The Hardest Easy Game

Edward de Bono is a lot of things -- an author, an economic theorist, a physician -- but he’s also a thinker about… thinking. His 1967 book “The Five-Day Course in Thinking” included a game that’s one of the hardest in the world, yet also one of the simplest.

The idea behind creating the perfectly simple, perfectly impossible exercise that turned into The L-Game was to distill a 2-player experience down to a constant churn of critical strategic decisions. By limiting the board to just 16 spaces with 2 L-shaped tetrominoes and 2 neutral pieces, the board can’t distract from the core task. And with so few rules -- really, just that you need to move your L piece to an open space and then optionally move one of the neutrals -- the focus is purely on thinking several moves in advance.

That level of abstraction is way, way harder than it seems. But by using experience to identify and organize some strategic guiding principles to moving in the L-Game, it’s possible for both players to play perfectly -- and forever.

As de Bono demonstrates in his course, that’s the same sort of approach we apply to almost everything we value. We think strategically about the groceries we buy, the relationships we have or want… if it matters, we employ some form of strategy. And the better we are at strategic thinking, the more likely we are to get the result we need.

And it all starts with a 4x4 board, two tetrominoes, and a couple pennies.

*** SOURCES ***

*** LINKS ***

Vsauce2 Links

Hosted and Produced by Kevin Lieber

Research And Writing by Matthew Tabor

Editing by AspectScience

Huge Thanks To Paula Lieber

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[Vsauce]

Just some clarification about only having 3 possible moves in the A, B, and C scenario -- yes, there’s also a fourth move (the L down the left side from the top corner), but it just mirrors the situation we have in A and B. By simply reflecting the L vertically, we open ourselves up to another immediate loss as orange places a horizontal L on the second row and kills our chance to make another move. 

Also, in move B, de Bono assumed that we would notice that Player 1 also moved the neutral piece from the top toward the bottom (since it can go in any of the open spots), which opens up a spot for Player 2 to go down the right half of the board. The neutral piece can’t be moved by orange *before* the L is moved, so that neutral piece had to have been moved by pink after Player 1 moved their L. 

Thanks for diving deep into these details -- and showing what strategic thinking is all about.

P.S. -- Whether or not I put my pants back on for the rest of the video is up to you to decide.

[racool]

This just seems like a simpler version of chess and a more complicated version of tic tac toe

[shepherd]

I can't stop thinking about why his left side is red and his right blue

[__M.K.]

This actually seems like a fun game

Now I just need friends to play it with

[leonelpowers]

Beating the AI in this game was a lot more cathartic than what I thought and had a lot more of me flipping the bird at the thing that I would had imagine.

[jerry]

So he did most of the video not wearing any pants?

[ketsu]

"the hardest easy game"


My brain: aight imma head out....

[Kaepsele]

Most of this video applies to all deterministic perfect information games, like chess, go, checkers, nine mens morris, tafl, connect 4 etc. (Although some of them can't go on forever). What makes this game special is that it strikes the balance where it's not obvious how to play correctly, but you can master it in a couple of days, where the other games can take a lifetime to master.

[Goastyy]

V-sauce: *tries to show the pants*
V-sauce: lemme take it off real quick
V-sauce: *literally sitting on a chair without pants*

[andreabarone]

1:50 my calculator when I try to divide by 0

[zanr]

"Avoid L's and manifest W"
But of course, no Luigi more Waluigi

[MsChestnutter]

2:38 That would of been the best oppertunity to say "L-swhere"

[bmgsplushworld]

I was recently at a camp for the disabled and I played this with my cabin mate, we had lots of fun playing such a simple game, though we changed the rules so the penny could only move to open spaces connected to eachother and not boxed off areas

[ukatofarticus]

Nobody:
Kevin: hey wanna play some B O N E L E S S C H E S S

[bluehoodie_gamer]

4:36 counter-move b is an impossible move as in order for orange to play it they'd need to move the neutral piece before playing which is against the rules

[robfielding]

I bought this about 30 years ago. My mathematics students loved playing this.

[conairehorgan]

Don’t let this distract you from the fact that Lightning McQueen blew a 3 lap lead in the piston cup

[ThrottleKitty]

"You can't place them at an angle to win!"
*Places them at an angle to turn his L into a W*

[gemmamalo]

played against the AI, won first try, never playing again so i can convince myself i'm a prodigy

[sha_]

I like the fatal weak neutral & strong mindset.

It really reflects how "just being reliable enough" can have you win through a competitor's mistake.

Rarely need to play the risk because just not exposing yourself is already on the winning side.
Only when both sides are in the skill level of not losing through mistakes, strong moves even start to matter.

Man i love that.