Memory card game

November 13, 2005 9:40 PM

Memory - 36 cards. Turn two over. If the pictures match, both get eliminated. Else turn them back and select another two. Repeat till field is cleared. Post the number of moves you took. [via]
posted by Gyan (77 comments total)

First attempt - 69.
posted by Gyan at 9:40 PM on November 13, 2005

TV game show Concentration comes to the internet.
posted by Cranberry at 9:45 PM on November 13, 2005

1st: 42
posted by Korou at 9:46 PM on November 13, 2005

59 moves. Bad interface, I don't want to have to turn the cards back over myself. Who are all these old white guys, anyway?
posted by kyleg at 9:47 PM on November 13, 2005

This is awfully skewed... they're all old white guys, so old white people will have the easiest time with this.
posted by gurple at 9:48 PM on November 13, 2005

Logicians.

62.
posted by Gyan at 9:49 PM on November 13, 2005

45 moves. Old and white.
posted by meh at 9:50 PM on November 13, 2005

47. I'm with kyleg on the flipping-them-back-over thing. PITA.
posted by sharpener at 9:50 PM on November 13, 2005

50 - I got down to 6 cards, with all the same guy on them, I swear! I clicked through them like 25 times...
posted by muddgirl at 9:52 PM on November 13, 2005

Wow.

I played it three times in a row and it took me 48 turns each time.

And I'm really sick of seeing thumbnail head shots of white guys now.
posted by Coda at 9:53 PM on November 13, 2005

Donald Davidson, Quine, Wittgenstein, et al.
posted by inconsequentialist at 9:58 PM on November 13, 2005

43 moves.
posted by Soliloquy at 9:58 PM on November 13, 2005

43.
posted by billysumday at 9:59 PM on November 13, 2005

48. Woo.
posted by youcancallmeal at 10:01 PM on November 13, 2005

1st: 47
posted by mrplab at 10:03 PM on November 13, 2005

1st: 41.
posted by dobbs at 10:03 PM on November 13, 2005

35 times. I could do much better if I weren't slightly distracted - an easy trick for me was to find something distinctive about the picture (say, baldness, cowlick, eyeglass shape, color or pose) and make a phrase like, "33 people look like santa claus." (As in, the man's picture on row 3, column 3 looks like santa claus.) Making the association also gives me a stronger impression of the photo, so I'm more likely to remember that I've seen it, and the nmenomic comes to mind when i encounter the picture the second time.
posted by invitapriore at 10:03 PM on November 13, 2005

59. I agree with "crappy interface." Turn cards back over manually, scroll down (laptop) to see bottom tier.
posted by jsteward at 10:05 PM on November 13, 2005

I turned over two cards and then it wouldn't let me do anything else. SO... I guess I won. So, two moves.

I broke the internet again, didn't I?
posted by dirigibleman at 10:05 PM on November 13, 2005

45 moves, young and white.
posted by zerolives at 10:09 PM on November 13, 2005

49
I recognised Alan Turing and Wittgenstein.
Was Herman Bondi in there as well? As a physicist I suppose he probably wasn't ...
posted by thatwhichfalls at 10:16 PM on November 13, 2005

Just one move. But lots of clicks in that one move.
posted by chasing at 10:28 PM on November 13, 2005

1st: 47
posted by sjvilla79 at 10:30 PM on November 13, 2005

44 moves.

I had to identify something specific in each photo, or I'd never remember them (didn't recognize anyone).
posted by kalimac at 10:33 PM on November 13, 2005

Does this remind anyone else of the real-life version of the same game that used DC superheros? I think it was red. And it had a bunch of little white things that you flipped over?

No? Just me? OK...
posted by Cyrano at 10:36 PM on November 13, 2005

Forty-four.
posted by deCadmus at 10:50 PM on November 13, 2005

44
posted by luckywanderboy at 10:54 PM on November 13, 2005

39 ... I got lucky though. Got three pair by blind guessing.

Maybe I'm an esper?
posted by RavinDave at 11:02 PM on November 13, 2005

1st try: 40
posted by Rothko at 11:11 PM on November 13, 2005

Wow! I KNEW Rothko was going to say that.
posted by RavinDave at 11:16 PM on November 13, 2005

53 on my first try. Also David Hilbert and Kurt Godel were there.
posted by number9dream at 11:23 PM on November 13, 2005

Uh, memry has a better interface. And uses photos from Flickr. And was previously discussed.
posted by dhartung at 11:34 PM on November 13, 2005

first: 70, second: 45. i came up with nicknames for some of them: jacket guy, face guy, white hair guy, etc. of course the descriptions could apply to many of them, and i didn't make nicknames for all of them, so that was more of a side-game than a strategy.
posted by clyde at 11:36 PM on November 13, 2005

Better interface, but I liked using portraits. I used a few well-known memory tricks and got a much better score than I would have with general scenic pictures.
posted by RavinDave at 11:38 PM on November 13, 2005

I'm pretty sure I remember Mandelbrot and Turing...
posted by Rothko at 11:38 PM on November 13, 2005

Got it in 39, first try.
posted by Cecily at 11:39 PM on November 13, 2005

52
posted by shecky57 at 11:43 PM on November 13, 2005

49
posted by Pigpen at 11:49 PM on November 13, 2005

I got 34 and I thought I was sucking at it. Plus every time I clicked on one of the cards, the screen jumped back up to the top, which made keeping track of the cards on the bottom difficult. Rating: One star.
posted by JParker at 11:57 PM on November 13, 2005

26. Cheers for a photographic memory.
posted by Mach3avelli at 12:01 AM on November 14, 2005

29. But having just read "Ender's Shadow" I still feel stupid.
posted by sfslim at 12:24 AM on November 14, 2005

40, first try, don't know who any of these people are.
posted by jann at 1:14 AM on November 14, 2005

64, which may sound like a crap score but I am comforted that it is a square of 8 for some reason.
posted by herting at 1:42 AM on November 14, 2005

i got better each successive turn, and on the fourth try got 33. and i'm stoned like mary magdalene right about now. so thanks, everybody! your mediocre ḧusker d̈u scores help me rationalize my continued marijuana addiction!

please note that the ümlaüt misüse was intentional, if a bit silly.
posted by Hat Maui at 2:01 AM on November 14, 2005

43 and I've been drinking all afternoon
posted by milkwood at 2:02 AM on November 14, 2005

Played a few more times. Got 32 ... but over, I am getting much-much worse as I play, remembering (no doubt) past positions.
posted by RavinDave at 2:18 AM on November 14, 2005

43 - 3rd.
posted by Gyan at 2:30 AM on November 14, 2005

41, first attempt.
posted by gene_machine at 3:29 AM on November 14, 2005

I'm not going to even try. The photos were making me fall asleep.

Maybe a younger male audience might be more interested in this (NSFW). You have 60 seconds.
posted by Deathalicious at 3:43 AM on November 14, 2005

42
posted by effwerd at 3:58 AM on November 14, 2005

38
posted by hoskala at 4:01 AM on November 14, 2005

47
posted by eriko at 4:53 AM on November 14, 2005

41
posted by surferboy at 6:50 AM on November 14, 2005

48. It was very easy to remember the faces, but I couldn't come up with a 'story' for them because I didn't recognize the people, and couldn't come up with a quick term to apply to them that I would remember.

I mean, maybe I could have if I'd tried, but, I didn't exactly try...
posted by delmoi at 7:02 AM on November 14, 2005

45.

I personally like ze's memory game.
posted by tentacle at 7:12 AM on November 14, 2005

44 first go and being kinda lazy.
posted by brautigan at 7:20 AM on November 14, 2005

31 on second go with a bit of effort.
posted by brautigan at 7:25 AM on November 14, 2005

54
posted by tetsuo at 7:27 AM on November 14, 2005

43
posted by ob at 7:41 AM on November 14, 2005

43
posted by 327.ca at 8:01 AM on November 14, 2005

I'm guess that, if you play more than once, your score will get progressively worse.
posted by 327.ca at 8:02 AM on November 14, 2005

40, first try.

Definitely helped that I recognized about a third of them. Easier to remember "Alan Turing" than "younger white guy with black hair turned to the left."
posted by googly at 8:20 AM on November 14, 2005

43
posted by poppo at 8:22 AM on November 14, 2005

First try--40. this was my favorite game as a child. I still have the original Milton Bradley game in my closet! Great posting, Gyan.
posted by Maishe at 8:34 AM on November 14, 2005

I am such a dork. I saw the title on my RSS feed and thought this had something to do with flash memory cards ("pick the matching miniSD cards!").

I'm going to go self-flagellate with a cat-o-nine-tails.
posted by socratic at 8:54 AM on November 14, 2005

64 on the fpp version, 30 on the flickr version dhartung posted. I definitely do better with color, although both of these are better than the Hamtaro card version my kids had - Hamtaro & his friends all look alike.
posted by mygothlaundry at 8:55 AM on November 14, 2005

I did it in 29 moves by cheating- I wrote down what was in each square as I proceeded left to right, row by row. Only once did I select a pair sight unseen (an adjacent pair). I suppose if the arrangement of cards is truly random I might hit more pairs by chance if I selected cards out of sequence?
posted by Lord Kinbote at 9:07 AM on November 14, 2005

44 and I recognised Bertie Russell
posted by criticalbill at 9:30 AM on November 14, 2005

37. I think the best way to do this is to click them in order.
posted by matkline at 10:04 AM on November 14, 2005

41
posted by dontoine at 10:05 AM on November 14, 2005

46
posted by Miko at 10:55 AM on November 14, 2005

59 or so, but I've always been bad at computerized versions of the original. (For example, I'm not a terrible chess player against a human opponent, but I consistently lose to even the easiest levels of the computer versions.)

NSFW variations on a theme: Meow
posted by phrits at 11:11 AM on November 14, 2005

matkline: I think the best way to do this is to click them in order.

That's what I thought as well, so I started flipping in the upper left and created a (mental) mnemonic sequence for the cards as I went, sort of an "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" but with each word signifying some key visual aspect of each card. Whenever I removed a pair I simply shortened the mnemonic sequence as needed.

Thus, every time a previously seen card's partner was found I was able to match it without error (on that turn if it was the first flip, on the next turn if it was the second). Despite having what I consider to be a very poor memory, I was able to avoid missing any "guesses" using this method.

Depending on where you start, and how lucky you get with the card distribution, I suspect that even lower scores are possible, but I haven't the math skills or the inclination to prove that.

Anyone out there know the answer?
posted by sfslim at 11:45 AM on November 14, 2005

Looking for this game for the Nokia 6230 mobile [cell]phone. If it helps, this phone runs the S40 Java platform. Preferably with pretty symbols and not dead Profs. Anyone?
posted by magpie68 at 6:58 AM on November 15, 2005

I got it down to 27 moves via cheating. On that occasion, I clicked two pairs by chance sight unseen.
posted by Lord Kinbote at 7:05 AM on November 15, 2005

first and only time: 41
posted by quadog at 2:02 PM on November 15, 2005

46
posted by oddman at 10:06 PM on November 17, 2005