[Icehouse] 2 player Zendo

[Guy Srinivasan]

I know there are several 2 player Zendo variants up at various places, but
nothing I found meets my requirements. Here are my requirements and a first
draft to meet them:

a) There is a Master and a Student for each rule. Almost certainly the two
people playing will switch roles for each rule and some kind of currency,
probably points, will stay with players over multiple rules.
b) The rules should encourage the Student to correctly guess the rule as
soon as possible.
c) The rules should strongly discourage situations in which the Student
takes many, many examples/guesses to figure out the rule and gets
frustrated.
d) The rules should encourage the Master to know beforehand how easy or hard
her rule actually is.

My first draft:

Players alternate being Master and Student, and keep a running total of
points throughout play. The current Master writes a standard Zendo rule and
an integer, 10+, both hidden. This number is her guess at how many turns the
Student will need to guess the rule, and actually represents a range. If the
chosen number is X, the range is X through X+X/5. So 10-12, 11-13, 12-14,
13-15, 14-16, 15-18, 16-19, ... 20-24, etc. Play as in normal Zendo except
that the Student has as many guessing stones as desired. The Student either
builds a sculpture and asks that it be marked, or guesses a rule that the
Master must find a counter-example to. Either counts as a turn. If the
Student takes a number of turns less than specified by the Master's range,
she gains +3 points. If the Student takes a number of turns within the
Master's range, the Master gains +10 points. If the Student goes over the
range, the Master gains +1 point.

This was fun, but it's a little sad that Mondo is missing, and the point
values and range values can undoubtedly be tweaked. Thoughts?

Guy
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