Show HN: Antimatter – Match the opposites (Mahjong solitaire mechanic)
Comments
sxp
michaeld123
the older generation of vectors, like word2vec, compress to one sense of a word, but even if we ignore polysemy, opposites have a lot in common. So for any antonym pair, they would not be minus-1, they would be actually pretty close.
The big challenge is when we go beyond antonyms with clear scales like heat, speed, size. To me "as of now" is recent, and therefore opposite to "old". I would like a word other than "opposite" or "antonym" or "contrast" that captures a wider range.
yellowapple
On screens that are taller than they're wide, a lot of the longer words get truncated, such that I have zero idea what they are until I've found a match for them (usually after blowing many moves on finding that match).
Also, how are “feuding” and “buddies” not opposites?
thrance
Interesting idea, but sometimes the associations feel a bit arbitrary. Also, I'm unsure about the "mahjong" presentation: since the game shuffles automatically when you're out of options and never leaves you in a dead end, the player is incentivized to minimize the amount of options they have at any given time, since that makes the game easier.
michaeld123
Both your points are solid. I think I'm pretty liberal about opposites, I can see opposites to major political and cultural figures too. You are right that the mahjong presentation loses rigor if there's not enough downside from choosing the wrong sequence. The mobile mahjong games often have a small fill-tray so the player needs to really focus on the sequence.
Nice game.
But I think you need to work on better "opposites". E.g, "as of now" and "long ago" don't really seem to be opposite. Instead, maybe they're complex conjugates of each other. I.e, they have similarities along one axis (time frame) and differences along another. But I wouldn't consider those two to be opposite one another. Word2vec with a consine similarity closer to -1 might be better than what you're using now.