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12:00 AM
@You "officially", it's only one (/smaɪl/), but I know what you mean by two there (/'smajəl/)
I always have trouble with the idea of words like smile and choir (et al.) being "one syllable"
I'm in the ELU chatroom so I figured I'd ask there to see if that phenomenon has a name (I'm sure it does)
 
(been thinking of a chat room puzzle)
Puzzle: In the sandbox chat room, try and get the robots into a feedback loop.
 
(no known solutions but can get about 3 or 4 echoes from one command)
 
cellular automata, but with table flips
 
12:15 AM
you can get the 9000 bot to trigger the chemo bot
 
that is something that honestly provides me with endless fascination, the idea of setting into motion a sort of infinite rube goldberg machine of program outputs feeding other program inputs
 
yeah! and it alllmost works
but one bot sees everything but can't constructs commands for the other bot
the other bot can construct commands for the first, but doesn't see everything
and, unfortunately, neither bot sees its own output
 
if I only knew how to create a bot...
 
think we already agreed that this room could use a bot or two
(i don't know anything about making them)
 
the closest I ever came to creating a bot of any kind was a twitter account that tweeted randomly-generated (valid) isbns from my website
 
12:19 AM
hee heeehee, from someone who's made an isbn bar code writer
 
nice!
 
using (La)TeX, worked fine
 
yeah back when I worked at a bookstore, I was like "isbns are neat, let me figure out how they work" and I did and wrote a perl script to generate valid ones, and then check against a database to see whether they existed
 
for the nerdly: you talking 10-digit or 13-digit?
 
fun fact: the ISBN 123456789X is assigned to (according to some databases) a book called "Dude Shirt" abebooks.com/9781234567897/Dude-Shirt-Dorothy-Davis-123456789X/…
10
I was too lazy to change my code to do isbn13
 
12:21 AM
10 was complete, 13 is a hack -- personal opinion
ah hah to 123456789X !
(didn't catch on right away)
 
probably got than isbn by accident and doesn't deserve to be stalked for it
 
yeah it was easy to check the database-checker because nnnnnnnnnn validates
 
see!? you just came up with another great puzzle idea!
pretty esoteric, though
 
(in my research on isbns, I also took the chance to figure out how valid cc #s are made, but never went too far with that)
 
12:25 AM
cc=? vvvv thanks
 
credit card
 
your music pieces drove me to YouTube
(now reviewing which... back in a sec)
 
oh man! the residents!
 
that one reminds me a little of your "seasick"
 
oh ha! I can kind of see that
 
12:31 AM
if you know/lke the residents, here's a funny cover
 
I won't pretend to know the residents all that well, but I always respected that kind of dedicated 'performance' art
 
You asking how f" gets rep fast when ghotiy has 100+ upvotes
it's almost at the top-5 answers voted now
 
(laughing silently)
also makes me realize how many visitors can vote but rarely do
 
12:49 AM
a good part of these votes probably came from some other site through HNQ
the bad part is hat sometimes some mediocre answers get a lot of upvotes for no real reason
the good part is now we have given ghotiy the number of upvotes it deserves
 
woohoo, I'm up to 5 on the scrambled library
six! six unscrambled books! ah ah ah
 
book 7 is hitchhiker's guide
 
HA! I was about to check that one, because of the word that looks like "galaxy"
ty
do you mind if I add it into my answer?
 
no, that's what I said it here for anyway
 
OK, thank you, you've been credited :)
 
1:07 AM
5: Harry Potter?
I'm not actually counting the letters, just so you know :P
I see you got it too :)
accepted latency somewhere around 10ms
 
haha yeah
woohoo! my first answer in what feels like ages
 
 
2 hours later…
3:03 AM
Funny - I am pretty sure I knew the answer to a riddle I saw on my phone, earlier, but didn't feel like trying to type everything up - surprised it' s still available.
I could just be wrong, though.
 
3:58 AM
q_a: i completely agree with you on that one "lateral thinking" puzzle that wasn't actually lateral thinking. tags shouldn't be part of a puzzle
 
yeah think there's been a meta on that, tags should not be part of puzzles as they are tools for search
 
i think it was over the same tag, too - someone else used lateral-thinking in a literal way
 
4:37 AM
I was guilty of abusing the lateral-thinking tag here: puzzling.stackexchange.com/q/25551
q_a called me out on it (puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/25551/…), and rightly so
 
wow, that puzzle is hard
you could give me the answer as a hint and I wouldn't solve it
 
f''
at least it's not this one, where they added the tag "densa" just to make the tags spell "hard": puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/31021
 
yeah, was pretty sure I would need to give hints. But Ivan smashed it.
 
KoA
4:54 AM
I skimmed over chat from today so I'm not sure if it's already been answered by the "2-syllable" nature of 'smile' is called a diphthong, but it is only considered to be one syllable
*but the
 
f''
that's not exactly it
plenty of words with diphthongs are totally uncontroversial as one syllable
the problem is the 'l' at the end (this also happens with 'r')
 
KoA
Hmm, I have never heard anyone say "smai-ell" unless they're singing choral music
(speaking of choral music, I've got a rehearsal I gotta run to, laters ✌🏼️)
 
5:16 AM
oh god, that 'densa' thing... we never got the solution to that first "densa lowQ question"
0
Q: Densa LowQ question 1

Jon Mark PerryHopefully this will form the first question of a sequence of questions from $\mathtt{Densa^{TM}}$ Here goes, which is the odd one out? And this question DOES have an answer!

that one
 
which means that a tag exists for the sole purpose of a closed question... shouldn't it just be deleted?
 
yeah, for some reason I thought I had edited it out earlier
 
so does the tag get auto-cleaned up if it's not attached to any questions?
 
yeah - I think the cleanup script (program? thing?) runs daily
 
 
1 hour later…
f''
6:22 AM
weird... the chemobot replies to the link "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/!!wiki/wiki " with the same link back
 
6:44 AM
gogogo
0
Q: Logically linked numbers

Jonathan AllanThe left and right numbers are linked. What should the last number on the right be, and why? \begin{align} 135759&: 1 \\ 151364&: 4 \\ 255075&: 9 \\ 279422&: 36 \\ 292620&: 91 \\ 348777&: 135 \\ 398067&: 147 \\ 417894&: 265 \\ 459431&: 279 \\ 478926&: 307 \\ 609941&: 363 \\ 689245&: 435 \\ 814576&...

shameless self-promotion ^^
 
7:01 AM
too much math for me ._.
 
hmm I didn't tag it math
no complex math involved I think
 
My last math puzzle is in limbo now that someone posted the answer in the comments
 
oh yeah juice?
 
Now I don't know if I should self-answer to create a proper answer, or what
 
7:04 AM
inb4 someone interpolates a polynomial in the link puzzle
 
Up way too late doing something before bed, but thought I'd say hi, and night, to you guys in here. :)
 
hihi, gn :)
 
night!
 
yeah polynomial for both left AND right?
be quite complex I imagine
 
(polypolynomial) gone
 
7:07 AM
just use the left as values of x and right as values of p(x)
 
hehe and then the classic "Hint: it's not a polynomial" :p
 
or train a neural network with those values and see what it spits out for the last one
 
wont give the why :)
"cos the black box said so"
 
7:27 AM
darn, can't post the polynomial answer now
 
hehe
saved you the effort
 
maybe the downvoter thinks the puzzle is lacking a starting point, but without knowing the answer, I really can't tell
 
well the starting point is left and right are logically linked
dunno what else to do for that :)
the tags are there too
and there are twelve pairs already, what more do they want? :p
maybe they just think it's "not useful" :)
and I guess I have to agree hehe
 
what im trying is sticking operations between each digit on the left side to equal the right side. so far too much math for me lol
 
made chembot swear
@f'' looks like FOX ignores chembot
 
f''
7:41 AM
fox needs the command at the very front of the line
 
f''
chemobot's only command that can put things in the front is doubleflip, but there's no way to make it start with >>
 
start of message or just start of any line?
 
f''
the message
 
:(
can you make the message start with a link that has text that starts with >> though? like >>this
 
f''
7:48 AM
no, fox bot won't recognize that
 
f''
8:06 AM
two gold badges from ghotiy
 
8:22 AM
"common phrase" egg timer?
I would have thought it would be a saying, a greeting or something, but "egg timer"? heh
 
KoA
8:39 AM
damn that rehearsal was exhausting
 
relax with a puzzle
 
KoA
hahaha maybe I'll keep working on mine in a bit
 
9:08 AM
@ffao downvote reversed hmm
...maybe by SE script from a multi downvoter
 
9:58 AM
Spam, flag please!
Same again right next to that one from a new (but identical) account.
 
@doppelgreener Thanks for letting us know. :)
I have downvoted it.. It will soon be deleted
 
10:16 AM
And they're gone! Hooray! Thanks everyone.
 
10:58 AM
Almost a puzzle:
7
Q: Determinant of Matrix with uncomputable values.

Benjamin R Calculate the determinant of the matrix $$ \begin{pmatrix} 10^{10} & 10^{10^{10}} & 11^{11^{11}} & 1 & 0 \\ 2^{2^2} & 3^{3^3} & 7^{7^7} & 0 & 1 \\ 11 & 17 & 12 & 2 & 7 \\ 2 & 3 & 5 & 1 & 1 \\ 9 & 14 & 7 & 1 & 6 \\ \end{pmatrix} $$ My wonderful Russian Professor put this one up ...

 
hahaha..
 
Thing is what is a Russian professor doing writing matrices on the board, shouldn't they be telling you how to conjugate verbs and such? :p
 
KoA
11:38 AM
pfffsch, 10 billion digits is totally computable! -grabs pen and paper-
 
yeah, just get a REALLY long abacus
2
 
KoA
hahaha I love that
 
man, solving a puzzle at like 9:30PM EST is not a way to rep farm at all
 
Worse is 2am =D
 
yeah
basically at US night time
 
KoA
11:54 AM
If I want rep I need to start solving puzzles at like 4am AEST lol
 
Sigh @ the damned people whining because a detail of this puzzle didn't match what they wanted it to match....
"I appear if things are broken"
 
@Khale_Kitha what are people whining about?
 
sorry, had to walk away for a sec for something
The answer to the puzzle was a 404 error page, and they're all up in arms, because one of the clues refers to something that you only see on a 404 error page when it's run in IIS.
 
hold on
 
KoA
I'm not annoyed at that, but it wasn't a great puzzle regardless imo
 
12:02 PM
you mean someone made a riddle where every clue isn't literally applicable in every conceivable scenario, real or imagined?
 
Heh - every single one of the clues didn't work in all scenarios, but they only complained about that one - and it was a hint, not even a clue lol
 
yeah no I'm just being jokey
 
No, I know
 
It's really hard to make a puzzle about computer and its languages. Many things apply to many things.
 
Yeah
 
KoA
12:05 PM
I'm most confused about the "clueless" clue - I have never in my life heard someone using 404 as slang for 'clueless'
 
I do hope Blender was able to do what I want it to do, now that it's working, q_a. It seems to have far less features than Maya.
I hadn't either, KoA - I found it with a cross-reference of 404 and clueless.
 
www.internetslang.com/404-meaning-definition.asp
 
but that's why I put the link to the wiki page that talked about it being used in the UK
 
KoA
Just because a lexicographer says it's slang doesn't mean it is ;)
I mean, it might have been back in '08
 
:D
 
KoA
12:07 PM
but it definitely isn't now
 
Yeah, well what slang lasts forever =D
 
KoA
lmao will be everlasting
 
@KoA until the "a" in that slang lasts.
 
@Khale_Kitha I don't know anything about either Blender or Maya, just that it seems like Blender is the thing that people use now?
 
shrug Blender's just free
 
12:08 PM
@Khale_Kitha But it's good that it's working, in any case.
Ah! That's what it is.
 
Stupid Cisco VPN Software..
Run it, and it pops up with a dropdown, already having picked where I want to go, and a Connect button.
In the corner is a tiny gear, and an (i)
Where does pressing Enter go?
.....the (i) --- sigh at UX
 
Someone finally asked about my puzzle, after 6 days - hah
 
KoA
3
Q: A long winding road

SeravielStart at the mountain of kings Then go down the country to face the oldest rivals. Go on down through the bizarre, And you'll find the place that cuts. Go south to find birds, Then leave to see those who fought metal in the end. Go North, passing the one above To end where the lightning strikes. ...

usernames of gibberish answers are very sus
 
good answers on that one
 
12:17 PM
Omg, at the answers to questions, this morning...
"A flagging I will go. A flagging I will go. Hi ho, the deereo, a flagging I will go."
Btw can someone explain this one to me?
10
Q: Why do these apples have no nutritional value?

PyRulez These apples have no nutritional value. Why?

I get that the answer makes perfect sense to some people - but I just don't understand what's going on, here.
 
I liked that one. It's a bit silly but I like it
 
What does that mean?
 
No idea - I don't understand what the answer is even trying to say
I've never heard of "handedness of molecules"
 
How to make a mirror image of a image?
(I am not expecting an answer that asks me to use a mirror)
 
ok so
certain molecules, uh, spin in a certain direction
that's their "handedness"
and some molecules, if they spin in the other direction, work totally differently (or, often, become 'inert' (I'm using the wrong chemistry words here, almost definitely))
 
12:24 PM
laevorotatory and dextrorotatory, iirc
 
no
not quite, q_a
it's not necessarily spin - it's nothing to do with movement
 
ok
sorry yeah don't listen to me on this
 
yeah have you heard of left-handed vs right-handed screws?
you can't rotate one to get to the other, even though one is just the other flipped
same with these shells:
 
enantiomers?
 
they're the same "thing", but in different orientations: one goes clockwise, the other goes counterclockwise
 
12:30 PM
no no
 
hm? i'm talking about chirality
 
there is the other word for it.
yeah
diastereomers
 
anyway, turns out in chemistry it can make a HUGE difference whether a certain molecule is "right handed" or "left handed" - which way it's oriented
 
yeah
 
i'm not an expert by any means, but that's the general idea
 
12:31 PM
different dipole moments and therefore different reactivity
 
....so much wrong with that puzzle...
 
the apple one?
 
yes.
 
@manshu: huh, really? they have different dipole moments? how does that work - wouldn't they be independent of orientation?
 
I like the apple one.
 
12:34 PM
yeah, the apple puzzle is fine
 
Shrug I just think it forces too many assumptions.
 
like what?
 
1. That reversing an image of something would change it's molecular structure.
2. That reversing the handedness would make it non-nutritional (only happening in a few works of fiction, from what I can see)
 
well i think the idea wasn't that timage was flipped, it was that the 'apples' were flipped
and generally something not being digestible means it can't be nutritious
 
KoA
12
Q: Rectangle in a Triangle

Mike EarnestThere is a rectangle inside a triangle, with one of the rectangle's sides up against one of the triangle's sides, and the other two corners touching the triangle's other two sides. Prove that the area of the rectangle is at most $1/2$ the area of the triangle. In other words, prove that the...

How do we feel about this question?
 
12:37 PM
not a fan of if
*it
 
one acid in something doesn't mean that the whole is not, though
 
KoA
It seems to be well received but to me it just looks like a purely mathematical question
 
And yeah - that question is NOT a puzzle in any way, shape, or form.
 
yeah, a lot of pure mathematical questions get upvoted here
there needs to be some insight necessary, otherwise it's just math and not a puzzle
 
KoA
Can we get a "migrate to Mathematics.SE" option?
 
12:38 PM
i VTCed, which is the best we can do for now
 
KoA
I feel like if the solution requires nothing but mathematics, it doesn't really belong on this site
 
right
i've mentioned this before, but the mutilated chessboard and its variants are my goto examples of good math puzzles
 
KoA
I can't find them right now but there are a few questions that are worded like puzzles but arent, and would be a much better fit for Math.SE
the ones about "is this theorem true?"
 
yeah that was the one that came up for discussion yesterday because of that dude whose puzzles were deleted for plagiarism
 
the Professor Halfbrain ones?
 
KoA
12:43 PM
Yea I think so
 
iirc some of them were good fits for Puzzling, some weren't
 
he's still trying to get emrakul's attention in the main chat, saying that the problem is "originality"
 
KoA
I mean they're all very good questions just not quite good puzzles
 
still?
heh yeah
 
The problem is that it seems that certain posters can post "Bing Tiddle Tiddle Bong" on this site, and it'll be upvoted, which makes it hard to enforce rules.
And I've noticed that if you flag something that has upvotes your flag WILL get declined.
 
KoA
12:46 PM
We have to comment and VTC (or vote to migrate to Math.SE if we get that option)
 
We still have no migration options.
 
KoA
It isn't fair to new users who see these other maths questions and then don't understand why they can't post theirs
 
Yeah
 
agreed
 
I've literally never seen a response of any kind to my flags
I don't even know how or where to look for a response
 
12:47 PM
You aren't checking then :P
hehe
 
you can check your flag responses from your userpage
 
KoA
My flags have all been marked helpful so far I think but I haven't done many on this site yet
 
you'll see a little flag icon on the right with "## accepted flags" or something similar
 
yeah, "helpful flags"
 
12:48 PM
all my flags have been helpful.
 
I need to go downvote an answer
 
i've had several disputed and denied
 
...so I can have 3333 rep
:P
 
found one, kk - newest answer to "puzzles having answers hidden in the question"
it's not a good riddle. at all.
 
haha
 
12:50 PM
i've had 11 declined/disputed flags
 
Yeah, see - I don't downvote nonsense like that
I flag it as Not an Answer
 
that's not nonsense though - it's just a shitty riddle
and apparently NAA flags should only be used when there's no attempt at answering
 
Huh?
The question asks for examples of a type of riddle.
And this guy answers that the answer to the riddle (there's not one) is to go north and find yourself.
Not an answer, in the slightest. Just a troll.
 
huh? no he MADE a riddle
that's part of the riddle
the point is that the riddle says "the answer is easy" in it so the answer is the word "easy"
 
Maybe we're looking at different puzzles...
This one is an open-ended puzzle-creation question.
 
12:54 PM
no, same one
 
There's no riddle involved - he's asking for ideas, as can be seen by all of the answers.
 
the answer posts a riddle: "the answer is easy, go north and find yourself..."
and then posts the answer under it
 
OK so unsurprisingly, my "offensive"/"rude or unhelpful" flags are the ones that tend to get declined
but part of that is because the person reviewing the flag is the person who was flagged lol
 
heh, really?
 
KoA
how does that happen? Shouldn't the system not let the reviewer review themselves?
 
12:55 PM
probably
 
well, maybe I'm wrong about that
but we have three people
 
KoA
just a small conflict of interest y'know
 
and ... they tend to stick together
 
hopefully we'll get new mods soon - most of our mods don't really seem to care about the site tbh
emrakul is the only one i see at all, and even him i only see very rarely
 
that triangle puzzle keeps getting answers
true
 
12:57 PM
yeah, a lot of bad puzzles (or even nonpuzzles) get HNQed
 
I know from StackOverflow that offensive flags are taken very seriously since they carry a serious weight on the person flagged if approved
 
11
A: Techniques to Solve this Sudoku Puzzle

Kevin CruijssenI'll just state some sudoku solving strategies in general, so not for the sudoku posted by you in particular. (NOTE: You probably know the first few, but I just state all of them for completeness.) 1. Naked Single Probably the easiest one that everyone knows: When there is only one candidate av...

i flagged this as not an answer (since it doesn't even try to answer the question)
it was declined
 
Yeah, some of the flag declines are pure nonsense
 
still not sure why - it would be a great answer to "what are some sudoku strategies" but not "what to do with this specific sudoku"
 
Like the one that f" did, yesterday (I think on the same puzzle)
Declined - then minutes later DELETED by the same mods who declined the "not an answer" flag
 
12:59 PM
hm?
 
@Deusovi that's a loooooong answer
 
yeah, that happens to me too
@q_a: yeah, and i think it's a great answer! just... not to that question
 
same - and it's not like there's anyone who can delete answers
 

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