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A Procedural Definition of Hit/Most/Six
Posted By: Taper_Mike In Response To: A Procedural Definition of Hit/Most/Six (Nack Ballard)
Date: Saturday, 19 November 2011, at 8:34 a.m.
A hearty thanks you, Nack! Once again, and very late in the day, you have corrected yet another misapprehension of mine about Hit/Most/Six!
I speaking, of course, about the Hit Convention, and the fact that any number of hits, anyplace on the board, ranks lower than a play that results in owning more points in the home board. I hope now that I truly do understand the rule!
I screwed up the title of the section on "Location of Blots and Spares in the Outer Board." It should have paralleled the preceding section by using the word "Destination." It should have read, "Destinations of Blots and Spares in the Outer Board." I got this right in the body of that section, where I wrote: "Begin at the 6pt, and search outwards in outer board until you find a blot or spare destination [italics added] that exists in one position, but not in the the other."
I'll fix both of these.
As to the verbosity, I plead guilty! You found the worst offender, that's for sure. The paragraph is so convoluted that even I recognized the need to add a clarifying example. First the two sentences you quoted:
In the event that the positions have points made at equal distances from the 6pt, but the made point is located in the inner board in one position and in the outer board in the other, then the position with the inner board point ranks higher in the family.
My example doesn't forgive the affront to our language, but it may make it intelligible:
The 5pt and the 7pt, for instance, are tied distance-wise, because both are one point away from the 6pt. By this rule, owning the 5pt outranks owning the 7pt.
It was cruel of you to omit this example!
Another trouble spot was the explanation that hitting on a higher points outranks hitting on lower points. It's fine to say that the play that hits on the highest point ranks higher, but what about ties? Here is my tortured prose:
Compare the highest points where each play hits. If one play hits on a higher point than the other, then it ranks higher in family. If the two plays are tied by this measure, and both plays make a second hit, compare the second highest points where each play hits. If one play hits on a higher point than the other, it ranks higher in family. If the plays are still tied, and supposing that a third and/or fourth hit was made, compare them in a like manner.
I may change this to something more algorithmic, such as the following:
For plays that make the same number of hits, begin at the 24pt work backwards down to the 1pt, until you find a point where a hit occurs in one position, but not in the other. The postion with the hit ranks higher in the Nactation family.
By way of explanation, I have chosen some of these descriptions because they parallel the statements might be used in a computer program. The business about beginning at the 6pt, and searching outward is one example. Another is my placement of the more-points-in-the-inner-board exception at the start of the Hit Convention. That's where it would belong in a program. As I admitted in a previous post, part of my interest in forming a procedural definition of Hit/Most/Six is so that it might one day be converted into computer code. Here's what I wrote last week:
I am interested in creating a procedural definition of Hit/Most/Six. It would be a definintion that enumerates the exact sequence of steps and comparisons to be made in an application of Hit/Most/Six. Procedurally, I would like to have something that can be directly converted into an alogorithm.
Let me publicly thank Nack once again for his tolerance and generosity in answering my many questions regarding Nactation during the last month. It has been a remarkable exchange. Nack revealed many new features that will be included in the upcoming revision to the Nactation Guide. Several have neither been finalized nor fully tested, and yet Nack was willing to expose them here, unvarnished though they may be. Most other authors would not have had such a strong sense of self-confidence. This series of posts comprises the most significant explication of Nactation since Nack wrote the Nactation: Study, Tutorial Supplement, and Annactated Game. And it likely isn't over! As sure as sun will rise, I will soon stumble again, and be back with yet more self-created confusion!
Look for a post in the near future where I will clean up my Procedural Definition of Hit/Most/Six.
Mike
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