Twenty Questions - Game 171

[han-shahanshah]

Spartaculous did mention that this person has written about games. To my mind that suggests some sort of journalist or critic.

[Hominidae]

Free guess: Donald Knuth.

I'm not at all confident, though.

[cdngooner]

Donald Knuth

Never heard of him, but on reading up I see he does tick a lot of our boxes. Certainly "0" and he did write music. Hominidae, how the hell have YOU heard of this obscure mathematician?

[Spartaculous]

Free guess: Donald Knuth.

I'm not at all confident, though.

We have a winner! Great job!

Donald Knuth

Never heard of him, but on reading up I see he does tick a lot of our boxes. Certainly "0" and he did write music. Hominidae, how the hell have YOU heard of this obscure mathematician?

I'd make the case that he is the greatest living computer scientist (at least in an academic sense).

[Spartaculous]

He did not write music or games, but he is connected with a fantasy game that is not D&D (perhaps Magic: the Gathering ... I don't know, I don't play fantasy games; others will know better).

Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: the Gathering, earned a doctorate in mathematics from Penn. His thesis advisor was Herb Wilf; Knuth wrote the forward for Wilf's book A=B (joint with Petkovsek and Zeilberger).

[damo666]

Hadn't heard of him

[Hominidae]

Donald Knuth

Never heard of him, but on reading up I see he does tick a lot of our boxes. Certainly "0" and he did write music. Hominidae, how the hell have YOU heard of this obscure mathematician?

To be honest I was just looking up famous computer scientists because of your comment about software until I found someone who seemed plausible. I didn't even make the "0" connection, which is why I wasn't confident.

This was a fun round, Spartaculous! Next game will be up in a few hours.

[sweetandcool]

Donald Knuth is not obscure :O

Anyone into programming is likely to have heard of him.

[cdngooner]

Anyone into programming is likely to have heard of him.

I think this game plays better when the subject is known to members of more than one occupation or avocation.

[Jamiet99uk]

To be fair this forum is full of the kind of dorks who have heard of mathematicians and computer programmers.

Even I can talk at length about early computer people like Tommy Flowers (but that's due to my job).

[Spartaculous]

To be fair this forum is full of the kind of dorks who have heard of mathematicians and computer programmers.

Even I can talk at length about early computer people like Tommy Flowers (but that's due to my job).

What do you want me to know about Tommy Flowers?

[Jamiet99uk]

Wait, Donald Knuth was the answer?

Well shit. That was really very obscure!

[Jamiet99uk]

I know the dart test is subjective but what the fuck.

This person was not well known.

[Jamiet99uk]

To be fair this forum is full of the kind of dorks who have heard of mathematicians and computer programmers.

Even I can talk at length about early computer people like Tommy Flowers (but that's due to my job).

What do you want me to know about Tommy Flowers?

I mean it's a really interestiing story!

[Jamiet99uk]

Tommy Flowers was one of the Bletchley Park codebreakers who broke the German Lorenz cipher during WW2. He designed and built the Colossus computer - the world's first programmable electronic computer - as part of that work.

After WW2, Tommy Flowers designed the first "ERNIE" machine to generate true random numbers for the Premium Bond draw. Instead of a software random number generator, ERNIE is a hardware random number generator. The first model used thermal noise to generate random numbers. (The latest version uses quantum noise!).

I know about this because I work at National Savings & Investments, a UK Government agency that runs the Premium Bonds, alongside various other savings products.

[Octavious]

If you can tweak things in favour of the numbers in the vacinity of 428RG52 I'd be much obliged