A Challenge/Response Game (C/RG) is a Contest, governed by R338, unless otherwise noted here. These are the Contest Rules for Challenge/Response Games:

Each instance of a Challenge/Response Game (C/RG) is governed by this set of rules and when it is defined, must include the following attributes: game name, Contestmaster title, period of duration, repetitive or not (if yes, how often), and entry fee. It should also describe the limits and guidelines for the challenge(s) and methods by which to judge the correctness of the answers, and either specify the (first) Contestmaster or describe how to determine who the (first) Contestmaster is. Statements in the rule(s) defining the instance of the C/RG take preference over this rule.

The Contestmaster of the C/RG (Contestmaster) should post the/a Challenge to a public forum (once in each period of duration if the game is repetitive). The other Players may, if they choose, submit to the Contestmaster an answer (response) to the challenge. Answers must be submitted privately via a time-stampable medium (e.g. e-mail) within the period of duration after the challenge was posted. Each player may submit up to one complete answer. Partial or incomplete answers (as determined by the Contestmaster) are not considered submissions. For each answer submitted, (entry fee)*2 points shall be transferred from each submitting player to the Contestmaster. After the period of duration after posting the challenge, the Contestmaster will judge the answers e received and select a winner. This judgement should be made in a reasonable amount of time [[like 2 days at most]]. If more than one answer is judged (most) correct, the answer submitted earliest will be selected the winner. Half the total of the entry fees shall be transferred to the winner of the challenge [[the Contestmaster keeps the other half]]. If the C/RG is repetitive, the winner of the challenge shall be the Contestmaster for the following challenge.

If less than 2 answers are submitted, the game is considered finished with no winner. All points taken from players as entry fees for the game are returned to their original owners. If it is a repetitive game, then the Contestmaster does not change and play proceeds as normal for the next challenge.

[[The changing paid Contestmaster is not only an extra incentive for people to want to win, but also for the Contestmaster to create a challenge to which a lot of people will respond.]]

If the Contestmaster fails to change after two consectutive periods of duration, a Secondary Unilateral Motion may me made naming a new (different) Contestmaster for the game which will pass after 2 days if no objections are voiced in any public forum. Players do not need to publicly consent to inclusion in a C/RG (as per R338/Contests) to become Contestants of the Game, they only need to submit an answer to the Contestmaster as per the Contest Rules. The Prize for the C/RG is the points awarded to the winner of the Challenge.

The Similarity Game

The Similarity Game is an instance of a challenge/response game with the following attributes:

game name: The Similarity Game
admin title: Similarity Officer
duration: until repealed
repetitive: yes, nweekly
entry fee: 2

Once every nweek, the Similarity Officer (S.O.) should post a Challenge to a public forum.

Limits and guidelines:
The Challenge will take the following form:
The S.O. will publish a list containing at least three distinct items. The answer should be an attribute which is shared between all the items.

Judging:
More specific attributes are 'more correct' than general attributes [[e.g. 'round' is better than 'same shape']] and multiple
attributes are 'more correct' than single attributes [[e.g. 'striped and round' is better than 'striped' or 'round' individually]].

first Contestmaster:
The first Contestmaster of the game is Benjamin.

[[
Three of these things belong together
Three of these things are kind of the same
Can you guess which one of these doesn't belong here?
Now it's time to play our game!
]]

A Contest is structure within the Game consisting of Contest Rules, Contestants, Prizes, and a Contestmaster.

An Agent may become a Contestant of a Contest by publicly consenting to inclusion in it, and by meeting any other qualifications established by the Contest Rules. Contest Rules are binding on Contestants, but may not supersede any Game Rules.

The Poetry Contest is an instance of a challenge/response game with the following attributes:
game name: The Poetry Contest
contestmaster title: A Nomic's Poet Laureate
duration: until repealed
repetitive: yes, at discretion of current contestmaster
entry fee: 2

When they feel like it, the Poet Laureate should post a Challenge to any public forum.

Limits and guidelines:
The Challenge will take the following form:
The Poet Laurate will set a topic, and optionally a length, a style and/or a title, for the other players to write a poem on.

Judging:
This is entirely up to the personal tastes of the current Poet Laureate; bribes, threats and other forms of coercion are entirely permissable so long as they break neither the other rules of this Nomic or the laws of the land in the country of residence of either participant in said form of coercion.

first Admin:
The first Admin of the game is M'cachessilnath.

The Mediocrity game is an instance of a Challenge/Response game with the following attributes:

game name: Mediocrity sub-game
admin title: the Supremely Mediocre
duration: until repealed
repetetive: when finished
entry fee: 2

The initial S.M should specify what limits are being used for the game set. The limits may contrain quantities that include those described below or others. The bracketed number following each quantity is recommended as the minimum for that quantity. However these quantities are only guidelines and do not determine compliance. In some cases a maximum will also be listed here.

The limits may include:

(x) The level of Mediocrity game to be played (min. 1)
(y) The number of players required for the C/R game to start (min 3)
(z) The number of level n-1 sub-games to play as part of each level n game.

The S.M is encouraged to be creative and come up with other limits that may apply to Mediocrity games.

A level n game of Mediocrity sub-game consists of z n-1 sub games, unless n=1 in which case it consists of z individual challenges.

The challenge shall use the following form: The S.M shall post to the public forum a message announcing the sub-game and asking players to submit their quantities. Players then have three days to respond with their quantites by private email.

A valid entry specifies one quantity.

At the conclusion of a level n Mediocrity sub-game the winner is determined. If n is greater than 1 the winner is the participant who won the most mediocre number of level n-1 sub-games during that level n game; that is whose number of level n-1 wins is exceeded by as many participants as it exceeds. The winner of a level 1 sub-game is the player whose specified quantity is the most mediocre.

Prizes shall not be awarded for individual challenges making up a larger Mediocrity game. Instead, at the conclusion of the game announced by the first S.M of the game the entire collection of all entry fees collected for the individual challenges that made up that game shall be paid to the winner. This is an exception to rule 336.

The ContestMaster of each Mediocrity sub-game is the winner of the previous sub-game of the same game. If there was no previous subgame the winner is the ContestMaster of that game. If there is no Mediocrity game active any Player start one and declare emself ContestMaster of the new game by posting such to the Public Forum.

There exists a Contest called Political Go. The Go Consul is the Contestmaster. The first Go Consul is Joel.

The Go Board is empty at the start of Political Go. Players become Go players by making a Go move. Go players are unallied by default.

A game of Political Go ends if it is no longer legal to place a Stone, or if a nweek passes in which no Player places a Stone.

The Go player with the highest Go score is the winner of the Contest.

The Go Board is a square grid of 19 rank lines and 19 file lines, lettered horizontally from "a" to "s" and vertically from "1" to "19".

Each vertex on the grid must, at all times, either be empty or be occupied by a single Stone. Two vertices are adjacent if a grid line can be followed from one to the other without crossing any other vertices. A set of vertices is mutually adjacent if it is possible, by passing only through vertices in the set, to trace a path along grid lines from one vertex in the set to all other vertices in the set.

The Stone is the playing piece in Political Go. Each Stone is owned by one and only one Go player. Two Stones are friendly if they are owned by the same Go player or by allies; otherwise, the stones are unfriendly. A set of Stones is mutually friendly if all pairs of Stones in the set are friendly. Two Stones are adjacent if they occupy adjacent vertices. A Stone is adjacent to a vertex if the vertex it occupies is adjacent to that vertex.

A Dragon is defined as any set of mutually friendly Stones occupying mutually adjacent vertices in which no Stone in the set is adjacent to a mutually friendly Stone not in the set. A Dragon is adjacent to all of the vertices adjacent to the vertices occupied by its Stones. A Dragon has a number of liberties equal to the number of unoccupied vertices to which it is adjacent, with no vertex being counted more than once. A Dragon is considered dead if has only one liberty; otherwise, the Dragon is live. A Dragon is friendly to a Go player if it contains only friendly Stones.

Each vertex from which no clear path may be traced to a Dragon unfriendly to a Go player is counted as one territory for that Go player. A Dragon has an eye if its liberties are territory for a Go player to whom it is friendly, and, barring a change of alliances, it would be impossible for that territory to be lost. Any Dragon with two distinct eyes, barring a change of alliances, may never become dead.

For each move, a Go player must do one of the following:

1. Place a stone.

The Go player may place a stone on any unoccupied vertex, with the following exceptions:

a. Stones may not be placed so as to repeat a previous Board configuration. b. Stones may not be placed on vertices on which the placement of a Stone would cause the formation of a friendly Dragon with no liberties, unless it would also cause the formation of an enemy Dragon with no liberties. c. A Go player may never place two stones consecutively.

2. Offer an alliance to an enemy.

The offer must name the Go player to whom the offer is made. The offer becomes void if the Go player to whom it was offered makes any other move before accepting the offer, or if the Go player who made the offer withdraws it.

3. Declare war on an ally.

If a Go player declares war on an ally, the two Go players cease to be allies, and eir former ally's Stones are no longer friendly.

4. Accept an alliance.

By accepting an alliance offered by another Go player, the two Go players become allied.

5. Withdraw an offer of an alliance.

If a Go player withdraws an offer e previously made, the player to whom e made the offer can no longer accept it. An offer cannot be withdrawn after it was accepted.

Each Go player may make no more than one Go move within 19 hours, with the exception of accepting an alliance or withdrawing an offer, which can be done an unlimited number of times.

[[One move per 19 hours instead of 24 hours because then you can start playing up to 5 hours before the time at which you played the day before, e.g. if you played at 00:00 yesterday, you don't have to wait till 00:00 before you may play again, you may start at 19:00 already.]]

Following each Go move, the Stones of Dragons with no liberties unfriendly to the moving Go player are captured.

If a captured Dragon is adjacent only to Stones owned by a single Go player, that Go player captures all of the Stones in the captured Dragon. If a captured Dragon is adjacent to Stones owned by more than one Go player, the captured Stones are divided among the owners of those Stones as follows:

The Go player with the most Stones adjacent to the captured Dragon receives the first Stone, the next most the next Stone, and so on, with ties broken randomly, until all captured Stones are exhausted or every Go player capturing from the Dragon has received a Stone. This process is repeated until all Stones from the captured Dragon are exhausted.

At the end of the game, all dead Dragons are captured by the Go players whose unfriendly Dragons are adjacent to them. After the removal of dead Stones, each Go player's territory is counted. A Go player's Go score is the sum of eir territories and captured Stones.

Following Go scoring, a number of captured Stones equal to eir territories is created in each Go player's possession, and all of eir Stones in play are added to eir pool of captured Stones, thus removing all Stones from the Go Board.

Stones are objects. They can be created, destroyed, transferred, and otherwise manipulated only as allowed by the rules.

Stones have three states: "Reserve", "In Play", and "Captured". Newly created Stones are always Reserve Stones.

If a game of Political Go is in progress a player may, at any time, purchase a Stone from the bank. This purchase transfers the purchase cost of that stone in points to the bank, and creates a new Stone [[Reserve]] owned by that player.

The Purchase price of a Go Stone is equal to (5^n)-1, where n is the number of stones purchased previously by the purchasing agent in that nweek.

Ownership of Reserve Stones is transferable at will by the owner of the stone.

Stones In Play acquire the property "location". The location of an In Play stone is specified when it becomes In Play and may not change.

Captured Stones may be sold to the Bank for 1 point each. This sale destroys the stone and transfers 1 point from the Bank to the stone's owner.

There exist objects in the game known as Cards. Cards are only transferrable under conditions stated by the rules.

Each Card has 3 properties that distinguish it from all other Cards in the game: Suit, Rank, and Back.

The possible Suits are Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades. The possible Ranks are Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, and King. The possible Backs are described elsewhere.

A Pack of Cards is a set of 52 Cards which all have the same Back. The 52 Cards represent every possible combination of Suit and Rank.

The following Packs of Cards are in play:

* The Red Pack
(The Backs of these cards are primarily Red. They are decorated with the traditional card design featuring the twisty lines surrounding circles which appear to contain cherubs on pogo sticks.)
* The Blue Pack
(The Backs of these cards are primarily Blue. Other than the color, they are decorated the same way as the Red Pack.)
* The Fish Pack
(The Backs of these cards contain colorful drawings of tropical fish.)
* The Corporate Pack
(The Backs of these cards contain a message urging you to fly the friendly skies with United.)

The Dealer is the player who owns all the cards in the Deck and is responsible for taking the necessary actions to Deal a card to a Player. The Dealer is an Elected Officer. The original Dealer is PurpleBob.

On certain occasions the Dealer will be required to Deal a Card to a Player. The Dealer does this by assigning a unique number from 1 to 52*(the number of Packs) to each Card, and asking the Nomic's dice server to roll one die with that many sides. If the number returned is the number of a Card that is not currently in the Deck, the Dealer keeps rolling until e gets the number of a Card that is in the Deck. The Dealer then transfers this Card from the Deck to the Hand of the player who should recieve the card, and notifies that Player of what the Card is. The Player is then considered to own that Card.

However, if the Deck contains no Cards, the Dealer cannot Deal a Card. This takes precedence over rules that state when a Card should be Dealt.

The method used to assign numbers to cards is this:

The packs are numbered from 0 to (N-1), where N is the number of packs, in the order which they are originally described.

The suits are numbered as such: Diamonds = 0, Spades = 1, Hearts = 2. Clubs 3.

The ranks are numbered as such: Ace = 1, Jack = 11, Queen = 12, King = 13, and all other ranks are numbered as themselves.

The number of a card is: (pack number)*52 + (suit number)*13 + (rank number)

A Hand is the collection of all cards which a player besides the Dealer owns.

The Deck is the collection of all cards which are owned by the Dealer. Originally, all the Cards in all the Packs that are in play are in the Deck.

Each nweek, the Dealer make a report of who recieved Cards in that nweek, and what the Back of each Card was. No other information about the Cards should be given by the Dealer.

At the beginning of each nweek, the Dealer deals a Card to each Player who voted in the previous nweek.

Pooker is a game played with Nomic Cards. The object of the game is to exchange Cards with other Players so that you have the best Poker Hand or combination of Poker Hands.

A Pooker Card is a Card that is in a Pack which is defined to be used in the game of Pooker. It can be abbreviated to 'PCard'.

A Trade is the process by which two Players exchange a specified number of PCards. In a Trade, the dealer takes the Cards which one Player wishes to trade to the other Player and changes their ownership to the other Player, thus adding them to the other Player's hand. E then takes an equal number of PCards which the other Player wishes to trade and changes their ownership to the first Player in the same way. Both Players involved in a trade must trade an equal number of PCards.

Any Player who has one or more PCards may arrange a Trade with any other Player who has one or more PCards. They do this by making offers and counter-offers with each other privately, and then each notifying the Dealer of the Trade they wish to make - both which PCard or PCards e will give, and which PCard or PCards e plans to recieve.

The Dealer must be notified of the same trade by both Players involved in the trade. The Players also must each pay the Dealer a transaction fee of one Point [[you'll notice that there's no other way for the Dealer to get Points from this game]].

A Player may make a Motion to Show Cards at any time as long as no such Motion is already pending. A Motion to Show Cards is a Secondary Approvable Motion which passes by being voted for by a majority of Players. When a Motion to Show Cards passes, a Showdown occurs.

Additionally, if a transfer of Cards (such as by Dealing) causes one Player to own ten or more PCards, e may declare a Showdown at any time, without making a Motion to Show Cards. However, in the resulting Showdown, e must show at least two PCards.

In the event of a Showdown, each Player can choose whether to show eir cards. If e decides to show eir cards, e must post a message to a public forum describing which PCards should be shown, and how they should be arranged into Poker Hands. A prize of a certain number of Points goes to the Player or Players with the highest total Score of Poker Hands, and all PCards that were shown are returned to the Deck.

The Player who has the highest total Score of eir Poker Hand(s) is awarded a number of Points from the Bank equivalent to the total Score of eir Poker Hand(s). If there is a tie for the highest Score, that number of Points is given from the Bank and divided among the Player(s) involved in the tie.

A Poker Hand is a set of one to five PCards owned by the same Player. A Player may arrange eir PCards into more than one Poker Hand if it would result in a higher Score or if e owns more than five PCards.

Poker Hands are scored as follows (statements at the top take precedence):

If a Poker Hand contains five PCards of the same Rank, it is a Five of a Kind, and has a Score of 80.

If a Poker Hand contains five PCards with the Ranks Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and 10, and those PCards are all of the same Suit, it is a Royal Flush, and has a Score of 80.

If a Poker Hand contains five PCards with consecutive Ranks which are all of the same Suit, it is a Straight Flush, and has a Score of 70.

If a Poker Hand contains four PCards of the same Rank, it is a Four of a Kind, and has a Score of 60.

If a Poker Hand contains three PCards of one Rank and two PCards of another, it is a Full House, and has a Score of 50.

If a Poker Hand contains five PCards of the same Suit, it is a Flush, and has a Score of 40.

If a Poker Hand contains five PCards with consecutive Ranks [[such as 7-8-9-10-Jack]], it is a Straight, and has a Score of 35.

If a Poker Hand contains three PCards of the same Rank, it is a Three of a Kind, and has a Score of 25.

If a Poker Hand contains two PCards of one Rank and two PCards of another Rank, it is Two Pair, and has a Score of 15.

If a Poker Hand contains two PCards of the same Rank, it is a Pair, and has a Score of 5.

If a Poker Hand contains none of the above, its Score is 0.

Each Pack of Cards can be defined to be part of a certain Card Game. A Card Game is a set of Rules that define how that Game should be played within the Nomic.

The Red and Blue Decks are defined to be part of the Card Game entitled "Pooker".