Anonymous Coward writes:
"2048, the most addictive game since Tetris, was recently released. Its origin has been traced back as far as Threes!, which inspired 1024, which inspired 2048. Finally, an improved version, with animations, was written by Gabriele Cirulli, 19 year old from Italy.
The game has enthralled many, and led directly to the waste of countless potentially productive hours. A variety of permutations have since surfaced: 2048 in 3D, 2048 in 4D, and 9007199254740992.
Some ask why it's so addictive. I say, it attacks our pleasure centers in ways that Wesley Crusher already warned us about."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ken_g6 on Tuesday March 18 2014, @09:35PM
This is nothing like Sudoku. But it could be played manually, with some difficulty.
Take a quarter of a checkerboard, and a lot of checkers. Let the red checkers represent 2 and the black checkers represent 64 (32 2's) so the stacks don't get too high, but you still need 512 of each color of checkers, theoretically. You need some way to randomly specify which spot to add checkers to, and whether to add one or two checkers. (Got a 16- or 32-sided die?) Then stack like neighboring piles when you move everything up, down, left, or right at each move, and swap in one black checker for 32 red checkers.
The goal would be to get a 32-black-checker-high stack.