Alphabet Soup For Picky Eaters (game)

December 4, 2024 8:41 PM

A simple, charming logic game (5-15 minutes depending on your deduction skills). Try to find a word that makes all the eaters happy. (Previously - Wordward Draw)
posted by roaring beast (18 comments total)

I found myself thinking that I've never played a game like this that is so simple, but interesting in an out-of-the-box mechanic kind of way. If anyone has any other recommendations, please share!
posted by roaring beast at 8:44 PM on December 4, 2024

If you're looking at the mefi comments before trying the game, just a tip not to look at the itch comments, because the current top comment spoils a (the?) solution!
posted by oc-to-po-des at 10:42 PM on December 4, 2024

a (the?) solution!

I've found at least three solutions, before solving the last unknown blob's rule, and I think that rule is... not sanely specified in regex.
posted by pwnguin at 11:31 PM on December 4, 2024 [1 favorite]

I take it this doesn’t work on mobile?
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 3:44 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

Wow Yellow really gave us some trouble for a minute there but we finally got it. That was fun, thanks for posting!
posted by saladin at 4:34 AM on December 5, 2024

I take it this doesn't work on laptops?
posted by serena15221 at 6:07 AM on December 5, 2024

I won while trying to figure out yellow's rule, I hadn't even gotten to brown or red. No idea why it worked.
posted by Hactar at 6:16 AM on December 5, 2024

That is neat! It reminded me of coming across a particularly good Professor Layton puzzle.

I think the rules are:

- Purple wants any consonant
- Blue wants N
- Green wants any vowel (or Y) included in an actual word
- Yellow wants any letter followed by the next letter in the alphabet
- Orange wants at least six letters
- Red wants two of the same vowel

posted by lucidium at 6:37 AM on December 5, 2024 [2 favorites]

Ah, I was confused by Green's facial expression. I thought there were certain letters/attributes that made him ANGRY and some that made him HAPPY. Because he looks angry all the time.

So I had to go to the comments and find the rules.
posted by skullhead at 6:38 AM on December 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

I take it this doesn’t work on mobile?

Same here. Sucks to not have the latest shiny, I guess.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:47 AM on December 5, 2024

To add to lucidium's comments, I think we have:

- Red doesn't count Y as a vowel (SYZYGY doesn't wake it up)
- Orange wants six or seven letters (not six or more)
- Green doesn't care about whether there's a vowel; it will accept any actual word, even CH or NTH - not that that matters, since there aren't any vowelless words long enough to satisfy Orange

posted by madcaptenor at 8:07 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

lucidium and madcaptenor's deductions match my own, except

for spoilers.

I have Purple requiring an odd number of consonants.

Strong hint to a particular solution.

There is a very apt solution, which is the one I found. What goes into an alphabet soup? Singular, because of Purple, but once you enter the singular version they're happy regardless of what you enter after that.

posted by JHarris at 9:28 AM on December 5, 2024

JHarris, I didn't come up with that particular solution (mostly because once I had worked out what the different eaters wanted I then just went crazy with regexes) but it is definitely the best solution.
posted by madcaptenor at 10:10 AM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

This reminded me of "Queen Anne's Riddle," which I'd been meaning to look into. There's an old game a bit like "Hunt the Slipper" except with children in lines, chanting a rhyme, so I doubt it's related. The best clues were actually right here on Ask Metafilter back in 2010, where people associated it with "Bobby's World," "Scissors," and "The Green Glass Door." Over on r/riddles, someone asked a couple years ago for "Good Custom Rules for the Game Green Glass Door," and one reply pointed to a log of some on Sporcle--maybe useful if you want to play a parlor game version of this.
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:05 PM on December 5, 2024

More directly, this game is basically Jewels in the Sand, but with a compound six part rule.
posted by pwnguin at 4:37 PM on December 5, 2024 [1 favorite]

My regex for this gave lots of solutions.

Amnesia denies kinship! Nonstop tuition tenders opener. Toponym insists noodle renders lenders abelian. Fightin' defends; encode genders!

Ahem.
posted by nat at 10:14 PM on December 6, 2024 [2 favorites]

oops, forgot

Western filming centers wooden fishing! Opinion needed. Honor denied inside. Autumn descent hitting; indeed, enable nominee!

posted by nat at 10:17 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]

This is now my favorite found poetry. Definitely spoilers here, don't read the link if you don't want the results of my lazy encoding of the rules, but the list is fun:
nutrimatic
posted by nat at 10:18 PM on December 6, 2024 [1 favorite]