Someone emailed me asking for help with the Battleships game. I thought I might as well post the text of my reply here.

I presume it works and you’ve got the window up with the spreadsheet-a-like in it – i.e. it looks like the picture on the website. The idea is to sink the battleship(s) by getting the correct formulae.

(1)     select File/Load Exercise and load in DemoGame.txt ; it should now display three numbers and a battleship (in grey)

(2)     click on any part of the battleship. At the bottom there should be a prompt ; this is ‘the formula it wants you to put in’ e.g. C3 is “the value in A2 multiplied by 2’

(3)     if you type in a wrong formula (e.g. =1) then it makes a ‘plop’ sound and nothing happens

(4)     if you type in a correct formula (e.g. =2*A2 or =A2*2) then it makes a ‘klaxon’ sound and a red blob appears.

The text file contains a lot of comments. The lines that matter are those that look like

A2:34

This is a constant value and goes into cell A2, and

C3:The value in A2 multiplied by two|=a2*2|=2*a

This is a ‘question’ or battleship part and goes into C3. It is split up by the vertical bar (|). The first part is the question text, and the following parts (one or more parts) are possible answers. There are two here because either of the answers “=a2*2” or “=2*a2” are correct.