Game AIs
by Jeff
Image text: The top computer champion at Seven Minutes in Heaven is a Honda-built Realdoll, but to date it has been unable to outperform the human Seven Minutes in Heaven champion, Ken Jennings.
This explanation got really long, so I'm placing it after the jump.
Explorers
by Jeff
Image text: We're going to have to work together to get over our hangups if we're going to learn to move on Catan's hexagonal grid. It's bad enough that we lost our crew of pawns when we passed within firing range of Battleship.
In this comic appears to be two chess pieces, a knight and a bishop. The knight can only travel two spaces up or over and then one space over and the bishop can only travel diagonally. The chess pieces appear to be on a 3x3 chess board on wheels that has broken off from a "home board".
The chess pieces are playing Settlers of Catan, which is the reference to the hexagonal squares because that's the shape of the spots on the board.
Ba3, Nc3 and Ke5 are all moves on a chess game. The black squares joke is because the bishop can only go back and forth diagonally on the white squares.
There is also a reference to another board game, Battleship in the image text.
Tic-Tac-Toe
by Jeff
Image text: The only winning move is to play, perfectly, waiting for your opponent to make a mistake.
Ok, wow. I don't know if I ever though I'd see a tic-tac-toe decision tree laid out like this. The explanation at the top sums it up for how to find your next move. Click on the image to see it large so you can find your next move. And as usual, the image text has it perfectly because the only way to win tic-tac-toe is to have the other person screw up somehow.
Scheduling
by Jeff
Image text: 'How about a little ... *family growth*?' 'Dude, that's not until round two.'
This comic starts out with a cliched pornographic movie set up. A strong pizza delivery guy mistakenly enters a house where a French maid is dressed in what appears in the comic to be lace. The pizza delivery got has a "hot sausage" pizza, in which the hot sausage is a double entendre for his penis.
Then in the second frame, the pizza delivery guy turns the pizza sideways which ruins all chances he had of ever delivering that pizza. Literally, I'm not making another sexual innuendo there.
Then the second cliche porn set up enters the picture as a plumber enters then delivers his sexual inneundo that Mrs. Jones "needs her plumbing fixed". But, then because this is xkcd instead of turning into some wild Pay-Per-View porn movie, they discover the game Agricola and decide to play that instead.
Agricola is a turn based game in which each player is a farmer and spouse. Each player is dedicated to expanding their farm and accomplishing all the tasks on the farm. This is where the sexual innuendo comes in from the image text. "Family Growth" is obviously a sexual innuendo, but in Agricola you cannot complete actual family growth until after you expand your farm and farm house to accommodate the kiddies.
In the last frame we see Mr. and Mrs. Jones come home. You can tell Mr. Jones because he has the briefcase. When they come home to interrupt the game, the French Maid, the Pizza Delivery Guy and the Plumber are all playing Agricola on the floor.
Incision
by Jeff
Image text: At one point, by force of childhood habit, the doctor accidentally removed three or four organs.
Operation is a "board" game in which the player attempts to remove body parts from holes in the board without touching the metal sides of each hole. Operation is hooked up to a buzzer which emits the familiar "Bzzzzt!" sound whenever the removal instrument touches the sides.
Sex Dice
by Jeff
Image text: You roll for initiative, and ... [roll] ... wow, do you ever take it.
In this comic, there are two different groups playing two different dice games. However, the dice got mixed up. Instead of numbers, the first two are supposed to have another die with actions on them, as seen in the last panel. The "sex" die got mixed in with the kids Dungeons and Dragons set because they did not organize the game cupboard. The four people in the last panel are completely different than the two in the first 3.
The joke in the image text is a play on the word "initiative". In Dungeons and Dragons you roll for initiative for an extra modifier to your roll of the dice. In the image text, they are suggesting that someone accidentally rolled a sex die for initiative. And "take initiative" means to take charge to take command outside of Dungeons and Dragons.
Strip Games
by Jeff
Image text: HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF STRIP GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR?
Agricola is a board game in which you start out as a farmer with a spouse. It is a turn-based game in which you have two possible movements for each character you possess. Sounds enthralling...
Jumanji is the game played in the movie by the same name.
Poohsticks is a game played in the Winnie the Pooh books in which two "players" each drop sticks from a bridge and the first stick to make it to the end wins. Sounds enthralling as a strip competition...
Podracing is the type of racing featured in Star Wars Episode I.
Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is a problem in game theory. It is the case that if two prisoners are taken into jail, but kept separate. If both choose to remain silent, they are given 6 months jail time. If they both accuses the other, they both will do 5 years in prison. If one accuses the other while the other stays silent, one goes to jail for 10 years and the other gets away scot free. When it is iterated, it is played over and over again.
Chess by Mail is just what it sounds like... and very slow.
Conway's Game of Life is a zero-player game and played by cells and here are the rules from Wikipedia:
- Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by underpopulation.
- Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
- Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
- Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell.