Game Theory


It was the originator of Linux who said that all ventures begin as military applications before evolving into commercial enterprises and eventually becoming entertainment.

As we circle potential apps for this technology like carrion crows, I think that it is as much a process of education as any and that the best way to educate is to entertain.

Look at the gallery above, and I think you'd agree that even US citizens would be hard pushed to spot the president? Or at least without Googling it?

It's far right (though I'm sure he wasn't), middle row in the form of Grover Cleveland.

Now what would be fun would be to navigate the whole series of US presidents in this way, with a prize (or at least the satisfaction) at the end.

(There is potentially a financial interest at stake, as the New York Times' purchase of UK author's 'Wordle' has demonstrated.)

What is immediately apparent however is two things. The first is that I don't want to spend my life trawling photos for the content. And thus the corollary is that we need a simple app that allows users to import a gallery of nine faces upon which they can impose one of their own... repeatedly.

Because sports fans being what they are, I'm sure there'd be any number of people (whilst on work time in all likelihood) willing to compile a competition to see which nerds are able to spot bonafide team-members of, say, the Boston Red Sox whether past or present?

Wordle is not a new game, but it is an old game wrapped up in a format that suits the modern era. And a game like this is something that long ago I figured would make a great board game called Famous Faces and which I never would imagined would suit something called a smartphone decades on.

But it could be the low-hanging fruit that I'm looking for and so the search is on again for a co-founder or co-founders who see the world as I do.

When GEC invented the TV, its principal engineer congratulated the team on having produced the greatest ever waste of time.

And I'd like to waste yours in the same way.

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