On the second roll of a play, I had 4 sixes and a five.

4K and Yahtzee were both open.

Obviously, the play would be worth 29 points in 4K, and Yahtzee is only a 1 in 6 chance, with a 2 in 3 chance of getting less than 29 on the next roll.

My heuristic is to *always* roll for Yahtzee on 4K if Yahtzee is open (and sometimes if Yahtzee is closed and Large Straight is open).

Expected outcome in this case is the average of all the possible outcomes: avg(50, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25) = 30.88. Go heuristics.

Some counter-intuitive, some not. I haven't done the math on many of these. Some of them I gleaned from looking at the logs of the Optimal Solitaire Yahtzee Player, an invaluable resource.

• Early in the game, ditch a bad roll in the ones.

  Sure, you'll go negative on the bonus, but it's likely you'll make it up if there are still 4 or 5 number boxes left to fill on the left.

• Don't actively try to fill the 1s and 2s boxes.
  
  

Typically what happens is that on your first roll you get 3 ones, and maybe a potentially useful singleton.

And you've already used the ones box.

So the question is, should you go for Yahtzee here? Or should you try to build off the singleton or just re-roll all five dice?

I suspect that if the probability is reasonably close to 1 in 6, it's probably your best chance at a Yahtzee in the game, and thus worth risking the Yahtzee box on.

There are 3 ways to get to Yahtzee from here, and we can sum their individual probabilities to get the overall chances.

A: Woof
B: What?
A (emphatically): WOOF!
B (get's it now): Woof!
A: What?
...
etc.

Minutes of fun whenever you need it.

A team from Ellen's work won the pub quiz at Elephant and Castle last night.

I didn't show up until the 3rd round, and I think I gave as many wrong answers as right answers, so my contribution was minimal. But I still bragged a lot about my correct answers.

The psychology of coming to a consensus when no one knows an answer and different people have different ideas of a best guess is interesting.

http://multisnake.com/

The massively multiplayer online snake game.

I'd also like to see an MMO daleks clone...

This is an alternate playlist for the Carmina Burana, in which each movement is replaced by a more recent song with a similar theme (musical or lyrical, preferably both).

If you've got a better entry for any of these, please leave a note in the comments!

This is a game where you come up with a tiny sample of an awful or infectious song that immediately reminds you of the song in it's entirety and simultaneously inflicts a deep sense of shame as you realize that parts of your brain are dedicated to recognizing the song and can never be used for anything else ever again.

Also, it has to be singable, so that you can afflict someone with self-loathing at any time, in any place, with no special equipment.

My favorite games of all time, in rough chronological order.

• Out of This World Game
• Syndicate
• PaRappa the Rapper
• Counter-Strike
• Color Quest
• Ape Escape 2
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
• Animal Crossing

http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html

I think the max possible high score is 188...