Cogito

“Cogito!”

From this point forward, that’s all you’ll be hearing when someone suggests a card game. Welcome to Cogito. Cogito [ko-jee-toh] a simple yet elaborate test of raw strategy. This game uses basic strategic concepts of aggression, passivity, anticipation, repetition and unpredictability to judge who is the more intelligent person. Here’s how it works:

To play, you will need a deck of cards, more specifically, two Aces, two Kings, two Queens, two Jacks and two 2s. Each player receives one of each of the cards. It’s best to have each set made up of cards of the same suit so that the teams are more clearly identified, and so the game is prettier. Each card has a rank, and based on that rank, they defeat lower ranked cards in combat. This works in a similar way to the game of War, but there is one exception to the ranking: a 2 will beat an Ace. Unlike War, however, the cards are not played randomly, but are chosen by the player and then placed face down until both players have ended their turn. Once both players have placed the card on the table, they flip them and the outcome of that battle is revealed. Since each player has five cards, there will be five battles in every match. The game shares its single card combat with War, its strategy for aggression and preservation with Stratego, and its requirement for layered anticipation of an opponent’s decisions with Rock-Paper-Scissors.

As in war, there are good victories and bad victories. Few things are more frustrating than flipping over an Ace and seeing your opponent reveal a card under five – what a waste! In that scenario the loser is often the more satisfied player. In Cogito as well, a good victory would be one where your card defeats your opponent’s card by a narrow margin, such as an Ace beating a King. A bad victory would be having your King defeat your opponent’s 2. The goal is to win more battles than your opponent, and to do so you must avoid bad victories.

In Stratego, players must choose where to place their power pieces, such as the Marshall, and where to place their loser pieces, such as the Scout. Although charging into a bomb and being blown to pieces may technically be considered scouting, it’s doubtful that the Scout had this  in mind when he accepted the position.  Anyway, placing your more powerful pieces in aggressive locations makes them vulnerable to attack, but can also pay off big by catching your opponent off guard. In Cogito, Players may play conservatively and choose a feeler card such as a Jack or Queen first, in order to get a read on their opponent’s strategy, but they will lose the first battle to a more aggressive strategy. Conversely, a more aggressive strategy, such as playing your Ace first, could either start things off with a bad victory or even the dreaded Two-over-Ace upset.

Rock-Paper-Scissors is a completely level battleground with each weapon having an equal chance at victory and an endless supply. Because of this, Rock-Paper-Scissors relies on only one method for creating a strategy: anticipating your opponent’s strategy. If your opponent has played Rock the past two games and was just defeated by your Paper, you should switch to Rock because he might think that you think he will do Rock again and choose paper, so he chooses scissors to beat your paper but is defeated by your Rock. If he does, by chance, choose Rock a third time then you will tie, which isn’t the end of the world. Cogito uses this theory of repetition and anticipation to help produce a solid strategy that takes into account your opponents previous choices and, therefore, likely future choices. If your opponent has opened with Jack King or Queen King the past two games you can make an informed assumption that he will either stick with the ‘feeler-killer’ strategy a third time or play an Ace out of the gate to take out your Queen or King that you would use to beat his Jack or Queen. In advanced Cogito strategy, players use cautious early games to bait their opponent into a more aggressive opening and then take advantage of it.

In tournament Cogito, players can choose to lay down more than one card at a time (up to all five) in order to throw off an opponents play style. A player may open with a feeler card, such as a Jack, then place two, three or  four cards face down on their next turn. When multiple cards are played, the game still takes place one battle at a time, but there are two sets of tournament rules which have differing instructions on how to respond to a multi-card play.

The first set of rules, commonly called Business Cogito, dictate that a player may respond to a multi-card play by laying down any number of cards. So in response to a four-card play, the player may play one card at a time, observing each battle before laying down additional cards. In the second variation, often called Thai Cogito, the responding player must play the same number of cards as his opponent.

Players who frequently lay down multiple cards are not welcome in some circles, since professional players are often frustrated by multi-card plays, especially from newer players. Sometimes the best strategy to combat multi-card play is abandoning single card strategy and going all in – placing all of your cards face down on the table.

Casual Cogito rules dictate that players must engage in one of two play styles: each player must either play one card at a time or lay down all five cards at the beginning of the game. This format reduces frustration with ‘cheesy’ multi-card strategies by focusing on the fundamental strategies of Cogito instead of optimizing player’s abilities to influence their opponents. When playing for money with friends or at the casino, Thai Cogito is the format of choice.

Here is an example of how an average game of Cogito might play out:

As you can see, you have won the game 3-1 with one tie. At Cogito tables in Las Vegas, players can bet on the bad-beat of Two-over-Ace or a certain number of wins or ties, similar to the side betting found in Blackjack. A 5-0 victory can pay big dividends for the casino player, but is virtually unheard of on the professional Cotigo circuit. With every card played, the options for each player become more limited and when each player has only two remaining cards the strategy is sharpened to pinpoint precision.

Try Cogito. You won’t like your friends as much afterward.

Click here to download Cogito for PC.

Click here to download Cogito for Android.

Super-Vision

supervision. [soo-per-vizh-uhn] -noun.

1. the act or function of supervising.

2. a heightened sense of sight often possessed by superheroes. Seahorseman foiled The Urchin’s evil plot by using his supervision.

supervisor. [soo-per-vahy-zer] -noun.

1. a person who supervises workers or the work done by others.

2. a visor worn by crazed individuals who seek superhuman eyesight. With this supervisor equipped I can now take over Nigeria!

Slogging

Walking is boring. If you have ever enjoyed a walk, it was because of the scenery or the company, not because walking itself is an enjoyable activity. Walking is merely the basic unassisted method of transportation that humans use to get from one place to another, but it can be so much more.

Normal walking requires your feet and hands to alternate their swing so that the weight of your extended leg is counterbalanced by your arm on the opposite side. When your right leg extends, your left hand will swing forward so that your body moves in rhythmic and stable motion. Boring.

Next time you have to walk somewhere, try spicing things up by swinging your right arm forward when your right leg extends. The result is a hilarious and unnatural bipedal motion which will surely brighten up your travels; this is known as slogging. Your first attempt will have to be slow because your body will want to revert to regular walking. Do not allow your body to tell you how to walk. Once you have a solid grasp of how your arms and legs should move, you may want to experiment with running in this fashion, as this will undoubtedly lead to laughter at your own foolishness.

Don’t walk, slog.

Teamship

Everyone has experienced that special connection with another person – the knowledge that you will always be able to count on each other. We call this connection friendship. We use this word to describe our relationship with a person that we consider our friend. But what about that intense sense of brotherhood and trust that develops between teammates, what do we call that? Surely there must be a word that describes the bonds forged in the heat of battle on a hockey rink, basketball court or soccer field. Now there is.

teamship. [teem-ship] -noun.

1. the state of being a member of a team. We are considering her for teamship this year.

2. a feeling shared between team members. The Wolf-Dogs have great teamship.

3. a relation which shares team-like attributes.

If you ever feel like you and your friend just make a great duo, that’s teamship. If your friends know you so well that they can anticipate your actions, that’s teamship. When, without words,  you crouch behind someone while your friend shoves that person so they fall over you, that’s teamship. Take that, Grandma!

So go ahead and try it out. Once this word works its way into your vocabulary you will wonder how you ever got along without it.

Forced Abstract Relation

The human mind is a beautiful machine. It can record and playback sounds and images, perform calculations and generate original thoughts and ideas. Although the brain is capable of so many wonderful things, it is outperformed in nearly every area by modern computers. There is, however, one function that a computer cannot do: comprehend abstract ideas. No matter how much information we feed into a program, it cannot grasp the philosophical ramifications of that information or explain how it relates to the life of a human being. This is where the human brain excels. In fact, our brains are so good at thinking abstractly, that we can relate any two things in the universe together. Our ability to link seemingly unrelated concepts and objects is a significant source of art and humor.

To explore our brain’s ability to relate any two things to each other, let’s play a game of Forced Abstract Relation. The game requires at least two people to play and becomes more fun in larger groups. It begins with one player asking one, or more, other player(s) to relate two random ideas, people or items based on the given category. The other player(s) then respond based on whatever reasons come to mind. If we have more than one player answering, they can debate until the correct conclusion is reached. Let’s look at a few examples.

1. A fork and a spoon – which one is liberal, which one is conservative? Well, the jagged edges of the fork remind us of war, which is associated with conservatism. The soft, round shape of the spoon signifies equality, a foundational principle of liberalism. In addition, forks are used to stab tough food such as meat, which conservatives love to eat, while spoons are used to eat soup, which is quite a mild, agreeable dish. There you have it, spoons are liberal, forks are conservative. Easy, huh?

2. An apple and an orange – which one is angry and which one is kind? This one is a bit tougher. At first glance the apple seems angry because apples are red, the color of rage, and oranges are the softer fruit. The orange, however, is much more acidic than the apple and acid is obviously angry. The apple also reminds us of grandma’s apple pie, which is a very kind treat. Applies are kind, oranges are angry.

The proposed relation can be between any two things in relation to any category. One interesting observation, as we play the game we notice that the number of categories is not as vast as we may have first thought. We even observe that most, if not all of the categories could fall under the master category of male vs. female. Conservative vs. liberal, salt vs. pepper, angry vs. kind, beautiful vs. ugly, waffle vs. pancake, Canadian vs. American – these could all be easily translated into male vs. female. It appears that in every subject that we dichotomize, the divergent characteristics stem from the stereotypical differences between male and female human beings. In any case, it’s a great game because we can exploit our brain’s ability to relate things that should not be relatable in order to find out whether Coke or Pepsi is the male of sodas.

It’s Coke.