Martian Greenhouse a solitaire Icehouse game by Becca Stallings

Number of Players One. Number of Stashes Any even number, preferably four or six. Opaque colors make a more challenging game. Premise You are a botanist hired to genetically engineer Martian flowers for colonists to plant in their gardens. Your employer gives productivity bonuses, so you want to produce each flower with the fewest possible generations of breeding. The genetic structure of the Martian flower consists of six pyramidal chromosomes arranged in a linear configuration or «stack». When flowers breed, they produce two offspring, with three chromosomes from each parent going into each child. The three chromosomes from one parent always remain in the same order relative to one another. Setup Before beginning the game, write a list of the flowers ordered by your employer and set it aside for reference. (The longer the list, the longer your game. Make sure your list does not require more than five of any one kind of pyramid.) Next, collect some breeding stock from the wild and set up your greenhouse: Put all the pyramids into a bag, draw them out without looking, and form stacks of six. Line them up on the table, leaving some laboratory space between you and the greenhouse. Playing Select two flowers to breed. Take them from the greenhouse into the lab. Unstack each flower, being careful to keep the chromosomes in order, so that you have two parallel rows of six. Decide which three chromosomes from one parent will combine with which three from the other parent, and slide those pyramids into the area between the rows, keeping them in order. Next, decide how the three from one parent will mesh with the three from the other. Chromosomes from the same parent have to stay in order relative to each other, but they can intersperse in any way with those from the other parent. That is, if one parent contributes one of each size red (1R, 2R, 3R) and the other parent contributes one of each size blue (1B, 2B, 3B), the offspring's genetic structure might be: 1R, 2R, 3R, 1B, 2B, 3B 1R, 1B, 2R, 3R, 2B, 3B 1B, 1R, 2B, 2R, 3B, 3R 1B, 2B, 1R, 2R, 3R, 3B; etc. Stack the chromosomes to produce one offspring. Then stack the remaining six chromosomes, using the same rules, to produce another offspring. When breeding is complete, you may choose to place both new flowers in the greenhouse and select two different ones to breed, or you may keep one new flower and breed it with any flower from the greenhouse. You may not breed the two new flowers with each other, as such incest will cause deadly mutations. Continue breeding until you have produced all the flowers on your list. Example of Play Suppose one of the flowers on your list is pure purple, with two smalls on top of two mediums on top of two larges. 1P, 1P, 2P, 2P, 3P, 3P From the greenhouse, you choose a pair of flowers which together happen to contain one of each size of purple, Flower 1: 2B, 3R, 1B, 1B, 2P, 3R Flower 2: 2C, 1P, 1C, 1R, 2B, 3P and select the purple chromosomes plus enough extras to make a flower, From No. 1: 1B, 2P, 3R From No. 2: 1P, 2B, 3P and stack them together into a half-purple offspring. 1P, 1B, 2P, 2B, 3P, 3R The remaining chromosomes are From No. 1: 2B, 3R, 1B From No. 2: 2C, 1C, 1R and you stack them to make the other offspring. 2B, 2C, 1C, 1R, 3R, 1B For your next turn, you put the non-purple offspring back into the greenhouse and breed the half-purple offspring with another flower from the greenhouse, which happens to contain at least one of each size purple, 1P, 1B, 2P, 2B, 3P, 3R (your offspring) 3P, 1P, 2P, 2P, 3R, 3P (greenhouse flower) and you set aside one of each size in the needed order from each parent, From your offspring: 1P, 2P, 3P From the other one: 1P, 2P, 3P which you then combine to fill the order. 1P, 1P, 2P, 2P, 3P, 3P (congratulations!) If more flowers remain, play would continue by combining the remaining six chromosomes from your success into a new flower, and then either pairing it with something in the greenhouse or bringing out two greenhouse flowers. Comments by the Editor Becca posted this to the Icehouse mailing list in June of 2002, and it disappeared from sight shortly thereafter. I stumbled across the old email a few months later, and thought it worth preserving on the Web. Becca gave permission, so here it is. Like most solitaires, it's more of a puzzle rather than a game. But a nice feature is that the same order list can be played several times, since the starting group of flowers is randomized. This ranks up with solitaire Volcano (and practicing Thin Ice or CrackeD Ice) as the best one-player Icehouse diversions. This plays well using three to five orders with four stashes, or five to seven orders with six stashes. And yes, using black or white (or both) greatly increases the challenge.