Skip to main content

"Trap the Cat" or "My Wife the Genius"

If you have a single frivolous bone in your body you have probably stumbled across "Trap the Cat" which has been frustrating flash gamers around the world for the last few weeks. It is a maddeningly addictive puzzle game in which you must encircle a cat before he can escape.

After several hopeless attempts during which I always seemed to be one circle behind the fleeing cat I resorted to Google and finally learned how to do it. Even with this stolen knowledge I am still not perfect. Depending on the layout of initial dots I can probably trap him about half the time.

Anyhow, my wife likes this kind of thing so I decided to show her the game, perhaps guiltily anticipating schadenfreude at her mounting frustration with such a difficult puzzle. As expected she took to the game immediately and after one attempt I could see she was hooked. I sat back, deciding to let her struggle for a bit before magnanimously stepping in and demonstrating my own (unearned) prowess.

She trapped the cat on her second attempt.

Beginners luck? No. She went on to trap the cat again.

"I'm good at this game she said."

I said nothing.

Comments

Melmoth said…
I managed it on my second attempt, but then didn't manage it again for the next twenty or so. Ease of success does seem to be very dependent on the layout of the green dots that are initially present.
mbp said…
Its not as dependent on the initial dots as you might think although I do believe some games are un-winnable.

Personally I think there is a male female thing going on Mel. I, the man focus in on the cat and end up chasing it around the board. My wife takes a more holistic view of the whole board and seems to have intuitively stumbled on the winning strategy while I had to google it.
Nikola said…
Jesus mate, exactly the same story with me and my wife.
Freaky...
mbp said…
Hi Bojan thanks for the comment. There has to be some kind of man/woman thing going on here. At risked of being called out for chauvinism can I suggest that man the hunter tries to hunt the cat and ends up futilely chasing after it whereas woman the gatherer actually surrounds the cat and gathers it in.

Popular posts from this blog

My First Gaming Mouse: Logitech G300

I bought a gaming mouse yesterday a Logitech G300, here my initial thoughts. What is a gaming mouse?  There are a wide variety of devices available classified as gaming mice but a few features  seem common: 1. Wired rather than wireless: Although some high end models are wireless wired connections are just better and faster than wireless so most gaming mice stick with wired. As a bonus wired mice don't need batteries so the mouse is lighter.  2. High response rate: 1 to 2ms response rate so the mouse immediately responds to input.  2. High DPI. Gaming mice invariable boast high DPI numbers from 2,000 DPI upwards. This makes the device very responsive to the smallest movements.   3. Adjustable DPI . High DPI improves responsiveness but reduces precision so gaming mice generally allow you to adjust the DPI down for precise work such as pulling off headshots in sniper mode. Generally the mouse allows dpi to be changed on the fly by pressing a button.  4. Extr

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access  then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein