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Google hides mathematical puzzle in Cr-48 video, rewards its solver with a laptop
Watching Google destroy Cr-48 laptops for fun can't have been easy for any of you, but it turns out that the wily geeks of Mountain View had a clandestine purpose to their malevolence after all. An equation, scribbled out in old school chalk in the background of one scene, attracted the attention of a Sylvain Zimmer, who, together with a group of like-minded geeks, set about trying to solve it and discover its meaning. A full day's worth of cryptographic work later, Sylvain was left with a set of numbers he was able to convert into letters, which in turned spelled out "speed and destroy." Appending goo.gl, Google's URL shortener, to the front of those words got him to a screen congratulating him for being "first to figure out our MENSA-certified puzzle" and promising to send him a Cr-48 laptop as his prize. Kudos to Sylvain... and to Google for being such irrepressible geeks.
Empire's new Mensa games not only for the 200 IQ crowd
Empire Interactive has recently snatched up the rights to make Mensa-themed games for consoles, handhelds, PCs and Macs. While further details on these upcoming titles are scarce, the ultra-elite group of brainiacs assures us that these new games will "foster intelligence." Judging by that statement, and the group's taste in gaming, we'd say to expect a slew of Sudoku and crossword puzzles. As if the DS needed any more of those.
Off the Grid: Set and un-fun gaming
Every other week Scott Jon Siegel contributes Off the Grid, a column on gaming away from the television screen or monitor. The card game Set has been around since 1991, but I only learned about it recently. During a recent trip to Israel, a friend introduced me to the game. He was surprised that I hadn't heard of it, so I asked him the logical question: "Is it any good?"His answer: "It's not very fun, but it's good."...Eh? I must have missed something. For me, a game being "good" is all about it being "fun." I believed my friend to be mistaken in one of two ways: either the game is fun and he just had poor taste, or it wasn't good, and he still had poor taste (sorry, Daniel).Set's biggest claim to fame is its association with Mensa International, a society exclusively for people with high IQs. In 1991, Mensa chose Set as one of their top five games of the year, and it's been riding that honor ever since. At heart, Set is a matching game, where players have to create sets of three cards, where attributes of each card must either agree or disagree completely with the other two. Trust me, it's harder than it sounds.
