"Say, Kirsch! Do you happen to have any examples of the application of 'pataphysical science to board gaming?"

"Why yes, yes, I do. Or maybe I don't. Honestly, I've read this four times and I'm still mostly just kind of scared of it. Whatever it is, you probably shouldn't play it."

http://untilheaven.tripod.com/id76.htm

@zebratron2084 maybe it's for the best that i don't know what 'pataphysics is, because this game just looks like a mess of scoring patterns nobody has time to learn

@KitRedgrave That is exactly correct. :) Pataphysics is, put very basically, a genre of surrealist satire of systems of rules.

Usually it's stuff like big fancy scientific-sounding papers about completely imaginary problems, like how to build a "real" time travel machine or turn a human being into the square root of negative one.

In this case, it's a satire of over-complicated games like contract bridge or mah jongg with a ton of fiddly and hard-to-remember rules -- or worse, monstrosities like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taikyoku_shogi -- and was probably never seriously intended to be played.

Hell, I'd be surprised if anyone but the author's even READ the whole thing. :) Though it might be fun to see someone program a couple of AIs to play it someday...