Have a penchant for Python? A love of Lua? Whether your language of choice is Javascript, Python, Clojure, Lua, Io, or CoffeeScript, you can use any of those languages to compete in our latest challenge, Criss-Cross.
In Criss-Cross, humans and ogres are fighting again, this time competing to form paths across a map by bidding on tiles. Criss-Cross is easy to play but hard to master, which is why we will help the top 10 players get job interviews with exclusive tech companies in San Francisco.
The Languages
Many Archmages have been hard at work writing parsers for our transpiler, Aether. As a result, you can now play the game in the languages mentioned above. In fact, the top solution on the leaderboards right now is written in Python!
Please note that many of the languages are still in beta so you might experience a bug or two; we'll be working hard to fix whatever bugs arise.
The Level
Players must construct paths across a map by out-bidding their opponent for tiles of a grid.
The humans are trying to form a path from left to right, and ogres bottom to top.
Each turn, a group of 7 tiles is available for bidding. The player with the higher bid on the group gets to choose one tile.
To make the best bidding decisions, players must use their knowledge of the tile groups, the bidding behavior of their opponents, and the amount of gold they have left. The best out of five rounds wins!
This problem is a variant of the game Bidding Hex. One of us played a very similar game at a competition and was intrigued by the problem, so we decided to make it accessible to everyone. The variant they played was more like a blind auction; you couldn't see the bids of your opponent. In this version, the bids are easily accessible, so a large part of writing a winning solution will be analysis of opponents' behavior.
The Competition
This competition will run for a month and end on Tuesday, September 16th at 5PM PST. At that time we'll verify solutions and perform a final ranking. The top 10 players (5 humans and 5 ogres) will have the opportunity to work with us to find their next job. We'll also feature the top 2 solutions on our blog. If a player submits solutions for both sides, we'll only take her better score into consideration.
Ready to play? If so, head over to Criss-Cross to get started!
