tacoyaki

March 20, 2010 7:15 PM

What other names does this game have besides tacoyaki?

I see this style of puzzle come up a lot on Japanese "Escape the Room" type games. I tried to google Octopus Balls and other variations, but I didn't get very far. I'm not really looking for a solution to this puzzle--more along the lines of its origin and other names it has been called.

posted by at the crossroads to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I've seen it go by the name "Entropy."
posted by Electrius at 7:20 PM on March 20, 2010

It was marketed in the US as Lights Out. That's the name I've always known it by even before I knew about the commercial angle.
posted by dorque at 7:21 PM on March 20, 2010

I knew it as game 5 on Parker Brothers' Merlin.
posted by rlk at 7:34 PM on March 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

Reversi or Othello
posted by CathyG at 8:21 PM on March 20, 2010 [2 favorites]

I don't know anything about the puzzle in particular, but the word "takoyaki" is usually spelled with a K instead of a C, so you might have more luck searching on that.
posted by ErWenn at 8:41 PM on March 20, 2010

It's also called "Fiver."
posted by lore at 8:58 PM on March 20, 2010

Reversi or Othello

I'm pretty sure that Reversi/Othello is an entirely different game.
posted by mhum at 10:46 PM on March 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

That's Lights Out, one of the first games a programmer learns to make during his burgeoning apprenticeship, at least that's how it was when I was brought up.

In high school, this was one of my ending exercises to our (initially Karel-based) AP Computer Science curriculum. I completed all of the coursework before I dropped out of school about 8 months later, naturally, but Lights Out was a prerogative.
posted by electronslave at 11:58 PM on March 20, 2010