[Icehouse] Re: two Treehouse questions

[Andy Looney]

--On May 3, 2006 8:14:54 AM -0700 Eric Wald <eswald at gmail.com> wrote:

> Carol Townsend wrote:
> > > 1) W trumps G
> > > You pick an action, and apply it to either the trio or the house.
> > > You may choose to apply it to the house even if the action you picked
> > > could be applied to your trio.
> >
> > This is the right interpretation.  Wild trumps general rule.  You pick
> > an action AND you choose where to play it.
>
> This is how we've been playing, as well.

Yes, this is correct.

> > Remember also that the "no passing" rule gets a bit weird here.  If
> > you can do something on your own trio, youv'e got to do that, even if
> > you've rolled a wild.  The only way you can pass is (a) you roll a
> > wild  (b) you pick an action that you CAN'T do on your Tree but you
> > can do on the House and (c) you choose not to do that action on the
> > House.  If you pick something that you can't do on either, then you
> > roll again.  If you pick something that you can do to your Tree and
> > the House, you can pick which one you do it on.
>
> This is excessively confusing.  It would probably be better to have the
> "no passing" rule trump the wild rule.

Sorry Carol, now I have to side with Eric. Frankly, I have no idea where 
that last paragraph came from... I don't remember having a conversation 
with you about such an interpretation being OK, and if I did, I retract it 
now. (And I guess there's a strangeness in the online rules I need to 
tweak.) The point is, No Passing means No Passing. You have to change 
something on your turn, and you can always do something to something.

What do I need to fix on the Rules page to support this understanding? 
(That goes for the mirror-image question, too.)

> > > P.S.: Was the ascii-art treehouse notation clear?
> > >         < = left leaning        3 = large piece
> > >         ^ = upright             2 = medium piece
> > >         > = right leaning       1 = small piece
> > >             stacks are listed top to bottom
> > >
> > > Ex.:    Initial House: <3 ^1 >2
> > >         Initial Tree:  ^1,2,3
> > >         A Nest:        ^3,2,1
> > >
> > Yeah!  This was great!  Totally understandable, especially now that I
> > see how you're notating Trees and Nests.  Cool!!
>
> I agree.  The only thing I would do to improve it is to use slashes
> instead of commas, to make the stacks explicit.
>             Initial Tree:  ^1/2/3
>             A Nest:        ^3/2/1

Yes, I too agree, the notation rocks, and slashes are better than commas.

-- Andy Looney