Go Zendo

[Haze_with_a_Z]

I think I did that right

[antonTobi]

Let’s fill in these question marks:

Edit: Ok, both of those are green as well. So what’s so special about the red one?

[antonTobi]

So far, every board containing only black chains is green, and every board containing only white chains is red. How about the empty board?

[shinuito]

I can’t find a rule or even make a convoluted rule that isn’t countered by some diagram already.

Here’s some observations and questions:

The placement of stones clearly matters, so it can’t be something purely to do with the number of black and white stones.

@Vsotvep

@Vsotvep

Of the examples so far, sometimes you can get from a green to a red position and vice versa by flipping colours of the stones. In other cases you get green to green. Do any red to red examples exist?

I keep trying to come up with some rule that breaks symmetry like Black has at least as many groups as white plus some other conditions but I can’t make it work yet. Again it still somehow has to take into account placement. In the above I can’t figure out id some rule about liberties could distinguish between them.

[Vsotvep]

With convoluted rules I meant something like “Rule X, except for if the board position has Rule Y”, which can be used to split the koans into two distinct cases. I’ll be sure to make an insightful pair of koans to counter the rule, not just another ‘exception’ to add to the list, but something more fundamental.

[antonTobi]

Apart from the idea about distances between chains from earlier (which I still can’t get to work), looking at just those two examples I start thinking about the “line of sight” between stones. In the green one, the white stones can “see” each other, in the red one, they can’t.

Looking at the rest of the boards, I can’t really make anything useful out of that, but I thought I’d just throw it out there in case it helps someone else come up with something.

[shinuito]

Green if Black has at least as many groups on the board as white, or if black has less groups then white has either no stones on the main diagonals, or at least as many as black does on both diagonals.

There’s always some counter example…

@Vsotvep

[antonTobi]

?

[Vsotvep]

I was still parsing it, but something like that may be useful

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[antonTobi]

Since it’s so difficult to come up with a valid rule to guess, maybe @Vsotvep can provide confirmation/counterexamples to more general statements like

“If a board has no white stones, it is green”?

If you don’t feel like that makes it too easy on us

[Vsotvep]

You should be very close to guessing what the rule is, all the ingredients are there. It’s just a matter of connecting them in the right way.

[antonTobi]

I feel like I don’t have any ingredients at all But that sounds like a hint about some sort of connections…

[Vsotvep]

Next hint:

@shinuito

Of the examples so far, sometimes you can get from a green to a red position and vice versa by flipping colours of the stones. In other cases you get green to green. Do any red to red examples exist?

No

[shinuito]

Board is green if Black has at least as many groups as white, or if Black has less groups than White, Black must have a stone on a main diagonal and white’s groups (if there are more than one) must be separated by a two space jump. (As in where there’s more than one white group, for each white group there is another that you can jump to by a two space jump)

Every time

@Vsotvep

Edit: I should probably give up and someone might have figured it out when I come back

[Vsotvep]

I think this comes closest to two koans for your proposed rule:

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Next hint: The rule is the combination of two ideas. Both have been mentioned in this thread already.

[李建澔2]

That is the largest I could have done.@vsotvep ?

[Vsotvep]

Yet also:

[shinuito]

@Vsotvep

Yet also:

This hurts me deeply.

[李建澔2]

I am not allowed to post another board sign, or maybe we can start to as this is too hard.

[李建澔2]

@vsotvep?geting better at spelling his name