Maybelle
unknown is not lost - when a search runs out of time, the result is 'not sure yet', and counting it as a loss hides the truth
Loading audio…
Press play to listen along. The line being read lights up as you go.
Show full transcript
Loading transcript…
Maybelle is a young fox with a bushy tail that she sweeps across the floor of the Card Lab when she is thinking. She thinks a lot. When something puzzles her, she tilts her head to one side, lifts one ear, and says a long, thoughtful "hmmm." Other animals in the lab have learned that the hmmm usually comes just before Maybelle notices something everyone else missed.
Her favourite thing in the whole lab is a small, empty wooden tray by the solver. She calls it the maybe pile.
This is how the maybe pile began.
One week a group of young rabbits came in to test a new solitaire rule. In their rule, any card could go into an empty column, not just a King. They were sure it would win more games. It seemed obvious: more moves, more ways to win.
They ran the test on thirty deals, once with the normal rule and once with theirs. When the results came back, the rabbits stared at the strip of paper and their whiskers sagged.
"Our rule won fewer," said the oldest rabbit. "Fewer wins! How can more moves win fewer games?"
Everyone looked confused. A few of the rabbits began to crumple the paper, ready to give up on the idea.
Maybelle tilted her head. "Hmmm," she said. "Can I see?"
She read the strip slowly. For each deal, the solver had written one of three words: won, lost, or not sure yet. The rabbits had only counted the wins. Everything else, they had lumped together as losses.
"Look how many not sure yets there are," Maybelle said, pointing her nose at the paper. "Your rule has lots of them. Far more than the normal rule."
"So?" said a rabbit. "Not sure is the same as not winning."
Maybelle shook her head. "Not sure is not the same as lost. It means the solver was still looking when its time ran out. Think about it. Your rule gives the solver more moves to try at every step. More moves means more paths to check. More paths means the solver takes longer, and runs out of time sooner. Those deals might be wins. The solver just didn't get to the end."
She carried the not sure yet deals over to her tray, one by one, and set them in the maybe pile. "A lost deal is a proof," she said. "The solver checked everything and found no way to win. A not sure yet deal is just a question that hasn't been answered. You can't count a question as a no."
The oldest rabbit's ears slowly rose. "So our rule might actually be better. We just don't know yet."
"Hmmm," said Maybelle, and this time she was smiling. "Maybe. And Addison, the bear cub by the block tower, has a way to reason about your rule before you even run it. But that is Addison's story. Mine is simpler: the fewer wins you saw were hiding in the maybe pile."
The rabbits un-crumpled their paper. They asked the solver to look longer at the maybe pile, and sure enough, deal after deal came back as won.
Maybelle feels most like Maybelle in the moment before an answer arrives, when the maybe pile is still full and nobody has decided anything too soon. It is an open, light feeling, like a door left a crack ajar with warm light behind it. Anything is still possible, and she likes to keep it that way until the evidence says otherwise.
You have a bit of Maybelle in you whenever you refuse to call something finished before it is. When a result isn't settled, give it its own pile, and say it the way she does: "Maybelle knows: not sure yet is a maybe, never a no."
Then give your maybes a little more time.
The Solitaire Lab ensemble
Maybelle is part of Solitaire Lab's distributed-narrative cast. Each character embodies a different curricular primitive; together they teach the full subject.
-
Dealia
(Mentor, a card-dealing raccoon) - asks what you predicted BEFORE you look at the data
-
Twinnie
Deals every hand twice - the same deals for both rules, so the test is fair
-
Hedgeworth
Never says more than the data can - reports at least ... and at most ...
-
Bigsby
Knows more deals make the answer sharper - the interval gets narrower
-
Lopsy
Counts the deals where only ONE rule won - those odd pairs are the whole story
-
Lanternby
Knows the measuring tool is part of the result - a bigger search proves more wins of the SAME deals
-
Glassby
Knows FreeCell hides nothing, so a 'lost' there is a proof about the deal itself
-
Tiebelle
Calls it a tie when the two ranges overlap - no winner the data cannot back
-
Seedwick
Knows the same run seed rebuilds the same deals, so anyone can re-check your test
-
Tabitha
Keeps one row per deal in the CSV so you can draw the chart yourself
-
Addison
Knows a rule that only ADDS moves can never truly win less - reason before you run