Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

Thank you to Green Armadillo for highlighting the fact that Free Realms is going to put a barrier in at level 5 beyond which you must be a subscriber to advance. As Green Armadillo himself puts it: "Free Realms is now all but officially a subscription game with a free trial, rather than a free to play game with an item shop and optional subscription" I know very little about Free Realms having only played one character up to (coincidentally) level 5 but on the face of it this is a staggering move. For quite some time it has appeared that microtransactions were an unstoppable force which would eventually signal the death of the subscription model. Turbine's recent move of DDO from compulsory to optional subscriptions has reportedly been a big success. Sony are the only company I have heard of moving back towards a compulsory subscription model. Without more information it is hard to read this. I assume Sony are doing it because they think it will make them more money ...

I grew up in a card playing family. We enjoyed Whist, Gin Rummy, Bridge and many other games but the perennial favourite was the traditionally Irish game of Twenty Five. Twenty five is a trick taking game like bridge or whist but the ranking of the cards is quite bizarre, it goes like this: Trump Cards (Trump suit is selected by turn of card at the start of each round) 5 of Trumps Jack of Trumps (more generally called the Knave) Ace of Hearts Ace of Trumps (bonus of allowing the holder to "rob" the card turned over to indicated trumps) King of Trumps Queen of Trumps The remaining trumps in natural order (10,9, 8 ...) for red suits or in reverse order (2, 3, 4 ...) for black suits. ("Highest in red, Lowest in black). Non Trump Suits King Queen Jack The remaining cards natural order (10,9, 8 ...) for red suits or in reverse order (A, 2, 3, 4 ...) for black suits. ("Highest in red, Lowest in black"). The Ace of diamonds is therefore worthless unless diamonds are ...