Quindecim

Quindecim. A game idea I have for my Alexa-powered smart speakers. It’s essentially a number matching and memory game with a maximum of fifteen numbers. The aim of the game is to descramble a scrambled list of numbers in as few moves as possible.

You start out with a game of a certain length, for simplicity let’s say the game is four numbers long. There are two lists, your list and Alexa’s list, both of which have the same numbers in the same (let’s say ascending) order. At this point the game looks like:

Alexa: 1, 2, 3, 4
You:   1, 2, 3, 4

Alexa scrambles the positions of the numbers and keeps the scrambled list hidden from you. The new list looks like:

Alexa: ?, ?, ?, ?
You:   1, 2, 3, 4

With this list, Alexa would let you know how many numbers still line up (if any).

Let’s say the scrambled Alexa list was:

Alexa: 4, 1, 3, 2

If you ask Alexa how many matching numbers you have, the reply would be none. You can then ask Alexa to swap two numbered positions, for example, to swap positions one and two. The new list would look like:

Alexa: 1, 4, 3, 2
You:   1, 2, 3, 4

And now, when asked how many matching numbers you have, the reply would be one. You can then ask once more Alexa to swap two numbered positions, for example, to swap positions two and four. The new list would look like:

Alexa: 1, 2, 3, 4
You:   1, 2, 3, 4

You would have all four numbers matching and would have completed the game in two moves. In reality this would be a bit more difficult as we would not be able to know exactly which numbered positions are matching. Also, the game would get progressively more difficult the longer the lists.

I might put in some hints, or the ability to ask once which positions are matching per game, maybe a leaderboard so you could know how you rank in a game this length (by number of moves, time to complete or even by time period: over the last 24 hours, last week, last month, last year, all time).