0

new here and couldn't find anything related to Q-Bitz, so I hope it's ok to ask this question. It has my family arguing!
So in Q-Bitz the challenge is to match the pattern on the card with your own set of blocks. Fastest and/or most exact wins, depending on the variant.
If your blocks match the pattern rotated through ninety degrees, have you matched the pattern? Or not? Trivial example to visualise... let's say the pattern on the card is entirely black apart from one white square in one corner, and, if you had a compass and aligned your table, you could say the white square was the north-east corner.
So it's an dead easy pattern to remember of course, and everyone reveals their solution. Three people have their white square in the north-east corner, yay. One person has their white square in the south-east corner. But they say their solution is correct, because the pattern is exactly the same. Hmmm!
Unfortunately the rules of the game don't help on this point.
Help us avoid family break-up please... who is right?
PS I couldn't create a q-bitz tag, as new here.

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

I don't know the game well, but looking it up it looks like there is nothing that specifically identifies an orientation for the player boards, nor is there anything on the pattern cards that show what part of the pattern is up. When playing a game like this, players are probably sitting around a table, each of them will see the pattern card from a different direction then, from their perspective a different direction on the pattern card will be "up". Given these things, I would say that there is no directions in the game, that as long as the pattern card and/or players tray can be rotated to match, then the pattern does match.

Though it's not conclusive (the rules are pretty short) on the MindWare company website page for the game they show an image of a game in progress with the player boards in all different orientations, most of them roughly 90 degrees rotated from the pattern card, see here:

2

This suggests even more that rotation of the board does not matter.

Improve this answer
3
  • Thanks Andrew - useful observations. I'm not 100% convinced as when boards are completed and revealed it's all about visual match, and a rotated pattern won't match, but I feel you're probably right that if the player could rotate their solution to achieve a visual match then they have solved the puzzle. But on the other hand one could argue that memorising the correct orientation is part of the challenge. We had a game earlier where the player clearly had (by own admission) not correctly memorised the pattern, but by a kind of fluke had achieved it after 90 degree rotation!
    – CrispinF
    Jan 23, 2021 at 23:04
  • Also, the MindWare photo doesn't really clinch this debate as they are showing mistakes as well as successes - the red board is clearly incorrect, so we cannot assert that the rotation of the purple and blue boards is supposed to indicate that rotation is ok - it could equally be showing that green is the only player finding the solution. But overall I feel you're probably right that if the player could rotate their solution to achieve a visual match then they have solved the puzzle. Or maybe this does need to be a house rule - yes or no!?
    – CrispinF
    Jan 23, 2021 at 23:13
  • 1
    And it's nice that the default stackexchange user icons are almost Q-Bitz cards!
    – CrispinF
    Jan 23, 2021 at 23:14

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .