Faith Puzzle

There’s a Java game you can get for free: jShisen. There’s an installer for Windows and a zipped file for everyone else.

For Windows, you’ll need to be sure and get Java installed. I recommend you get it here. It’s not as complicated as it looks. Look at the fourth column near the top of the page (“Runtimes”), and select the fourth item with “Java” in the label. That’s the latest Java runtime environment for 64-bit computers, which means just about every Windows computer since Win7. Just follow the instructions on the page. Click the item and scroll down to the “Get Your Ninite” button.

Navigate to your Downloads folder and double-click the Ninite file. It will install Java without troubling you about anything except permission to install. Next, we’ll set up jShisen.

I haven’t tried to Windows installer lately; it didn’t work too well the last time. If it doesn’t work for you, then it requires setting it up manually. Get the zipped file for other operating systems. It’s not that different internally. Unzip the package and you should have a “jShisen” folder with some files inside.

I drop that folder into my “Documents” directory (on the machine itself, not in One Drive). Then, inside the folder I right-click on the “jShisen” file with the cartoon Java character on the icon, identified as a “JAR” file. On the right-click menu, select: Send to > Desktop (create shortcut). Your system should automatically associate the executable with Java.

For Linux, you have to know how to create your own menu entries or desktop icons, since all the various desktop packages have their own methods. Typically you’ll need a command like this:

/usr/bin/java -jar /home/[USER]/jShisen/jShisen.jar

Years ago I created a PNG icon from the Windows icon file. Feel free to download this for your Linux version of the game. (Right-click and “save image as…”)

Open the game and run through the various settings. On Boardsize, I recommend 24×12 or 27×14. You’ll have to decide whether you like having the tiles slide down with “gravity” or stay in place. There are a few other options; explore.

To play, learn how to read the buttons on the menu line. Start a new game. You can right-click on any tile to see where the matching tiles are. Only if two matches are adjacent can you click inside the matrix. Mostly it’s a matter of eating away at the matrix by clicking two matching tiles from the outside. The line between them must take no more than two corners.

You’ll learn how it works. Unless you have some odd talent for it, you’ll be surprised at what will and won’t work in trying to get matches to disappear.

Here’s the point for faith: You must take what comes. Trying to build a strategy won’t do much good. Maybe you’ll notice that cutting a line up, down or across will increase your opportunities for finding matches, until it doesn’t. There are things you need to watch out for — like when two types of tile are lumped together in an diagonal square. It’s not possible to match either pair by themselves. You must remove one using an outside match.

Otherwise, the whole point of the game is just eating away at what can be matched as is. The game teaches you the virtue of opportunism. Believe it or not, that’s a biblical moral value — take what God grants and make the most of it.