Why Games?
There is an old proverb (made popular by Stephen King): "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." If all you do is stare at pictures, then you might lose your edge. (Or worse: burn out.)
With any type of problem, sometimes it's best to take a break in order to find a solution. Some people get their best ideas or have breakthrough insight when they take a short walk, lay down for a short nap, or even step into the bathroom.
Psychologists, like Scott Barry Kaufman (author of "Wired to Create"), attribute these epiphanies to a combination of relaxation and engaging other parts of the brain. (
One study found that 72% of people get creative ideas in the shower.) This is supported by
neural science, where changing environments, using distractions, and switching to some type of relaxation increase dopamine. Dopamine leads to great ideas.
The basic concept: When you hyperfocus on a problem, only one part of your brain is primarily engaged. Changing the environment, interacting with a distraction, relaxing with meditation, or taking short naps allows the engaged portion of your brain to rest. In addition, this change activates other parts of your brain, permitting possible alternate insight into a problem that you wanted to solve.
Some companies have actively embraced this concept of change, distraction, and relaxation. In Japan, companies like Honda established exercise programs. Besides the health benefits, they had a direct correlation with an increase in productivity. Other companies encourage naps, short walks, and even game play. Google, 3M, and Mitre encourage employees to spend as much as 20% of their time on "fun side projects." These distractions generate new ideas and help solve existing problems.
And this takes us back to games for picture analysis. If you hyperfocus on the analysis, then you might miss some other interesting aspect. By viewing the picture as a game, you engage with the distraction and are forced to see the image differently.
There is certainly no guarantee that playing a simple game will solve a complex problem, like determining whether a picture has been edited. But when you get stuck, it can't hurt to try something new. Maybe you'll have an epiphany and find another way to evaluate the image, or suddenly realize why something looks a little off.
Tips for Playing the Tile Game
Some pictures are more difficult than others. If you get stuck, try one of these tips:
- Lines: Look for lines that span grids. Make sure they line up.
- Edges: If a line or object does not appear to have a continuation in another piece, then it's probably an edge of the puzzle.
- Corners: Does a grid contain a small difference in the corners or along edges? That might be a clue about where the piece belongs.
- Colors: A blue sky or white wall usually isn't uniformly colored. Pay attention to slight gradients.
- Shift: Even if you know what the picture looks like, most people focus on objects and not position. You might have a few correctly adjacent pieces, but they may be in the wrong location on the board. You might need to shift the group horizontally or vertically.
- Swap: The most difficult pictures are the ones with large squares of uniform coloring. This includes screenshots and digital alterations, where the background is a solid color. Multiple regions that are completely the same color (such as solid black or solid white) may look visually correct but are actually in the wrong order. Try swapping identical-looking pieces.
- Touch: To keep your score low, don't move a piece until you have some degree of confidence about where it belongs. You may have to track adjacent pieces.
- Four: The puzzle is 4 pieces wide and 4 pieces high. If you can track adjacent pieces and find four that are similar, then they probably belong together. For example, a tall light post may span four vertical pieces. Or the ground might have four horizontal pieces that look different than all other pieces.
- Peek: Ya know... you could always open another copy of the analysis page in a second window and take a little look...
This game is intended as a short-term distraction. If you find yourself playing it for hours, then you're doing it wrong. (And if you get caught by your boss while playing games, don't blame me.)
This puzzle game is based on "Create an HTML5 Canvas Tile Swapping Puzzle" by Brad Manderscheid (January 2012).
Lights Out Game
Want something more difficult than the tile game? Try 'Lights Out'.
Lights Out divides the puzzle into 25 squares. Some of the squares are inverted. For this game, remove all of the inverted squares.
Clicking on a square inverts it. But it also inverts the four adjacent squares: above, below, left, and right. There is a solution, but it isn't as simple as clicking on the inverted squares. (It might take you some time to find the solution.)
Spoiler
If you get stuck, there are three steps that can help you solve it quickly.
- The first step is called "chasing lights". Starting on the second row, click below every inverted square. This turns off the inverted cells on the first row. Repeat on the third row to turn off every inverted square on the second row. Keep doing each subsequent line until only the bottom row has inverted cells.
- The second step uses known patterns. Based on the bottom row's inverted pattern, there are specific squares to click on in the top row.
- The final step repeats the chasing lights step. This will remove all of the inverted squares.
