69.110.10.126: possible addition (2005-12-19 14:54) [#771]

I have a suggestion for an addition that I think would make problems more useful to users.

Instead of just listing some possible lines into the solution page, I think there should be a way for the user to play out his/her guess against a computer player.

All you'd need to do is get any reasonably good open-source Go program and modify it so that

1. It starts at the problem's openning position; 2. It knows the problem-presenter's responses to all reasonable attempts by the user; 3. It obeys its own mechanism when the problem-presenter doesn't enter a response for a given attempt by the user.

Assuming that the program was half-way decent, it should be able to win against any attempt that was not reasonable, as seen by the problem-presenter.

To make this really work, you'd need to make your own code so that presenters could create these problem-programs without much difficulty. But I think it could be done, and I think it would be very useful.

--dspivak

gnostic: ((no subject)) (2014-01-27 15:05) [#9923]

Using computer programs is a great way of verifying solutions, at least for the simpler problems, but having an SL interface to a computer program seems unnecessary. There are plenty of free go playing programs, and you can always download one yourself and use it to help verify a solution. Preferably one that at least has a setting to make it never tenuki a L&D problem until it is very clearly over. That means probably not Gnu Go. Maybe Pacchi? And for dan level problems you have to be very careful about not blindly trusting an answer provided by software. For mid and high dan level problems, it would be recommendable to use a program designed specifically for go problems, like Go Tools for example, but rigorous refutation and re-refutation by hand should be the standard for solving Go problems in general. What a computer can add to the mix is the same thing a human being can: some new lines you may not have noticed. --gnostic?