Botched game ad

2024-02-27T02:07:51Z

I had a game ad pop up while I was playing another game on my phone. There's a kind of "negging" that some of the ads use: "You can't handle this!" "What a loser!" "Only 0.008% of people can reach level 23!" and such. Presumably they're intending the viewers to get a feeling of superiority, trying to prove that they can do it. For me, such comments tell me that there's no way I want to try that game. If I "can't handle it" I'll only feel frustrated, and why would I voluntarily spend time with a person or thing that keeps insulting me?

But this ad was a little different. "Only left brain thinkers can handle this!" The goal of the puzzle is to separate the rings by sliding them out in an order that lets them move freely. But the sample shown has no solution. The red, orange, and medium-green rings can't be detached from each other without cutting at least one, or resorting to a higher dimension.

It's the same configuration of rings that I made for myself as a "fiddle toy" many years ago. It looks like a wire puzzle, with small gaps in the rings, as though the rings could be separated if one only manipulated the thing properly. In reality, it's just a pretty symmetrical arrangement that makes a pleasant chiming if it's tossed in the air without spinning. Occasionally, I hand it to people to play with, without comment, and watch them try to figure out what they assume is a puzzle. Once, years ago at a convention in Minneapolis, I was chatting with some friends and pulled the thing out to fiddle with. When I explained to Pamela Dean that it wasn't actually a puzzle, it only looked like one and had no "solution", etc., she said to Patricia C. Wrede, "Pat! It's a Mike Ford toy!"

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bunsen_h

Botched game ad