Help In Understanding More Advanced Verifiers

[SWN32720]

Hi Everyone,

I'm hoping someone might be able to help explain the logic of some of the more advanced verifiers in Turing Machine to me? I thought I understood them after doing some additional research and finding this "X Paradox" info on the game linked on Board Game Geek.

(https://s3.amazonaws.com/geekdo-files.c ... 2433885886)

However, if this is accurate then I don't understand why the solution in game Table Turing Machine n°464668977 (https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=464668977) was not 333? Thanks for any insights folks may have so I can hopefully play the higher difficulty levels. I guess I'll just add that I got a green check for verifier "E" with the test code of "333" (as I'm not sure if people can see what I submitted).

Thank you and take care!

[Jellby]

All cards work the same way: they tell you that the corresponding verifier card (the card with red crosses and green checks) is one, and only one, of those listed. So, in this case, card 29 tells you the verifier will be green for every number with blue=3 OR for every number with yellow=3 OR for every number with purple=3.

With that information, you know that at least one of the three numbers is 3, because the solution must be green for all verifiers, and whatever of the three options this verifier is, one of the colors must be a 3. It also means that 333 will always be true for this verifier whenever you see card 29, so it is useless to test it, because you learn nothing.

For basic cards (1-25, I believe), the options given are exclusive, so whenever you find a green response, you know which of the options applies. For advanced cards, some (all?) codes are green for several or even all of the options, so a single test alone doesn't tell you which one applies, but it can reduce the list.

[NachitoRus]

Hi!

It’s normal to find some verificators from Hard mode confusing. It took me a while too, but now I follow a pretty simple rule of thumb that helps you not falling in the X Paradox and other common errors. My rule is: each verificator only “sees” one of the conditions being shown in that verificator. Forget about the text and about the other conditions. It only sees one of the conditions and it will only give you a check if you are following it.

Of course, you don’t know which of the conditions being shown is the one that the verificator can see, so you’ll need to ask the right questions to figure it out. In your case, the verificator has three conditions: blue=3, yellow=3 and purple=3. All of them could be true, or maybe two of them, or maybe only one. But the verificator doesn’t care about any of this because the verificator only sees one of those conditions. Let’s say in your case it saw the condition “blue=3”. The number you chose follows that condition so of course it will give you a check. The fact that your number also follows the other conditions means nothing to the verificator.

Once you understand this, it’s easy to see that the number you chose it’s a terrible choice if you want to learn something from that verificator. In the game you shouldn’t really care about fulfilling the conditions, but rather about learning which of the conditions from each verificator is the one being “seen”. If your proposal makes all of them true, you won’t know which one it is because it could be any of them.

A better choice could be “133”. If you get a check, it means that you fulfilled the condition that the verificstor can see, so it must be “purple=3” or “yellow=3”, so you have eliminated one option. If you get a cross, then the condition “blue=3” must be the one being seen.

Hopefully my explanation was helpful If you want to improve your deduction skills I suggest you check the youtube video by “Adventures in Creative Software”. It covers different strategies in a very nice way and also explaind how more complicated cards work.

[Romain672]

I wrote that part here in the gamehelp section: https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Gameh ... rificators

Feel free to make it better since it will get more views than here on the forum.

[SWN32720]

Thanks for the replies everyone, I appreciate it. I believe the explanations make sense now. Unless I'm reading things incorrectly, it seems like the example I found on the board game geek site is incorrect then as far as its explanation of how the verifiers would work and I was under the impression this was more from an "official" rule book.

[poptasticboy]

Hi Everyone,

I'm hoping someone might be able to help explain the logic of some of the more advanced verifiers in Turing Machine to me? I thought I understood them after doing some additional research and finding this "X Paradox" info on the game linked on Board Game Geek.

(https://s3.amazonaws.com/geekdo-files.c ... 2433885886)

However, if this is accurate then I don't understand why the solution in game Table Turing Machine n°464668977 (https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=464668977) was not 333? Thanks for any insights folks may have so I can hopefully play the higher difficulty levels. I guess I'll just add that I got a green check for verifier "E" with the test code of "333" (as I'm not sure if people can see what I submitted).

Thank you and take care!

Your test in that game gave you no information. You know that verifier E is telling you that one of the colours =3. If you test it with 333 then it will always give you a , because no matter which colour it knows about, it will definitely pass that test.

Just to reiterate how they work; each verifier knows that one of the criteria on its card is true and it knows nothing else. In particular, it knows nothing about whether or not the other criteria listed on the card are true. They might be, they might not be, but the verifier will not know anything except the one fact that it knows. Your job in solving each puzzle is to work out what each verifier knows; once you know that, only one solution will match those facts.

[poptasticboy]

Thanks for the replies everyone, I appreciate it. I believe the explanations make sense now. Unless I'm reading things incorrectly, it seems like the example I found on the board game geek site is incorrect then as far as its explanation of how the verifiers would work and I was under the impression this was more from an "official" rule book.

I'm curious as to what you found on BGG. There are a number of people who are pretty active on there, myself included, so I would have expected that anything incorrect would have been responded to.