In theory "Google" in that example could be "Yahoo" or some other web site. But in practice, 2tone players mooooostly choose Google for this.
2Tone uses an ooooold version of OpenID. In about a month, Google will stop supporting. I think. I'm kind of scratching my head as I read the explanations. But I think 2Tone's going to stop working with Google accounts.
Oh man. I use my Google account for this. I use my domain, lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us, but that just delegates to my Google account.
I guess I could re-work 2tone's login programming to use the latest, greatest flavor of OpenID. That seems like a lot of trouble when lately there's been about one batch of players per month. So... instead I wangled a version of 2Tone that doesn't try to keep track of players. The bad news: it'll let you look at the "meta" puzzle before you have any hope of understanding it, instead of making you wait until you've seen "regular" puzzles; The good news: a system that's gone can no longer break, no matter what Google doesn't feel like maintaining anymore.
I guess in a few weeks, I'll try logging into the game via my Google account. And if that indeed breaks, I'll redirect 2tonegame.org to the no-login version.
Meanwhile: putting together the no-login version was a fun chance for some programming. I'd forgotten how to compute Levenshtein "edit distance" (darned useful for telling players "RESPONNSE looks reeeeally close to a right answer so you should check for typos instead of screaming and starting over"), and it was good to de-rust that part of my brain.
