Debian Package of the Day (static archived copy)

Entry submitted by Kari Pahula. DPOTD needs your help, please contribute !

Einstein is a game for playing a type of puzzle, attributed to Albert Einstein (hence the name). In its original form, the riddle asks the question “Who owns the fish?” and the player is given hints like “The Englishman lives in the red house” and “The owner of the green house drinks coffee”. The riddle can be solved by placing the five neighbours to the correct order and deducing the nationalities, house colors, favorite drinks, pets and the type of cigarettes they smoke.

In Einstein, the player is given 6 groups of different types of tiles, with 6 tiles in each and a number of hints. Only one type of tiles can be found in a row. There are four different types of hints.

• X is in between Y and Z hints tell that the three tiles in question are in successive columns, but the order of Y and Z is not fixed.
• X is on the right side of Y hints tell how the two tiles are situated relative to each other, but they may have one or more columns in between of them.
• X is next to Y hints tell that the two tiles are in neighbouring columns.
• Finally, the X is in the same column as Y hints tell that the two tiles are, well, in the same column.

The gameplay consists of elimination and deduction according to the hints. For example, the “x … I” rule above reveals that “x” can’t be in the rightmost column since that would leave no room for having “I” anywhere. A click of the right mouse button removes that tile from consideration. Left clicks are conversely used to mark that the tile in question is in the claimed position. Unneeded hints can be removed from view by right clicks too.

Random clicking or guessing rarely lead anywhere, since the game mercilessly declares the game over from one wrong guess.

Einstein’s homepage is at http://games.flowix.com
It is available in Debian unstable and Etch. And in Ubuntu since Feisty.