anything? You play games to have a fun or engaging time, counting seconds is extremely boring.

I and everyone we showed this game to had a lot of fun playing this game and not by counting seconds. It‘s a nice, quick game to start out with …

You beat it because: thems the rules son. They decided, not me.

The more interesting question in that case, is why play it at all, if you're going to take all the life out of it only you demonstrate a hollow win.

Why is it a hollow win? Does castling or forking in chess make it a hollow win?

What’s hollow or not is about context. Chess is very serious, The Minds is not very serious.

If things are less serious and also more squishy when it comes to the rules (despite the very absolute “no communication” rule I do think that some talking in The Mind doesn’t immediately destroy the experience and if you find a happy medium and approach with the group you are playing with it can even enhance the experience) then I would generalize that it’s in general easier for wins to be hollow, because there is more room to “cheat” in ways that ruin the experience.

It's not taking any life out of it since that's how you are supposed to beat it. It's not a hollow win, it's the real win.

The rules explicitly state that you shouldn’t count seconds … this presumably also includes using a clock as reference.

It’s given as a guideline (in the optional to read spoilery upside down box on the rules that explains that it’s a game all about timing), not an actual rule, but that still completely contradicts your statement that “that's how you are supposed to beat it”.

Not everyone plays games in order to win them, the “spirit of the game”, the fun, the camaraderie, is often times more important and it’s what one will remember in 20 or 30 years’ time, not the fact that on that particular night he/she won a specific game.

This is like this guy I played Golden Eye with once who had one place on the map between the body armor and the best gun and refused to move from the spot. Said the point is to employ the optimal strategy to win, right? I set the control down on the other half of the map, and he goes, “I guess it’s a stalemate, and I’m in the lead, do you surrender?”

Cracked me up. I said no and started walking in small circles. Then when he’d finally gotten tired and started coming out, I knew the maps well enough that I was always as far away from him as possible. Said the point is not to lose, right? Then he quit.

It literally says in the game that's how you are supposed to beat it.

It literally says in the game that’s how you are not supposed to beat it.

Quote from the rules: “It should be emphasised at this point that this is not a question of counting off the seconds. There is no counting. Of course, time passes by “in the head” of each player, but this is normally quicker than one second per number and it changes depending on what level is being played. The secret of the game is developing that collective feeling for “now is the moment”.”

This could be discouraged by having many more cards in the sequence than you distribute. With large random gaps, sleep sort would make a slow game.

Not if you, for instance count 5 cards per second, you will get trough the deck in 20 seconds. Also after the first card is played add a "slow down" buffer for next 5 cards - 1 number per second and then speed up again to 5 per second.

I would also try to stick to my logic and tempo and just let the other players pick up on the logic used.

Could be fun.

I would argue that sleep sort requires communication before the game play starts, which seems to be a violation of the rules, and a way to keep time synchronized during play, which I doubt most groups of people are able to do without a shared clock.

With the limited information, what other option is there?

I would hope/expect each other player reaches the same conclusion: sleepsort is the most obvious plan, and 1 second is the most likely interval.

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