@Stiv I was kind of shocked for 1 second when I saw the title of your puzzle. My puzzle for tomorrow is using lyrics as well (be it in a completely different way).
To be honest, I've been very impressed we haven't yet had an incident where someone else has gone, "Oh no! This is what I was planning to do!" It's surely inevitable in some capacity, just hopefully nothing too crucial for anyone!
it does seem like the algorithm dislikes lukas for some reason... my day 3 got hnq'd with 10 votes and lukas's puzzles are not being taken up with 14 and 17 votes
my hypothesis is that it becomes easier to get into hnq once you've gotten a bunch of posts hnq'd already
I really like the new Stack Exchange home page, where certain questions from the Stack Exchange Network are presented, along with a hotness rating that is described as "arbitrary" in its tooltip. Such questions also appear randomly on the sidebar on sites across the network, under the heading "Ho...
Looking at that formula, it seems like a good way to increase your chances for HNQ is to make an easy puzzle that's nice to look at. If open-ended was still on-topic, it would be an extra bonus.
I debated over whether or not to go with this one or not, but I did like a couple of the clues quite a bit, and like you said, some level of thematic duplication is unavoidable.
@JeremyDover Haha! Yes, I did have to admit, as soon as I saw there were twelve clues in this puzzle my first thought was: "Oh. Does this give me an unfair advantage??" Then my second was: "CRYPTIC CRYPTIC CRYPTIC CRYPTIC!"
Still wondering how I completely overlooked the word 'set' in #6 until I'd click 'Post'...
Average view count for advent calendar puzzles between 12/01-12/06: 523. Average view count for other puzzles within same time frame: 375. Fore vote score its 13 to 6
@LukasRotter Argh, balanced ternary! I should so have thought of that from 'unbalanced' alone... (facepalm) It formed the basis of a puzzle of Jeremy's that I got most of the way through last winter (@JeremyDover I still think about it from time to time and will eventually get the breakthrough I need to finish it off, I'm sure!)
@LukasRotter Nice stat - people are noticing it :)
I saw it's not just a page views number, because, if I press F5 several times, it won't increase the number of views.
They could store my IP address in a table, but wouldn't that make it slow? They would need to query a database one more time for each request.
Oh god. I was searching for the puzzle Stiv was talking about and apparently they changed the UI for questions on profiles as well. I can't handle it, I'm too used to the old one :)
@LukasRotter If you're really interested, here's a link. It was one of my first puzzles here. It borrowed heavily from Stiv's Captain Clumsy, and while it had some good elements (Ice Station Frazier-Heine is still a favorite of mine), it's kinda of a mess. I like to think I've gotten better.
@Stiv regarding number 6, I was pleased to be able to use set in that context, since while it could be fodder, it could also be a neutral "just sitting next to" word as well. That was my favorite clue in the puzzle, though.
Hey LukasRotter , just want to send a personal "thank you" for your efforts on the advent puzzle series. I had really been slowing down on puzzle creation, and this was a prod to get me back in. Looking forward to the monthly challenges too.
LukasRotter: my next puzzle is tested and ready to go at a day's notice. I don't think I have any blackout days, so just ping me to let me know if you need it.
If I haven't missed anything, the only tools used (except caesar shift, obviously) in the Sgt. Sequence puzzle were: Num <-> periodic table, middle letters (irrelevant for this, I assume), sequence completion (which I don't see a use for). Yet the puzzle doesn't have a knowledge tag and Tellurium is just that :)
Is has electrons per shell 2, 8, 18, 18, 6, but the letter distribution doesn't seem promising
I saw it's not just a page views number, because, if I press F5 several times, it won't increase the number of views.
They could store my IP address in a table, but wouldn't that make it slow? They would need to query a database one more time for each request.
