This game is designed to test and improve your organization skills.

The game resembles Tetris in that objects slowly drop from the ceiling and you have to decide, under time pressure, where to place them.

But here, the objects are sheets of paper, and you have to place the falling papers onto one of 5 numbered piles. Each piece of paper has a picture or word or number on it. You can drop it onto any pile you want, but the goal is to *REMEMBER* where you put it.

There are 10,000 possible figures; you cannot expect any repeats. You don't know in advance whether you will get birds, numbers, red things, people, words, or anything else. Thus you will have to work dynamically, noticing similarities among the offerings and remembering what you have already put in each pile.

You can rotate the papers, so that they stick out from one side or the other on a given pile. The graphics show the piles building up, but just a side view, so that you can no longer view the contents.

Once 40 sheets have dropped (60 in level 2, 80 in level 3, etc.), it is time for the QUIZ!

The game asks to you locate 20 particular pictures in the piles you've built. For each picture, you must click where in the stacks you think it is. You get points for picking the right column, and more points if you guess approximately the right height. Score enough and you'll qualify for the next round. Score too poorly and it's game over!

MECHANICS: The computer chooses among the 10,000 input files based on tags (each image is multitagged such as "this image is a bird, an animal, red, and small". In fact, even a dump from a photo community site could be used.) In easy levels, the computer chooses pictures which fall into distinct, separate categories. In hard levels you can expect true randomness.

Thank you.
-- phundug, Apr 05 2006

Memory wizards and how they do it http://www.discover...emory-championship/
Not the whole article but where you can find it [NotTheSharpestSpoon, Apr 07 2006]

This could actually work. Well done. Have a bun. Which pile will it go in?
-- dbmag9, Apr 05 2006


I had a dream like this once.
I woke up screaming.
-- gnomethang, Apr 05 2006


Baked on my desk right now.
-- normzone, Apr 05 2006


Thinking up categorisation criteria on the fly... quite a good concept for a game. After several goes at this game, the gamer will eventually get a good idea of what is the most efficient means of categorising random things.

In fact this would make an interesting experiment. Two buns. (+)(+)
-- spiritualized, Apr 05 2006


If you find a wrong, but similar picture, you shold get points, too.
-- DesertFox, Apr 05 2006


I disagree, [DesertFox] - if it's similar, you probably should have put it in the same column as the other one, so you'd at least get some points for that.

I could also see this working as a 3-d thing - with say a 3x3 grid, nine piles of paper to choose from. Then you could have multiple ways to organise the items, e.g. across = small, medium, large , down = living, manmade, other.
-- imaginality, Apr 05 2006


Hey, a lot of jobs involve limes.
-- normzone, Apr 06 2006


Or are done by limeys.
-- RayfordSteele, Apr 06 2006


I read an article in last month's Discover about how people use a combination of playing card association, places in the room and actions to memorize really long list of names, numbers, etc. A combination of that technique and this game could make it fun and easy to develop excellent recall ability. (+)
-- NotTheSharpestSpoon, Apr 07 2006


[BrauBeaton]'s idea is great! So: early levels: Distinct, nonoverlapping categories. Middle levels: Randomness. Hard levels: Overlapping, purposely tricky pictures forcing you to develop new categories *within* categories. I like it!
-- phundug, Apr 07 2006


I would lose So heinously. Now if it were tools at a workbench...
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Apr 07 2006


//I would make four piles of one paper and one pile of 9,996 papers. //
Then I'll implement gusts of wind that blow at random times and spill overly high stacks into random positions.
-- phundug, Apr 07 2006


//Then I'll implement gusts of wind that blow at random times and spill overly high stacks into random positions.//

Oh yeah? Well then [phlish]'ll make the next stacks out of wood, and if that didn't work, he(?)'d use brick. So there! In your face! Whoo, whoo! High five!
-- NotTheSharpestSpoon, Apr 08 2006


...and so aptly named, too.

I play a variant of this game on my desk at the moment, but with just one pile.
-- moomintroll, Apr 09 2006


//...and so aptly named, too.//

Who, little ol' me or the game?
-- NotTheSharpestSpoon, Apr 09 2006


A very stressful game, given the rather random way in which sheets of paper fall.
-- wagster, Apr 09 2006


To beat phlish's clever trick, simply restrict the maximum height of the piles.
-- Loris, Apr 12 2006



random, halfbakery