Caterpillar Logic

This is a very nice afternoon’s pastime.

Caterpillar Logic is designed as a tool to help train people in inductive reasoning: given a few data points that show some cases that follow a rule and some cases that do not (in this case fourteen multicolored caterpillars, seven that follow the rule and seven that do not), find the rationale behind their categorization.  “I believe that it is a good idea to develop inductive reasoning skills in games,” says the developer, because “scientists use it to form hypotheses and theories.” 

The game begins by giving you two sets of seven multicolored caterpillars, each caterpillar has one to six segments and segment can be one of four different colors.  One set follows a simple rule that relates the number and order of the colors on the caterpillars, the other set violates that rule in some way.  By looking at these fourteen examples, you are asked to deduce the rule that fits all of them, and then test your rule by checking fifteen random caterpillars.  The quiz stops when you miss one caterpillar, and that caterpillar goes up on the board.  You are also free to test caterpillars in the caterpillar wizard – or whatever it’s called – to experiment with any questions you might have about what’s going on.  If you can complete the fifteen item quiz, the game assumes you know the rule.

This is probably the flaw in the game: I was able to interpolate through a few of these quizzes without an explicit idea about what the rule was (I may overstate this because I would build up several heuristics, but they weren’t the rule).  And so I felt smarter than I really was.  Since that is a major selling point in a lot of video games, it may not be a flaw for everyone – it allows you to guess your way out of a hard situation.

There are only twenty levels in Caterpillar Logic, so if you pace yourself, you can get a good month out of the game.  Or, if you’re like me and lack self-control, it’s a good afternoon of fun.