vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Aug 19, 2019 12:05:30 GMT
There was something a little strange about Cirus... Something real...
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Aug 27, 2019 22:47:59 GMT
Its very strange the passage of the inside of the spaceship to the planet. And the planet is also a bit strange. But i think i like it.
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Aug 29, 2019 10:06:23 GMT
Going dowm through that floating road kilometres above the fields down there. So strange. Deja vu. I feel that i have been here before.
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Aug 30, 2019 5:34:44 GMT
Very good book. I won it today. I felt it. A medium book, with a very good final part. The encounter with the extremely agressive Zark (inspired in Darth Vader). The philosophical encounter with the fantastic pilot of the Vandervecken. And the final (long) encounter with Ciro. I remember looking into the eyes of Ciro. I felt very interesting he was not the normal kind of a scientist. Very interesting book.
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Post by slloyd14 on Jul 7, 2022 0:28:50 GMT
I have a soft spot for Space Assassin. Maybe it's because it is one of my earlier books. I like the new rules and I think some of the non-essential set pieces are very good. The pilot conversation is good.
I know the path to victory is short and the final section is a let down, but it has the makings of a good gamebook.
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Post by CharlesX on Jul 7, 2022 4:01:24 GMT
I have a soft spot for Space Assassin. Maybe it's because it is one of my earlier books. I like the new rules and I think some of the non-essential set pieces are very good. The pilot conversation is good. I know the path to victory is short and the final section is a let down, but it has the makings of a good gamebook. I agree, objectively it isn't brilliant - the writing is juvenile and boring, the rules and gamebook doesn't work half as well as intended - but something about it is good. It has an original feel because it was Andrew Chapman's first published FF, and for same reason feels like a less manufactured FF, like it could be part of another gamebook series. I particularly like it when you play the first few times, before knowing the true path to victory - some of the non-true path encounters are interesting. It's reminiscent to me of some of the old-school tabletop RPGs.
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Post by vastariner on Jul 22, 2022 22:43:37 GMT
OK, having run through it again on the 40th Frenzy, I have a few other comments to add.
1. I did it almost as a speed run; basically going straight on at most options, other than opening doors. So I missed out on quite a bit. The tank battle and a proper exploration of Beneath World.
2. The Armour stat is intriguing, it's almost like a second helper for battles, as you might get away with being hit. But it is ultimately of limited use because, if you have a low skill, it will be run down to zero (or close thereto) fairly quickly, or, if you have a high skill, will never get tested. Probably needs a bit more thought.
3. There are some great concepts and great writing in here, the completely alien is seen as being not unexpected, which is normal for a Guild Assassin. I do wonder whether this would have been an even better book had Chapman got it as his third or fourth. Because he is too slavishly WoFTMing it with quasi-dungeon crawl and easy boss. So with a bit more experience - and that applies to the audience as well, with readers more sophisticated and more demanding of their adventures - the gameplay might have been more developed.
4. The whole planet and floating pathway bit. I love this idea. I'm not sure how one gets the concept. Is it basically an illusion? Spaceship linked indelibly? Portal? Doesn't matter. It's the most spacey thing in any of the space books. The idea that you could trap a planet onboard or be integrated with it. Might also explain why there's no real sense of urgency about getting back to the Vandervecken; are there any failure endings where you just get lost or the ship vamooses or spreads Cyrus' shit all over it?
5. How many books are there where you can win it without learning a thing? There are obviously things that make it easier, but no killer code or McGuffin that is absolutely necessary.
6. The Strangling Vines and Toroid may be unique. Is there any other enemy where you're basically close to guaranteed to winning the fight, but the time it takes - and the damage you are forced to take - is entirely dependent on your weapon? If you have the Lash, you're going to lose 12 ST to the vines. If you have the Blaster, you could lose anything between 2 and 24.
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Post by dragonwarrior8 on Aug 3, 2022 15:43:55 GMT
So was this book actually written before Starship Traveller? Perhaps Chapman should get the credit (or the blame depending upon your point of view) for introducing Sci-Fi to the series. Maybe Steve even saw his submission and decided to borrow the idea?
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Post by a moderator on Aug 3, 2022 16:32:57 GMT
The entire Sorcery! series and House of Hell also came out before Space Assassin. Do you really think that Steve could have written all those gamebooks in the time it took to edit Andrew's book into publishable condition?
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Post by dragonwarrior8 on Aug 3, 2022 17:58:47 GMT
Probably not, but I remember seeing that Andrew only had WOFTM to go off of when writing Space Assassin, and I would find it interesting to know when they actually received his submission. Wasn't Space Assassin also a replacement for a book that was never released? So they could have had it awhile (assuming Andrew's recollection is accurate and he sent it in before even The Citadel of Chaos came out). I wonder if any of this is covered in You Are the Hero, which I haven't read yet.
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Post by CharlesX on Aug 3, 2022 19:15:40 GMT
Probably not, but I remember seeing that Andrew only had WOFTM to go off of when writing Space Assassin, and I would find it interesting to know when they actually received his submission. Wasn't Space Assassin also a replacement for a book that was never released? So they could have had it awhile (assuming Andrew's recollection is accurate and he sent it in before even The Citadel of Chaos came out). I wonder if any of this is covered in You Are the Hero, which I haven't read yet. I have read You Are The Hero and it doesn't mention anything about Space Assassin being a replacement for a book that was never released (this was only the early years of FF so I think they didn't have so many submissions, ambitious or otherwise), as you say only the one FF had come out before Andrew Chapman ambitiously wrote his own one, which was rejected by Penguin Australia but given the go-ahead by Penguin UK. Something that comes across in You Are The Hero is now much responsibility falls on the houses to decide what to publish - all sorts of wonderful, colourful FF were rejected for publication, and a bigger number which won't be missed - and also the decision not to renew the FF books, which just weren't making enough money.
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Post by aeris2001x2 on May 1, 2023 7:07:36 GMT
I did have some fun with this one but I won't read again, its just too stupid and badly written.
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Post by a moderator on May 2, 2023 0:51:28 GMT
I did have some fun with this one but I won't read again, its just too stupid and badly written. What about the book constitutes bad writing in your view?
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IoannesKantakouzenos
Traveller
Being slowly eaten alive by a Ghoul
Posts: 105
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy (Aventuras Fantásticas)
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Post by IoannesKantakouzenos on May 2, 2023 18:25:58 GMT
It's one of my childhood memories, so it hits a soft spot in my heart. However I do agree it's a bit weak and (I don't know if it's a translation problem) from what I understand (133) is flawed: if I recall correctly, the text asks if you did one or the other option, but you can end up doing none of them at all.
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Post by a moderator on May 2, 2023 19:35:14 GMT
(I don't know if it's a translation problem) from what I understand (133) is flawed: if I recall correctly, the text asks if you did one or the other option, but you can end up doing none of them at all. The original English text definitely has an option for having done neither, so that's either a translation issue or a mistaken memory.
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Post by scouserob on Aug 15, 2023 17:26:59 GMT
I’ve very recently received Space Assassin via EBay so I thought I’d jot down some first impressions. My memories of this one are practically nil. I remember there were Pep Pills and pretty much nothing else. 🤷🏻♂️ I love the cover and the internal art is generally great. Just in the first few sections of the adventure there is that fantastic Guard Robot looking through the hole made with your Gravity Bomb (see below) and the alien remains. 😎👍🏻 (Wow! Geoffrey Senior illustrated the original Death’s Head in transformers, yes? I loved Death’s Head, his adventure with the Seventh Doctor was top quality, yes?) The use of armour and weapons in the gun battles works really well at least for the first battle. I’ve coded up that battle against the Guard Robot and it really zings along. (Especially with a few laser sound effects.) The initial weapons choice is interesting. The Assault Blaster increases your damage to an average 3.5 points but is expensive. The grenades are cheap and would be very useful indeed against large groups of low Stamina high Skill enemies. Extra Armour is even cheaper and as high armour completely mitigates gun damage it would probably be the most useful if you are usually against solitary opponents with higher stamina who hit hard. Gravity bombs are situational. I guess I’ll have to wait to see what can be picked up along the way and what enemies are on the golden path to discover the best purchasing strategy. There are a few rule oddities compared to the previous books. No luck use in battles, and no restrictions against popping Pep Pills mid battle. 💊 it is also a bit odd that the Assassin’s Guild are hired for what is essentially a hostile extraction mission rather than an assassination. 🤔🤨 I guess Space Assassin sounds cooler than Space Cop or Space Mercenary. Here’s a peek at my phone app:
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Post by CharlesX on Aug 15, 2023 17:41:01 GMT
So, scouserob you coded a FF app yourself? It certainly leaves standing an FF one my IT literate mate made for me back in the eighties! And you can program in all the special rules for playing particular FF, or would it be beyond you to code an ambitious one such as a Martin FF?
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Post by scouserob on Aug 15, 2023 18:35:07 GMT
Yes, I bought Pythonista on my my iPhone for tenner a few months back and have been at it pretty much ever since. (I started with Talisman of Death, which I was playing/mapping at the time.)
I've fully coded up Talisman of Death and Scorpion Swamp as they don't have iPhone adaptations, and have only just begun with Space Assassin. I'm pretty sure I've got all the special rules incorporated for Scorpion Swamp, with the spell gems, etc, including a LOT of variables tracking whether you've been to clearings, slain a particular monster, how much Stamina things had when you ran away from them, etc, etc.
I'm very embarrassed to admit that I've never owned or played a Keith Martin Fighting Fantasy. 😔 (I stopped getting them at Creature of Havoc and picked up again at Blood of the Zombies.)
As for coding up quirky rules from the books I have read, I guess I would find it difficult to preserve the spirit of stuff like getting to the unprompted hidden references in Creature of Havoc. I wouldn't want it to pop up as an option if you have the right item or have been to the correct paragraph so I guess you'd need a button that is always there, next to the items or notes. I've not had any text or number entering yet but I doubt that would be much of an issue. I also like keeping things in sight, all on one screen, so Ian Livingstone's plethora of items in Shadow of the Giants would drive me insane. 😂
You'll be unsurprised to learn that I found the trickiest part to be coding up the battles especially when they are multi-way. Though once the subroutines are in place they can just be reused.
Choosing items to give away or exchange is also a bit of a pain but only due to keeping the consistency of the formatting of buttons, etc.
This is as far as I've got, the special rules for gun battles and grenades make for a pretty cool fight:
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roidhun
Wanderer
Ironic, self-deprecating nerd and geek extraordinnaire.
Posts: 78
Favourite Gamebook Series: The Legends of Skyfall (Yes, really!)
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Post by roidhun on Aug 15, 2023 23:02:48 GMT
(Wow! Geoffrey Senior illustrated the original Death’s Head in transformers, yes? I loved Death’s Head, his adventure with the Seventh Doctor was top quality, yes?) Yay! Somebody else who properly esteems this scandalously unappreciated artist! He illustrated all of Mark Smith and Jamie Thompson's Falcon series too.
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Post by Peter on Aug 18, 2023 1:13:31 GMT
Yes, I bought Pythonista on my my iPhone for tenner a few months back and have been at it pretty much ever since. (I started with Talisman of Death, which I was playing/mapping at the time.)
I've fully coded up Talisman of Death and Scorpion Swamp as they don't have iPhone adaptations, and have only just begun with Space Assassin. I'm pretty sure I've got all the special rules incorporated for Scorpion Swamp, with the spell gems, etc, including a LOT of variables tracking whether you've been to clearings, slain a particular monster, how much Stamina things had when you ran away from them, etc, etc.
I like how the illustration remains for the length of the encounter, unlike the books, where obviously it disappears as soon as you make a choice and turn the page.
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Post by scouserob on Aug 18, 2023 10:39:47 GMT
Yeah, it's fun choosing the exact cut off point for each illustration and choosing whether they should appear if you arrive from a different location. 🙂
I've worked my way into the very early sections of the Vandervecken now and, though the Gun Battles are still great fun, I'm beginning to sense things settling into a rather repetitive pattern, similar to the pre-portcullis part of Warlock of Firetop Mountain. (Albeit along two different main corridors.)
It seems to be a long series of path choices which, in their, essence boil down to carrying on down the corridor, or opening a door (then returning to the corridor). (Though some 'doors' are reasonably badly disguised as short side corridors.) Now, I guess many gamebooks are like this if you dig down and map them out, yet this pattern has been pretty obvious. I'm hoping things will pick up again soon.
There was also a Gravity Bomb booby-trap, which at first glance seemed nothing more than giving you a random 1 chance in 6 of survival. Yet, given the colours were Red, Green and Blue, both me and my son, disarmed the trap successfully on the first try. So, a decent puzzle after all, perhaps? Did everyone else avoid the trap?
Anyhow I'm off down the corridor to continue my assassination hostile extraction mission. ... Is that a side door up ahead?
By the way: The Cephalo Squirrel you can take with you. Would you say that it should count as an item towards your maximum limit of 5? I'm treating it as such even if it could end up sleeping on your shoulder. 🤷🏻♂️🐿🐿🐿🐿🐿🐿🐿
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Post by a moderator on Aug 18, 2023 11:17:08 GMT
There was also a Gravity Bomb booby-trap, which at first glance seemed nothing more than giving you a random 1 in chance in 6 of survival. Yet, given the colours were Red, Green and Blue, both me and my son, disarmed the trap successfully on the first try. So, a decent puzzle after all, perhaps? Did everyone else avoid the trap?
I went with the order the three colours appear in the rainbow from the outset, so I never had any difficulty with the puzzle. However, I've read many reviews complaining that the trap was completely random and unfair, so clearly not everybody had the same idea.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Aug 20, 2023 13:24:55 GMT
There was also a Gravity Bomb booby-trap, which at first glance seemed nothing more than giving you a random 1 in chance in 6 of survival. Yet, given the colours were Red, Green and Blue, both me and my son, disarmed the trap successfully on the first try. So, a decent puzzle after all, perhaps? Did everyone else avoid the trap?
I went with the order the three colours appear in the rainbow from the outset, so I never had any difficulty with the puzzle. However, I've read many reviews complaining that the trap was completely random and unfair, so clearly not everybody had the same idea. When i played the book I had no idea. Pressed buttons randomly. Blew up. Then just learned the sequence.
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Post by CharlesX on Aug 20, 2023 13:29:48 GMT
I went with the order the three colours appear in the rainbow from the outset, so I never had any difficulty with the puzzle. However, I've read many reviews complaining that the trap was completely random and unfair, so clearly not everybody had the same idea. When i played the book I had no idea. Pressed buttons randomly. Blew up. Then just learned the sequence. Space Assassin was one of the first FF books I bought, and I thought having a sequence of colours based on the rainbow was too highbrow a puzzle for FF. That was before I read Tower Of Destruction, of course.
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Post by Wizard Slayer on Aug 21, 2023 8:30:56 GMT
When i played the book I had no idea. Pressed buttons randomly. Blew up. Then just learned the sequence. Space Assassin was one of the first FF books I bought, and I thought having a sequence of colours based on the rainbow was too highbrow a puzzle for FF. That was before I read Tower Of Destruction, of course. I always thought it was more highbrow than that! I got it based on the technical term RGB, it being a science/technological based book and all.
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Post by scouserob on Aug 25, 2023 9:19:51 GMT
OK, I'm on the planet. The planet inside the Vandervecken?!?!? This is both exceptionally cool and really rather frustrating.
Cool because, well, it's a planet inside a spacecraft that can be reached either through an underwater stream that pops you out in the middle of a river, or by falling from upon high through the atmosphere before inexplicably slowing down to gently land on the surface, like some deranged theme park ride. How is this possible? Is the Vendervecken large enough to house a planet? Is there some kind of wormhole in there that sends you to a planet far away? With a stream passing through it?? Is there some kind of Doctor Who style TARDIS-like effect going on? 🤷🏻♂️
If you get to it via the drop then you can see that the planet is doughnut shaped! This is, at first, a baffling detail, until you begin to explore the planet and realise that the topology of the place is indeed toroidal in nature as you are able to loop around the planet in both of the two perpendicular directions.
This is where the frustration comes into play. The descriptions on the planet are often extremely basic and along the lines of: You are in a forest do you want to go north, south, east or west? Fire Island with its multiple grand locations and accompanying, immersion creating, descriptive text, it is not.
Also the toroidal layout and continual 4+ entrances and exits to each location is a gigantic pain in the backside to map in my usual excel sheet manner. I fear I may never escape this doughnut and will be stuck trying to get these locations to wrap around in all directions for the rest of my days! Either that or I'll be driven out of my mind, as images of moving squares and arrows attempting to fit nicely together fill every resting moment.
A portion of the planet:
Anyhow, enough venting about this doughnut shaped planet. I'm not going to bring Cyrus to justice down(?) here, unless he is on a peculiar form of intrinsic shore leave. I miss walking down the Vandervecken's corridors and exploring its doors and its hatches. Time to find a way back there...
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Post by scouserob on Sept 10, 2023 12:07:43 GMT
Riddle Me This
Between the sport watching guards from the cover illustration and the barmy pilot there are 4 puzzles/riddles, which I thought might merit a bit of discussion, especially as two of them I really don't understand at all.
If anyone can help me with understanding the two Simulacrum riddles, I'd appreciate it.
1. The Next Letter of the Zarg's Sequence: O T T F F S S E Answer:
N
The sequence is the first letter of the natural numbers beginning at 1. O(ne) T(wo) T(hree) F(our) F(ive) S(ix) S(even) E(ight) N(ine)
I like this one. I've seen it many times before and immediately knew the answer. It is a bit like the Fibonacci numbers, in the sense that once you've seen it you remember it, yet if you haven't seen it, or something like it, before then it is damn difficult to solve. The type of question that would appear on Lee Mack's The 1% Club.
2. First Simulacrum Riddle: The Moon is red, the sky is pink. Which is faster, light or time?
Answer:
Time I have no idea what this riddle is even asking. Is it a metaphor? A philosophical question? What do the red moon and pink sky have to so with it, if anything? (Sunset? Blood moon?)
What does fast even mean with regards to time. Fast usually refers to how much something (like distance) changes with respect to time. So time's change with respect to time is always a unitless 1. Light on the other hand has a speed of about 3x10^8 m/s, which is dependant on units and I cannot see how it can be compared with a unitless quantity. Help?
3. Second Simulacrum Riddle: Up is up and down is down, but do they really exist or are they ghosts?
Answer:
They are ghosts.
Why? I'm not sure.
I would say up and down are usually defined by the local gravitational field. Down pointing towards the centre of that field and up away from it.
I suppose if you are away from a large gravitational field and feeling weightless there would be no up, nor down.
Also I guess up and down are constructs based on gravity, but does that make them ghosts?
Perhaps it is something silly to do with a ghost hovering up and down. 🤷🏻♂️ I'm not sure what on earth is going on with this riddle. I've put my best interpretations in the spoiler text but I'm not convincing myself at all. Help required again.
4. The Floor Tiles: Step on the wrong tile and it's goodbye. The numbers of the tiles have nothing to do with providing a solution.
Answer:
Go on the centre path half way and then the left path in the second half.
First I found the totals for each of the nine routes:
The 255 jumped straight out as being one less than a power of 2, and being involved in colours (RGB was the combination for the the earlier Gravity Bomb safe.)
255 is 11111111 in binary. The opposite of nothing!?!?
In 8 bit colour 255 is white, which kind of looks like nothing on the page, though it is, again, more like everything.
In ASCII 255 is a non-breaking space, use it and you'll see nothing.
That'll do me. Kind of. 😬 [Alright, that explanation it is almost beyond tenuous.] So, assuming you don't loop around or jump over tiles, there are nine paths. You can go left, centrally or right in both the first and second halves of the route. A one in 9 chance is a bit ridiculous for a random guess so there must be more to it... surely. (OK, so two paths total more than 400 so that makes 7 options.)
First time through I just went down the middle, always the middle, like that poor tentacle armed victim of Cyrus' experimentation said. Wrong!
On my second attempt I focussed on that italicised nothing and came to the correct path. (Possibly through luck more than judgement, though there was still only a 1 in 6 chance for a pure guess to be right.)
I'm not 100% convinced of my solution but it makes some sort of sense and is in the spoiler box.
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Post by CharlesX on Sept 10, 2023 13:10:03 GMT
Riddle Me This
1. Is a 'good' if unoriginal riddle. 2. Moons tend to be blue, not red, and the sky definitely tends to be blue not pink. But I think that's very bauble-esque and very irrelevant. Time is just faster, that makes more sense (light takes time to move, time doesn't). 3. No, this is b*llsh*t even wi the best will in the world. 4. I worked it out that the numbers were counter-intuitive, which gives a better than average chance (don't go directly through the middle, try something else!).
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,458
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Sept 10, 2023 13:24:58 GMT
Regarding up and down: My guess is that up and down aren't objects but ways of describing relations of objects to one another. Since there's nothing tangible there, they're ghosts. Less sure about time and light, but I would venture: Since everything, even the fastest thing in existence will take some time to occur, there will always be some miniscule amount of time that will pass sooner than that. So from such a perspective, time will always be quicker than light.
But yes, that's all complete nonsense in terms of physics since time can't really be used as both measurement and the thing being measured. And I don’t think the floor crossing is really a puzzle - it's just a more elaborate way of asking you to blindly pick from one of several options.
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Post by schlendrian on Sept 10, 2023 15:12:55 GMT
My take on the time/light puzzle:
Let's use, for convenience, natural units, as opposed to SI or imperial units. Here, light will have a speed in vacuum of 1 (this can be achieved by using as base unit of length the light second, so light travels one light second per second, ls/s).
If then some event A happens one lightsecond away from you, there exists no possibility of you knowing of that event in less than one second of time. Anything happening in your place can only be causally connected to event A if it happens at least one second after event A. If it happens earlier, it can't have been influenced by A.
In this regard, we could say that causal connections can travel at a speed of 1 ls/s, i.e. that the speed of causality equals 1, and I think that this speed of causality, an existing concept in the Theory of Relativity, is what Chapman means when he mentions how fast time is, so my guess is that the puzzle is poorly worded in that regard...
Now in a vacuum, light and causality travel at the same speed of 1. The puzzle though mentions a pink sky and a red moon, phenomena which occur because light gets slowed down in the atmosphere. In this circumstance causality could travel faster than light, as f.e. neutrinos or gravity waves hardly get slowed down by interactions with the atmosphere, whereas the speed of light would be lower than 1. That's what I think the puzzle wants to get at, but as I said it words it poorly.
W.r.t. the up/down puzzle I think kieran is right.
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