1/11/09

"Set" Challenge






"Set" is a game played with a deck of 81 cards no two of which are identical. The pips on each card are differentiated by four variables: color, number, shade, and shape. Each of these have three options:

color: red, green, purple
number: 1, 2, 3
shade: empty, hashed, filled
shape: oval, diamond, squiggle

Thus, because all possibilities are present, there is a card with one filled red oval, and another with one filled red diamond, as well as cards with two or three filled red ovals.

This deck, I would like to note, is only very slightly more numerous than the Tarot deck, and far more regularly organized. Now, I am not saying that a regular system of organization would necessarily help the Tarot better do whatever it is doing (it might only be able to do its job using magically significant numbers like 22 and 10 which are not encoded into the Set deck), but perhaps we could begin with the Set deck and see if these cards could serve one _possible_ function of a deck of legible cards.

Let's say that we want to use the Set cards to represent 81 distinct ideas, covering as much of reality as possible. Of course, this is a quite limited vocabulary (though, again, less so than is the Tarot deck), but it might prove a though-provoking exercise.

Please use comments to propose four variables with three options each describing as much as possible. If this is stupid, another fun comment might be an explanation of why the Tarot deck's system is much better than this one.