The Sphinx's Lair

Two-Button Idle Game is a puzzle that was made for but not included in the Galactic Puzzle Hunt, and can be found here. It was mentioned in the wrap-up (Caution: Spoilers!), but no solution was provided. I've tried to solve it but have failed. Can you help to solve it? Note: the solution w...

Deusovi

4:57 AM

Should I make my answer on that question ^ a community wiki?

(@boboquack)

boboquack

@Deusovi Probably

In the interests of fairness

Just wondering, if that puzzle was used instead of Thunk, would they have placed it as 5-1?

Deusovi

Not sure! It probably would've been a late puzzle - puzzle order didn't matter for any of the metas, though

boboquack

(I mean, looking at the answer, it doesn't seem anywhere near as hard as Drive or Unaligned)

Deusovi

Finding the actual solution involves a lot of programming.

Unaligned wasn't actually that hard.

boboquack

@Deusovi Hmm... Gurer'f bayl gjryir npurvirzragf. Fheryl gjryir snpgbevny be sbhe-gjb-avar-mreb-mreb-bar-fvk-mreb-mreb vfa'g gbb zhpu gb onfu guebhtu jvgu n pbzchgre, naq vg jbhyqa'g or gung uneq.

Deusovi

5:06 AM

Jryy, pbafvqrevat lbh unir gb purpx rnpu beqre sbe "Ratyvfu-cuenfr-arff", naq gura svther bhg RKNPGYL ubj znal gvpxf gurl gnxr...

boboquack

Oh, yeah, I suppose.

Deusovi

Yeah, there aren't as many possibilities as your first estimate, but that's still a lot to search through without programming

Why are you removing so much?

boboquack

For the CCCC, I find the '--' suspicious

Deusovi

Well, it's how you're supposed to typeset dashes. I agree though, potentially important

boboquack

@Deusovi Really? Didn't know that.

Deusovi

5:12 AM

@boboquack "Unlike using Dijkstra's" - ???

boboquack

Dijkstra's algorithm

Dijkstra's algorithm is an algorithm for finding the shortest paths between nodes in a graph, which may represent, for example, road networks. It was conceived by computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra in 1956 and published three years later. The algorithm exists in many variants; Dijkstra's original variant found the shortest path between two nodes, but a more common variant fixes a single node as the "source" node and finds shortest paths from the source to all other nodes in the graph, producing a shortest-path tree. For a given source node in the graph, the algorithm finds the shortest path...

Deusovi

How is that relevant though?

Also, could you please stop removing your messages?

boboquack

@Deusovi Ok.

@Deusovi The programmy way to do it would to be to find 'the shortest path through the puzzle' (or at least that's the way I've been taught to program things like that)

Deusovi

I don't see how you'd represent that as a graph, though.

boboquack

@Deusovi I haven't done something exactly of this type, but I've got a friend who does IOI level informatics, and they were talking about something similar in which they used the algorithm. I think it's something about running two instances of the algorithm in parallel.

Deusovi

5:17 AM

"Something similar"? I honestly don't see how this has anything to do with graphs - at least, finding the optimal solution

I suppose you could make a graph with every state in it, but that'd be equivalent to just going through them manually - or worse, if you weren't clever about it

boboquack

5:54 AM

@Deusovi I'll try to follow up on that with them.

Wow! 3 bounties in an hour!

I know this may sound like a silly question, but how can you 'select an area by dragging across the lower chart' when viewing rep as a graph? Mine doesn't seem to work.

Ankoganit

Works fine for me

boboquack

Do you click on the blue section and drag?

Ankoganit

Click on any part of the lower graph and drag

boboquack

drag where?

Ankoganit

Basically select the part you want to zoom into

(Also, rep graphs are public anyway, so I don't think you need to do all that paint stuff :P)

boboquack

6:08 AM

@Ankoganit They don't contain answer downvoting info :P

Ankoganit

Oh okay

btw, what happened to the FTC?

Deusovi

We've all been too lazy to start it

Ankoganit

oh no

that's bad

Deusovi

(I'm planning a puzzle for it, and I've currently hit a roadblock - I need as much time as I can to think up something :P )

but yeah, feel free to go ahead and start it

I guess the bot died?

Ankoganit

say, if someone starts it today, what'd be the last date?

boboquack

6:12 AM

Let's put an alternative spin on it then... We've all been holding off so that we can have extra puzzle-creation time

Deusovi

two weeks from today

boboquack

Oh, what Deus said

@Ankoganit 25 April

Ankoganit

okay

Deusovi

My current plan involves over 30 metapuzzles.

boboquack

!

Deusovi

6:16 AM

(Haven't decided yet if I'm going to just give the answers out or give cryptic clues to them.)

boboquack

Are you doing a community one again, or is this all you?

Deusovi

All me. It's gonna be similar to Chess Fortnight.

(I might do another community one sometime if people are interested! I'm even thinking about making it a pure meta (one that doesn't have any "extra" information besides the answers).)

boboquack

@Deusovi I'm interested, but my quality of puzzle-writing is very up and down

Deusovi

The issue is that to have a good meta, I'm gonna have to plan out all the answers first, and it won't be doable for more or less than the specific number of answers I have

(the previous one, I'm not entirely happy with - I wanted to make it possible to extend to any reasonable length, but that meant I had to drop some constraints)

boboquack

Oh no! Now I have to almost double my rep to get to the next privilege level :P

Rubio

7:09 AM

Good lord.

Dargloc. Bounty. Reason: "This question has not received enough attention."

There aren't many puzzles on here that have had as much attention paid to them as that one :)

61 edits. 24 hints.

boboquack

Yeah

Not enough THE-PUZZLE-IS-SOLVED! attention, perhaps

Sp3000

8:20 AM

@Deusovi I wouldn't mind joining a community one fyi :) (the one I'm working on is kinda... half done and at a standstill)

humn

8:52 AM

From curious idling, boboquack, do you pronounce boboquack? If so, how? Like my Irish great grandfather, @Bob O Doquack (actually O Donnell)? (Also, my capitalizing Boboquack the other day was from sloppy editing.) Asks (and sez) - @h'wmn

boboquack

@humn (b) (long o) (b) (long o) (quack as in the duck sound)

humn

Thanks. Looking forward to the TV special on the story behind the name some day. (goodnight for today, though, now I can rest easy)

Sphinx

0

Q: The total cost of salaries in a company

It's the end of the first trimester of 2017. This means it's the end of the 2016 fiscal year (at least in my country it is). It's time to draw the line. So the CEO did his calculations and said we did a good job so we should get a bonus. yupeee... But there is a catch. Or 2. The CEO values more ...

logical-deduction

0

Q: Where to put 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8?

In the picture below? Once each i guess. I think it's a trick and is not necessarily something that adds up to 9 on the left column. Idk. Haha. Any hints please?

mathematics

M Oehm

10:20 AM

:36628869: Shouldn't the enumeration be (9) rather than (5)?

boboquack

@MOehm Why'd you add the second colon? Reply syntax is :#previous_id your_message

M Oehm

Because That's what I do when I use the @ syntax. I now see that I've botched it.

@GarethMcCaughan Shouldn't the enumeration be (9) rather than (5)?

Oh, I can't even delete my previous message,probably because the grace period has expired. Sorry about the mess.

Ankoganit

Darn this meta bot is super slow

It's been half an year

*hour

@Deusovi Do remember to add the featured tag and delete paramesis' answer :)

boboquack

@Ankoganit Paremesis' answer?

Ankoganit

this

Gareth McCaughan

10:31 AM

@MOehm wait, I typed 5? I absolutely did mean 9, and I have literally no idea how that happened. I remember counting the letters and everything. Yow!

Sorry.

boboquack

@Ankoganit Ah

Gareth McCaughan

Of course it's much too late to edit.

boboquack

@JonEricson If you're actually here can you feature this and delete this? Thanks!

Gareth McCaughan

I'll pin the following correction notice and remove it once MOehm has posted the solution I take it he has:

My CCCC's enumeration was meant to be (9), not (5). Apologies for the typo.

M Oehm

@GarethMcCaughan No problem. Thanks for confirming the 9 letters. I'll solve then: FIRMAMENT = FIR + M (1,000; many) + AMENT (botanical name for catkin)

boboquack

10:35 AM

@GarethMcCaughan Looking at the OEIS too much?

Ankoganit

O my

that's impressive @MOehm

Gareth McCaughan

@boboquack Ho ho. No, I think it's just that "five" and "nine" sound kinda similar and my brain is an idiot.

2

@MOehm's solution is of course correct.

M Oehm

@Ankoganit All the things I tried were too long for 5 letters. And AMENT, onceI had it, was too good not to use.:)

@GarethMcCaughan Not only yours. I've got a similar thing where I mix up 2 and 4, and they sound and look quite different.

CCCC: Loudspeaker improves display for festival (9)

Puzzling Meta

10:55 AM

2

Q: Fortnightly Topic Challenge #30: Metapuzzles

This is the thirtieth installment of the Fortnightly Topic Challenge described here, with topics suggested and voted on here. This fortnight's topic is metapuzzles (suggested by paramesis), and will span from the the 11th of April to the 25th of April. During this period, we will compile the list...

discussion topic-challenge

Jan Ivan

q: metapuzzle is like rabbit hole? That one puzzle leads to another?

M Oehm

It's more that several puzzles lead to an overall answer, which often is not obvious at first.

Gareth McCaughan

11:58 AM

@MOehm Do you mix 2 and 4 up less often in English than in German? (Or more often?) I don't have a convincing candidate explanation or anything, I'm just curious. I suppose ZWEI and VIER have the same vowels (though not the same vowel sounds) and the same letter-counts so maybe they look misleadingly similar. But then I'd expect either VIER and DREI or ZWEI and DREI to be worse. Meh, brains.

M Oehm

12:13 PM

Good question. I do most arithmetic mentally in German, and only say the final result in English. but I'm not sure that it is a language thing. It may be my mental representations of these digits. (I often mix them up when they are only a part of the number, so forexampleI think about 48 and actually use 28.) I seem to mix up words and names more often when they have the same number of letters, too, but that's not really based on hard evidence, just a feeling.

Anyway, the vowel sounds in ZWEI and VIER are quite distinct; the sounds are like the vowels in try and fear. The vowels in ZWEI and DREI are the same and many people use ZWO instead of ZWEI to avoid mix-ups, especially when spelling out longer numbers.

Gareth McCaughan

Yes, I know the vowel sounds are very different (and said so). That's why I thought it might be a matter of looks -- but ZWEI/DREI beats ZWEI/VIER on similar looks as well as similar sounds.

(I guess you're familiar with the old joke: What did Freud say comes between fear and sex? Answer: Funf. Of course it only works when spoken rather than written down.)

M Oehm

12:34 PM

Yes, you said so. To me, EI and IE even look very different. I'm also a very visual person (despite being quite short-sighted), so the looks could play a role in the mix-up. Probably better not to think too much about it.

I didn't know the Freud joke. The fact that six and sex sound alike in German is the basis of a lot of jokes, most of them juvenile arithmetic problems. And I'd rather not know what Freud has to say about mixing up four and two ...

n_palum

Freudian stuff is weird...

Sphinx

1:22 PM

0

Q: Solve my picture riddle! Cowards need not apply!

Something connects these images: What is it and what are the connections?

riddle visual

n_palum

@Sphinx What makes this a visual riddle and not a rebus?

Rubio

1:39 PM

the visual tag, obviously. ;)

n_palum

Alright sassafras

Rebus' are visual no?

Rubio

2:01 PM

Well yeah. I mean, it is possible for this to be a pictorial version of a "What do these have in common - Day, horn, thumb, apple, around the gills" style puzzle, right? That would be visual, but not a rebus

n_palum

Ooo

Sphinx

2:21 PM

0

Q: Who is missing here?

It seems my last few puzzles have all been far too easy and quickly solved. Let's see how long this one stands against the genius of the combined PSE community. $$[56\;68\;76\;80\;80\;76\;68\;56]^2$$ $$[26\;38\;52\;52\;52\;52\;38\;26]^2$$ $$[36\;58\;58\;58\;58\;58\;58\;36]^2$$ $$[168\;180\...

word enigmatic-puzzle

Jon Ericson

3:05 PM

@boboquack Done and done.

Rubio

3:29 PM

@Rubio @n_palum yah, looks like that's exactly what it was :)

n_palum

@Rubio I didn't doubt you ;)

Deusovi

3:56 PM

@Ankoganit Apparently Jon got there before me.

(Thanks, @Jon!)

Sphinx

6:36 PM

0

Q: Lost my Password! Please help!

I was working on this new puzzle for quite some time now. Unfortunately, I locked it and now I don't remember the password... :( Here's a snapshot. I think I might have left some clues for cracking it. But I am lost.. Transcript of file name WFBEBOCLECHKLBPM Can you help me out?

enigmatic-puzzle knowledge

n_palum

7:26 PM

@Sphinx @Rubio out here tryna be a sassafras King today

Rubio

Why so serious?

;)

Sphinx

0

Q: Impossible 100 Balls Game

You are trying to make an impossible game where there are $100$ balls numbered from $1$ to $100$ and ordered in the worst case and put next to each other. The player is supposed to order the balls from $1$ to $100$ with the simple rule you are going to assign: The player can switch two balls ...

strategy optimization

n_palum

Oh now we're making Jokes are we?

;)

n_palum

7:43 PM

Oh hey @MOehm

Does your CC require any knowledge btw?

boboquack

10:44 PM

@JonEricson Thanks!

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