Technofile

Grapple with the rules of the road and the Nomic principle - at your own risk. You could also pay a virtual visit to Mornington Crescent and other places on the Tube. And coffee mornings will never be the same again, now that Tupperware has got serious about software

Mornington Enlightenment

Many fans of Radio 4's I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue may have assumed that the point of the celebrated game Mornington Crescent was that the players only pretend there are rules. The 20,000-odd words of the Mornington Nomic rule set prove otherwise; as does the even longer Encyclopaedia Morningtonia, published by a nucleus of "MC" devotees in York. The Nomic principle, already used to explain the weird world of LambdaMOO (see below right), can now elucidate one of our home-grown mysteries. In these fat files, newbies can find explanations of the finer points of play, such as the Finsbury Option, the Septimus Divergence (moving to Seven Sisters), line velocities, and "foetal" stations (still under construction). Foetal stations have coefficients of 1.4 times those of "ghost" stations, defunct destinations such as British Museum and Aldwych. You can watch a game in progress too, although as in LambdaMOO, it soon disappears beneath a sea of banter straight from a post-grad student party. Player Gil Williamson also offers an automated game that can be played by clicking on a section of Tube map. But nowhere will you find the answer to the game's fundamental paradox, set out in the Mornington Nomic FAQ: "Mornington Nomic starts with but two essential playing rules: 'The Winner is the first Player to Move to Mornington Crescent' and 'No Player may Move to Mornington Crescent'."

Ways To Play

Mornington Crescent: a guide

In weak positional play, it is vital to consolidate an already strong outer square, eg Pentonville Road.

The A40 northbound used as a counter- play offers rear access to suburban bidding. (Dr Graeme Garden, news.bbc.co.uk)

"Morningside Crescent is a more refined, Scottish version of Mornington Crescent, which nonetheless follows standard rules quite closely. Shunting and straddling generally are considered unacceptable". (Encyclopaedia Morningtonia)

Millennium Compliant?

London Underground's web site has co-opted the Subway Navigator service provided by France's Pierre David, which works out routes on metro systems around the world. The centrepiece of LU's efforts is the Jubilee Line Extension site, with features on archaeological finds along the route, and a "JLE Active Channel". But - yes, you guessed - it's still under construction.

The Rules Are The Game

One of the most interesting aspects of Julian Dibbell's My Tiny Life (4th Estate, pounds 16.99), which was extracted in the Sunday Review last month, is the way it describes how computer games are gradually ceasing to look like games.

The text-based interactive programs used to sustain online fantasy worlds were originally developed for the multi-user role-playing game of Dungeons and Dragons. The fantasists may have given up chasing dragons, but they still play games. Dibbell recounts how the inhabitants of the virtual world of LambdaMOO are obsessed with civics, endlessly debating how their society should be run. The simplest explanation for this may be that the game is now about making the rules.

There's a name for this type of game - Nomic. Invented in the early 1980s by a professor of philosophy called Peter Suber, there are now Nomic games in Japanese, Polish and Swedish, Imperial Nomics, communist Nomics, and a Radio Free Nomic. There is (or was, till it crashed) even a Nomic whose players are other Nomics. All of them are variants of the basic Nomic, a game whose purpose is to create and alter its own rules.

Suber explains on his web site that his aim had been to illustrate the paradox of a rule that allows itself to be changed - abstruse stuff indeed. Nomic has much in common with software coding, and the results are often about as interesting to read. But the attraction is clear: creating and altering laws is what governments do. Play Nomic, and you can be a lawmaker without even having to get elected.

Freeing Up The Freeways

You're going slow in a motorway tail back, can't see what the problem is - and then all of a sudden the traffic is flowing freely once again.

Often what you're experiencing is the ghost of an outbreak of rubber- necking, as cars slow down to view an accident on the opposite carriageway, which persists long after the incident is over. Traffic waves of this kind can also be created by motorists changing speed for other reasons - braking to keep clear of cars changing lanes, for example - and the knock-on effects on traffic flow can be dreadful.

Amateur scientist Bill Beaty claims to have discovered a way to disperse these waves. He tried driving on highways round Seattle at the average traffic speed instead of speeding up and slowing down as normal, and speculates that posses of civic-minded motorists could free whole road systems by driving in a similar manner.

But, he concedes, the job should probably be left to state troopers. His site also links to mathematical models of traffic flow, and shows you how to draw holograms on Perspex using a pair of dividers.

Software Today, Tupperware Tomorrow

Tupperware parties will presumably be held in Internet chat rooms once the top plastic tub brand implements its plans for a web site. We may also look forward to beta versions of new Tupperware releases, upgrades, patches, and possibly plug-ins too