The Sphinx's Lair

Alenanno

12:07 AM

@Alconja Uhm thanks. I will try adding another key clue to see if that's enough to force a single solution.

Rand al'Thor

Heh, someone downvoted my valentine code answer.

Doesn't look like I'll succeed in doing a Geobits :-P

Jonathan Allan

@Randal'Thor well last seen 1m ago and in The Ninteenth Byte

Rand al'Thor

@JonathanAllan By "doing a Geobits" I meant repeating his success, not finding him! :-)

Last spoke 2 hours ago - I'll try to catch him when he's active.

Jonathan Allan

oh, I read "I'm tempted to go and find Geobits to show him" :/

Rand al'Thor

Hey, are you a PPCGer too?

Jonathan Allan

12:21 AM

Yeah

Rand al'Thor

Seems to be quite a few of our top users who're also active over there.

Rubio

12:33 AM

Out of curiosity, does anyone else find it a little, ... I dunno, martinetish ... to VTC questions whose intent is manifestly clear even if they don't explicitly state it? I've seen a few instances recently where a question was voted to close, or in fact actually closed, when it seems quite apparent what the questioner is looking for. A recent example is MBB's puzzle; the intent, decrypt the cipher, doesn't even bear mentioning. It was closed as "unclear what you're asking" -- but ... is it?

Deusovi

12:50 AM

I occasionally post questions over at PPCG. Not much of a coder myself - thinking of learning a weird esolang or finding some other ridiculous construction method just to get obscurity points, though.

Alconja

1:17 AM

@Rubio I think in that instance people were using "unclear" as a surrogate for the, as yet, non-existent "low quality" close reason. As for not explicitly stating things, that sounds like a bad idea... ;)

Rubio

"I don't get it" + "You didn't state the objective" ≠ a low quality or unclear puzzle. I don't think MBB's presentation of that puzzle is particularly good (and practically speaking needed the hints to solve, but mechanically didn't), but it was in fact a pretty good puzzle, the intent was clear, and other than reducing this uncomfortably close to "I can't define a 'bad puzzle' for you but I know it when I see it", I'm not sure what exactly it is that made that one VTC-worthy.

Deusovi

Alconja, you did have the goal in one of the sub-images (sort of):

Gareth McCaughan

It is a bit weird for a puzzle to be put on hold as "unclear what you're asking" after it has been solved.

Rubio

That's happened twice in the last week.

At least. I suspect I've seen at least 3, but I can't find the 3rd one now

Gareth McCaughan

What was the other one?

Rubio

1:29 AM

2

Q: State of the Union

A topical puzzle for you all. Can you tell me, briefly, which of the following US states is the odd one out, and why? California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Hawaii Illinois Oregon Rhode Island

wordplay

OP confirmed in a comment that my answer was correct, though never actually accepted it (and apparently went AWOL immediately thereafter)

Rand al'Thor

@Rubio Your answer by itself makes clear that the question is too broad.

Rubio

But it doesn't, actually. See my comment under the actual question.

Rand al'Thor

This is why "odd one out" questions tend to be bad: one can often make a case for any particular one being the odd one out.

Rubio

My "answers" were deliberate jokes, until I actually hit on the right one. The others didn't fit, weren't topical, and clearly were not intended solutions.

Gareth McCaughan

I'm with Rubio on this one, FWIW.

Rand al'Thor

1:32 AM

But any of them could have been considered a valid solution.

I stand by my VTC on that one.

Gareth McCaughan

Any pattern-finding question will have multiple possible answers. Should we forbid 'em all?

Rubio

The puzzle from the onset hinted at topicality and at abbreviation relevance. (And wordplay.) None of the answers given fit that, so would not qualify to make it "too broad". In my opinion.

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan They don't all have multiple possible equally sensible answers.

Gareth McCaughan

I agree that that one was a marginal case -- I don't think voting to close is entirely unreasonable -- but I think leaving it open would have been better.

Rubio

I really do think that one was well hinted, the answer sought was definite, and the other answers precluded by the question itself.

Gareth McCaughan

1:35 AM

This one also didn't have multiple possible equally good answers. (I'm not sure "sensible" is the right word.)

Rand al'Thor

If someone posts a number-sequence and someone else answers it with a stupid polynomial interpolation which obviously wasn't intended, then I wouldn't say it's too broad just because of that.

Rubio

A vote to close seems to me to be a judgement on behalf of the overall community that a puzzle is objectively bad. And I don't think either of the two referenced qualify. That's my opinion, and I think I can argue well for it.

Gareth McCaughan

I think this puzzle was (just about) like a number-sequence that has other unintended answers via polynomial interpolation. The question indicated explicitly that a topical answer was sought (none of Rubio's other answers had that property) and it hinted that abbreviations were relevant (only one of Rubio's other answers had that property).

Again, I don't want to claim it was a great puzzle or deny that it was at best teetering on the edge of being too broad.

Rand al'Thor

But if someone asks "what's the odd one out - Britain, Kazakhstan, Argentina, or Lesotho?", then an equally good case could be made for any of them, so that's too broad, at least without further clues towards what sort of odd one out is being sought, which would probably make it trivial.

Gareth McCaughan

Right. But this question was not like that because there was an answer that, once stated, was fairly clearly better than the others.

Rubio

1:39 AM

I'm only bringing it up because it seems, as I said, to have happened more than I'd expect in recent days, and maybe a modicum of caution should be called for before knee-jerk reaching for the Close button just because something looks like it might not be a good puzzle. Voting to close, in particular after a puzzle has actually been solved and therefore is, objectively, solvable from its own clues, seems like bad form.

Rand al'Thor

@Rubio Not so much "objectively bad" as objectively off-topic or unanswerable. I believe I've written about this on meta ...

Rubio

And yes, I'd agree that if it was the question you just asked, that it boils down to "Guess the criteria I'm thinking of"

but neither of these puzzles were that.

Rand al'Thor

16

A: Is the distinction too subtle between downvoting and voting to close?

A CLOSE VOTE IS NOT A SUPER-DOWNVOTE. Sorry for shouting. But this is a really important point which far too many people apparently fail to grasp. Downvotes are used at the discretion of the individual voter, and mean "this is a bad question". They can reflect the voter's opinion of the qualit...

Rubio

The proper solution was hinted at in the puzzle. (And in MBB's, further hinted in hints, though arguably that may flag it as a bad puzzle)

Gareth McCaughan

Again: when a puzzle has been attacked by someone other than its setter, who has given it nontrivial amounts of thought and arrived at the setter's intended solution with confidence that it is the intended solution -- isn't that strong evidence against its being "objectively unanswerable"?

Rand al'Thor

1:40 AM

^^^ That was what I was thinking of, but this one is actually better:

Rubio

No.

Rand al'Thor

5

A: Proper rules for closing

too broad the question has already 3+ answers that all look plausible/acceptable I can easily think of one or more answers for this riddle Op has been contacted: -- OP states the intended answer is similar or even worse -- OP can't show that some of the clues haven't been used properly OP...

Gareth McCaughan

@Rubio What was the "No." in response to?

Rubio

I could then argue that the Dargloc puzzle is VTC worthy.

er. Sorry. I completely misread Gareth. :)

Gareth McCaughan

I wondered (hence my question)

Incidentally, I would have some sympathy with closing the Dargloc puzzle :-).

Rand al'Thor

1:42 AM

@GarethMcCaughan That's where we disagree, then. I think some of the other solutions in Rubio's answer looked more likely than the intended one. "Letters which appear in 'Hillary Clinton'" just seemed fairly random to me.

Rubio

My answer now that I read it is "Yes", though I would qualify it somewhat; it's possible to get the answer to a bad question and that doesn't make it not a bad question. But VTC because "unclear" in that case is, I think, unquestionably inappropriate.

As it was plainly clear enough to someone to follow the clues to a solution.

Gareth McCaughan

I think it would have been a better puzzle if the setter had contrived to have both (major) candidates participate symmetrically in the condition.

And yes, absolutely a puzzle can be a terrible puzzle despite being solvable, but -- as Rand has rightly been pointing out -- being a terrible puzzle is not the same as deserving to be closed as "unclear".

Rubio

I think you meant me, but yes.

Gareth McCaughan

I actually meant Rand. (See, e.g., that first meta question linked above.)

Rubio

I gotta run for a bit, but I just wanted to raise a little flag of caution. I'll read the metas when I get back.

Rand al'Thor

1:45 AM

@GarethMcCaughan Lack of symmetry between the two major candidates has been a much bigger problem than just here ;-)

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor Yes, but let's not get into that here...

(I would hazard a guess that there's a great deal of agreement among the denizens of PSE about which candidate was better, but I bet there isn't total unanimity, and political arguments can get very toxic very fast.)

Rand al'Thor

Heh, yeah, I didn't mean to start a political debate. There's an election room for that anyway.

Jonathan Allan

2:33 AM

hmm, any ideas on the final step of the patternbot? I'm stumped.

cant see any indication of anything other than "look stuff up on oeis". But there is no such sequence.

Maybe it could be a triangle read by sequences or something?

Gareth McCaughan

3:03 AM

I obviously didn't read your answer carefully enough -- I thought you'd completely solved it.

oh -- is it actually all the sequences themselves that you haven't got? I think I saw you said something like "OEIS sequences in order" and just assumed you'd checked :-).

oh, no, I understand now

so you have the right sequences but don't know where each one needs to start from

my apologies for being slow on the uptake

Jonathan Allan

yeah I don't know for sure, but I am almost certain that everything is correct except for where the sequences I've given start.

so eleven and ten items of those two sequences respectively, but possibly starting at a different n

Jonathan Allan

3:27 AM

yeah A000002 is a best guess - updated. Others seem to be accurate - but I don't shink all are known to infinity anyway.

From 13 on we see ...,4,4,4,2,2,3,3,2,4,... which does not appear in OEIS

if you can spot a mistake in there?...

...4,4,4,2,2,3,3,2,... does appear though.

3 results

Rubio

So, like - I read Rand's meta post. I read the Proper Rules for Closing. I would disagree with "already has 3+ answers that all look plausible/acceptable" to the extent that it could accept answers clearly not the intent of the asker; a "stupid polynomial interpolation" may be provably "correct" without being Correct™, and similarly there are often going to be answers that are defensible, but nevertheless are incomplete or unsatisfying in how well they fit the question.

Other than that, I agree with pretty much everything in the Rules for Closing accepted answer. And would argue that the recent VTCs I commented on, don't fit.

Jonathan Allan

*shink = think ^

Gareth McCaughan

@JonathanAllan I think I've got the last bit of the patternbot

but hang on a moment while I check details

Jonathan Allan

hmm last should be A21 but is actually A22...

^ oh hmm no it is A21 sorry

Gareth McCaughan

aargh, it doesn't quiiiite work (yet)

I'm getting my arse kicked by the Law of Small Numbers

see, if instead of starting position in the sequence as listed in OEIS we use starting position relative to "correct" sequence indices -- i.e., add the (first) offset value from the OEIS entry -- then we get 2,?,2,?,3,2,?,2,3,3,4,?,4,4,5,2,3,3,4,3,4

aargh formatting

sorry, I had underscores there at first and that did entirely the wrong thing

anyway, OEIS has a bunch of matches for 2,3,3,4,?,4,4,5,2,3,3,4,3,4

which I think are all morally the same thing, namely number of bits in n

Deusovi

3:52 AM

"morally"

Gareth McCaughan

but the earlier terms don't quite match

Jonathan Allan

those numbers are the ones I posted plus "left-offset"?

Gareth McCaughan

sorry, I said "number of bits" and I meant "number of 1-bits"

@JonathanAllan yes

Jonathan Allan

yeah I read bits set and understood "ones"

Gareth McCaughan

@Deusovi by "morally" I mean that e.g. one of them is "numerator of fraction of 1-bits" which is very frequently equal to the number of one bits

and one of them is "max number of 1-digits in any base" which is usually the number of 1s in base 2

and some others differ in more fundamental ways but equal the #1bits sequence "often" for good reasons

anyway, lots and lots of them look like 2,2,3,?,3,3,?,2,3,3,4,?,4,4,5,2,3,3,4,3,4

where the italicized ones are ones that seem to differ from the starting-point sequence we've got here

and maybe this is all coincidence, but it seems like a really big coincidence.

Jonathan Allan

4:05 AM

it definitely seems like the right kind of result for the puzzle, not sure whey the extra offset in the most likely candidate "hamming weight"

(that is A000120)

Gareth McCaughan

anyway, it's 4am local time and I'd better go to bed. Good luck!

Jonathan Allan

I'm also in the UK - Good night!!

Rubio

Good night guys :)

Jonathan Allan

Well I'm still up (ish)

Rubio

4:51 AM

The latest question needs to be taken out back and shot.

Jonathan Allan

Lock: 3,[n*1],6,7. Unlock: 3,[n*1],6,9,4 or 2,[n*5],9,4

It looks like the OP is asking if their answer is right.

Rubio

Yeah actually I just was typing up an edit to address the open-endedness of the state diagram. There's a mention of 5-digit sequences, which presumably is an external constraint as it's not a constraint of the state diagram.

Jonathan Allan

5:07 AM

Ah yeah I pretty much ignored all the writing

Pretty sure you've answered everything except their question: "Your answers are wrong, neither of them are five digits long" :p

Rubio

I couldn't tell what they were actually asking, so figured I'd provide the most general answer possible. :)

Jonathan Allan

Think you got it

Rubio

This is, amusingly, a case where the question is completely unclear but it doesn't even matter because the answer is straightforward and easy to provide regardless of what their specific question was. Unless they actually meant those tags, in which case who knows what they're after.

Jonathan Allan

Someone who can't string a coherent sentence together is likely to get the wrong tags.

Rubio

poor guy's getting savaged on rep for that Q though. :)

Jonathan Allan

5:14 AM

having 0 effect

or almost

Ankoganit

5:27 AM

@Deusovi Aaah thanks, that's a great relief :-)

Rubio

I don't suppose there's any way to SUGGEST an edit to the OP of a question (or, I guess, answer) without actually making it, once you're past the rep threshold for unreviewed edits?

Ankoganit

@Rubio I think so. However, you can always ping the OP and manually suggest an edit in the comment.

Jonathan Allan

or edit and comment "is that what you meant" or equivalent.

Rubio

I suppose. Though I sort of did that already, I guess. :)

Just in an answer rather than in a comment, or in the original question

user230888

@Ankoganit No upcoming prof. Phenomenon puzzle ?

Ankoganit

6:00 AM

@tpk Nah, not anytime soon, sorry. Nice and new math puzzles are hard to come by.

Beastly Gerbil

2:11 PM

@Mithrandir nice puzzle!

Mithrandir

@BeastlyGerbil Thanks!

Beastly Gerbil

I'm exploring Sarumon now, got to the greeny, purple yellowy bit

Found the ROT13 text at the bottom

Rand al'Thor

What's the latest CCCC?

Beastly Gerbil

Posted an answer

Rand al'Thor

I'm creating a new one, but need to solve the last one before I can post it.

This one still unsolved?

22 hours ago, by Rand al'Thor

19 hours ago, by Gareth McCaughan

CCCC: A state I've reached: turned on (6)

Sid

2:25 PM

Unfortunately, I don't see the image, it says "not available"...

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor have you clicked on Mithrandirs puzzle yet? If you click on the picture, it isyour account on the computer

Sid

Well, another image shows Rand's puzzle about Mithrandir.... which leads to nothing that I see... while another has someone from The Hobbit...

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil Yeah, I know.

Sep 7 at 21:34, by Mithrandir

Beastly Gerbil

Oh you found the GIF on the keyboard too then

Sid

That image reminds me of Windows 98... Not sure, why...

Rand al'Thor

2:28 PM

My rep is about 10k out of date though :-P

Beastly Gerbil

@Mithrandir I can't decode the pigpen cipher in the BFG to anything

Sid

@BeastlyGerbil Yeah, it gives weird letters...

Beastly Gerbil

Most of the books lead to images, but a few lead to text so I am focusing on those

I like the red circles one :P

Rand al'Thor

wat

Too broad?

Beastly Gerbil

Okay @Mithrandir I've been through every single book and some contain secret links and letters, but most just contain an image from a movie or a book cover or just an image, and thats really confusing me. Are those pics important?

Sid

2:44 PM

@BeastlyGerbil Rebus?

There is no tag, though...

Beastly Gerbil

Yeah I found a pretzel rebus and a couple that look like rebuses, but most arent

For instance, one of them just shows a picture of a donkey

And one just shows a fire

Rand al'Thor

11

A: The many memes of scifi.stackexchange

Meme: rand al'thor's (or anyone else's) donkey of shame Originator: Wad Cheber Cultural height: September 2015 to present. Background: rand made the mistake of admitting that he has never seen any of the Star Wars movies. Therefore, he was forced to ride a donkey backwards into the des...

Mithrandir does know his SFF memes, though maybe he wouldn't put them in a puzzle over here.

Beastly Gerbil

Aaah this one is really bugging me. I've found Q3 and H2 but can't find another letter to complete an imgur address

Rand al'Thor

On the other hand, he's already included a reference to the "Mithrandir = Rand al'Thor" thing in that puzzle.

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor thats the donkey one

Rand al'Thor

2:53 PM

Too broad?

Beastly Gerbil

I don't think so

Rand al'Thor

Hmm, maybe not. The fact that the solution is in the story does narrow it down, I suppose.

Although the question doesn't actually say that.

So it probably is too broad as stated.

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor can you help with the pretzel rebus?

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil That one was solved ages ago.

Beastly Gerbil

Its part of Mithrandirs new one

Sid

2:58 PM

@BeastlyGerbil I don't quite remember, but It had something to do with LOTR..

Rand al'Thor

4

Q: The second pretzel rebus

This is the sequel to this. What does the below quote, written with pretzels, say? (The tags are a hint... :P) Overall image: Mug shots: Sorry, this first one is kinda blurry. But it's still recognizable :) Next one's a bit blurry, sorry. But it doesn't really matter :P) G...

visual rebus tolkien

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

Beastly Gerbil

Probably indicates the book called 'Hobbit'

user230888

Mithrandir is a sockpuppet of BG. :P

Ankoganit

Which by the law of transitivity of sockpuppetry implies rand is a sockpuppet of BG :P

Beastly Gerbil

@tpk you haven't been here long enough to know Rand althor and Mithrandir are the same person ;)

(Not really its an inside joke)

Ankoganit

3:05 PM

lol just realised sockpuppetry is an equivalence relation

Sid

@Ankoganit Pretty obvious, isn't it? That should be an example of equivalence relations in books.. :P

Ankoganit

@Sid Yeah, that's obusovi

user230888

Yeah, very trivial.

Rand al'Thor

@Ankoganit Obusovi is Deusovi's brother?

6

Ankoganit

@Randal'Thor lol

I'll keep that typo

Rand al'Thor

3:08 PM

@Beastly @Gareth @Jonathan More delete votes on this? It's a request for people to write creative stories, not a puzzle.

Beastly Gerbil

VTD

Sid

Wait, duplicate questions are also equivalence relations?

Maybe not, Not exactly symmetric...

user230888

Nope, one way based on time.

Ankoganit

Wow, @Gareth's C4 is unsolved for 19 hours

My C4s don't even last 19 seconds

Rand al'Thor

@Ankoganit I'm not sure about symmetry ...

With genuine bad sockpuppets, there's likely to be one 'master' account and a sockpuppet which is mainly used to upvote that one. Not sure if you'd say the master was a sockpuppet of the sockpuppet.

Ankoganit

3:19 PM

Um that depends on whether you agree to call the original user to be a sock of the fake users

Actually yes, that doesn't work too well

Rand al'Thor

I'd say Gamow, for instance, has too much rep to be a mere sockpuppet.

Having socks isn't the same as being one.

Beastly Gerbil

Yes I mean we can be sure @Randal'Thor isn't a sockuppet

Ankoganit

damn now what do I write if they ask for an example of equiv relations in an exam :( :P

Beastly Gerbil

He might have some (naught, naughty) but h isn't one himself

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil Having sockpuppets isn't naughty in itself, unless you use them to upvote yourself etc.

I do have a sockpuppet, but there's nothing nefarious going on with it.

Beastly Gerbil

3:22 PM

who? mithrandir? :P

user230888

For example, MBB ... [?]

Rand al'Thor

86

A: How should sockpuppets be handled on Stack Exchange?

How can I be sure I'm looking at a sockpuppet? You can't ever be 100% sure. What you think is a sockpuppet could in fact be my good friend Nog Shine, who loves everything I write, copies my writing style, and uses my computer to vote and post stuff when I step away for coffee. But in practice, ...

Ankoganit

Many high rep answerers have a sock for asking, I heard

Beastly Gerbil

@GarethMcCaughan?

Rand al'Thor

@Ankoganit I dunno, maybe on SO.

In these parts asking is at least as prestigious as answering.

Ankoganit

3:25 PM

Yeah, that was SO I think

Not here

Beastly Gerbil

Dependigng on the puzzle, it is generally as hard to make one as it is to solve it

user230888

@BeastlyGerbil Sorry no offence, but except for finding Beastly's wife and a cipher, all his puzzles, although being (well) efforted, are trivial.

Ankoganit

8

Q: Do the top answerers have secondary accounts to post questions?

I wonder why some of the top answerers (> 1000 answers) on SO have so few questions (< 100 questions). Has anyone ever caught them using multiple accounts?

discussion stackoverflow vampire

Beastly Gerbil

@tpk, my top ones aren't and yes unfortunately I agree with you for the rest. I'm only 13 and still need to work out how to make consistent good puzzles

Gareth McCaughan

@BeastlyGerbil If your question meant "do I have a sockpuppet for asking questions": nope, no sockpuppets at all, sorry.

Beastly Gerbil

3:28 PM

I am going to try and concentrate more on what I'm good at, imgur mazes

@GarethMcCaughan aaaaah :P

user230888

Why care about the age ? You may be 13 and posting good puzzles, or be 30 and posting trivial ones.

Rand al'Thor

feature-request: if @Deusovi ever makes a sockpuppet, he should call it Obusovi.

8

Beastly Gerbil

@tpk my point is I still haven't figured out before posting whether a puzzle is good and isn't trivial

To use a cliche - I'm still learning

Gareth McCaughan

@Sconibulus If you happen to be around, is there any chance you could double-check a couple of things in your chess cipher? Specifically, whether S5 is really correct for both word 4 letter 5 and word 6 letter 4; and whether word 5 is missing a letter. Thanks!

@tpk People do commonly learn a thing or two between ages 13 and 30. For instance, that complaining in public that someone else's puzzles are "trivial" is rude.

5

Beastly Gerbil

Nah I agree

user230888

3:32 PM

Nov 15 at 12:01, by tpk

Oh. I am a stupid.

Beastly Gerbil

But I also would like to point out that a lot of puzzles on the first page of the votes section are trivial, including this from Rand Althor

Gareth McCaughan

@BeastlyGerbil You're welcome to agree, and you may well not be bothered by it, but that doesn't stop it being rude. (Something is rude, I suggest, if a substantial fraction of people it's said to would be upset by it. Of course if someone knows you really well then they may say things to you that would usually be rude but they know you won't mind -- but I bet tpk doesn't know you that well.

Ankoganit

Trivial =/= bad or boring

Sconibulus

If you're asking, you probably already figured it out, but yeah, there was one letter left out of the plaintext that would not change a word meaning because it was unencipherable with the chosen key

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil You thought Andrew Void was trivial? :-(

Sconibulus

3:34 PM

let me check to make sure I didn't screw up a different letter

Beastly Gerbil

Depends on the definition of trivial

Gareth McCaughan

@tpk Being rude about yourself doesn't excuse you from being polite about other people. (This is a thing I learned between age 13 and age 30.)

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor I'm thinking trivial means involves a piece of trivia (In your case the book A Void) if it doens't mean that, I apologise

Gareth McCaughan

@Sconibulus I've figured out the answer, or at least I think I have, but I am still trying to make sense of how the "S" letters work. I thought I had a kinda-sorta pattern that would semi-explain them but then I found something else that broke it :-).

Mithrandir

@BeastlyGerbil Most of them

Gareth McCaughan

3:35 PM

@BeastlyGerbil I think by "trivial" @tpk means too easy / content-free / no serious thinking required.

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil I thought "trivial" normally means easy, simple, uninteresting.

Mithrandir

I don't remember what the BFG one is....

Beastly Gerbil

And if trivial does mean bad or boring then I will take offence at @tpk's comment

Gareth McCaughan

(the etymology of "trivial" is quite interesting, btw)

Ankoganit

@GarethMcCaughan via is road, right

?

Rand al'Thor

3:36 PM

@GarethMcCaughan Indeed. Comes from the trivia and quadrivia in ancient Greek times IIRC?

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor okay then, sorry

I just meant it contained a piece of trivia

Rand al'Thor

When the education curriculum was split up into seven parts (though I can't remember what they all were).

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor Mediaeval rather than ancient Greek, but yes.

Ankoganit

Once I heard obvious etymologically means "right there on the road"

Beastly Gerbil

FWIW Andrew Void is a great puzzle

Gareth McCaughan

3:37 PM

oh, sorry, earlier than mediaeval, actually

goes back to late Roman

but not Greek

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil No problem :-) Once I realised you were using "trivial" in a different sense, nothing to be offended about.

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor @BeastlyGerbil I am pretty sure @tpk is not using it in that sense, though.

Beastly Gerbil

@tpk wait till tommorow when I post a puzzle for the metapuzzle and then try and call that one trivial. It's anything but

Mithrandir

6

Q: What does this message on your doorstep say?

You wake up one morning and head outside to get your mail. However, on your doorstep, you find an encoded message... What does this message say?

cipher

user230888

In my def, trivial = very very easy.

Rand al'Thor

3:38 PM

@tpk = @ArbitraryKangaroo, right?

Or am I getting mixed up with someone else?

Ankoganit

I use trivial in the sense 'three vials': "Nurse, give that patient a tri-vial dose"

2

:P

Gareth McCaughan

@Ankoganit no, not "right there on the road". Back in Olden Times (tm) there was a sort of 7-part academic curriculum; the three parts that were studied first were the "trivium" (three roads) and the four that came after were the quadrivium (four roads). So the easy stuff was "trivial" because it belonged to the earlier part of the curriculum.

trivium = grammar, logic, rhetoric

Ankoganit

@GarethMcCaughan Oh, nice! I was talking about "obvious" though

Gareth McCaughan

oh, yes, obvious = right there in the road getting in your way

Sconibulus

@GarethMcCaughan Curses, it looks like you're right and I'm a terrible person, word 4 was supposed to have S7, not S5.

Sid

3:40 PM

@tpk See, Every puzzle appears trivial once it is solved. For example, the puzzle that Mithrandir referenced in his latest puzzle.. (The one asked by Rand) had a very simple concept and that's where the beauty lies, in the simplicity of the puzzle.

Gareth McCaughan

ok, thanks. oh, and that means a bit of extra information about the S-letters, which may help deconfuse me a bit.

Beastly Gerbil

Some puzzles are good because they are complicated (Alconja's) but some are good as they are simple

user230888

@BeastlyGerbil I would be sleeping/at school then.

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil Some of the best puzzles seem very complex and difficult but are actually easy once you get the right idea.

user230888

Trivial puzzles aren't puzzles, as trivial problems are nothing but rote dumb exercise.

Sid

3:43 PM

@tpk sample? WHat do you call as trivial problems?

Rand al'Thor

This is why I like (good) riddles: they can be really confusing and seemingly impossible to make all the clues fit one single thing, but when you find it, everything slides into place so beautifully.

Gareth McCaughan

@Sconibulus I have only very weak evidence that there is anything wrong here, but could you confirm that both s2 (word 1 letter 5) and s19 (word 4 letter 1) are correct? My highly deficient and defective understanding of the S-letters makes me think they should be letters 16 apart but in fact they seem to be letters 10 apart.

Rand al'Thor

For instance, this awesome riddle, which remained unsolved for months until the great McMagister was brought out of retirement.

Gareth McCaughan

@Sconibulus (feel free not to indulge me in these queries, of course)

Sconibulus

I'm going back through and making everything else is right, just to verify. I thought I'd done this before, but I guess I missed something

Rand al'Thor

3:45 PM

Such a massive amount of clues, and nothing seemed to fit them all.

Until you come up with the right solution, and everything makes perfect sense.

(@Beastly @Gareth one more delete vote needed on this)

Beastly Gerbil

Already VTD

Sid

How does that puzzle have so less votes? And the answer too... That is my new benchmark for writing riddles..

Rand al'Thor

@Sid Which - paco's riddle?

Sid

Yep

Rand al'Thor

It should be noted that even though this answer was posted almost 3 months after I posted the puzzle, McMagister had been inactive and hadn't seen the puzzle until I contacted him on another forum on August 12. It took him only one hour to solve this puzzle! — pacoverflow May 11 at 22:44

Ankoganit

3:51 PM

He's not active anymore?

Rand al'Thor

Last seen about a month ago.

Ankoganit

That reminds me, f'' has completely vanished.

Rand al'Thor

I see @Deusovi hammered the "prophesied battle" question :-)

Sconibulus

@GarethMcCaughan Everything except the S5->S7 in word 4 looks right, I double-checked the S squares, and treble-checked those two in particular, and it's right

word 5 letter 1 is s2 though? Did you maybe lose track of a word somewhere?

Ankoganit

@GarethMcCaughan Mind giving a hint on the C4 ? :-D

Rand al'Thor

3:59 PM

@Beastly @Gareth One more delete vote needed on this too ...

Beastly Gerbil

Again already VTD

Rand al'Thor

I suspected as much :-)

Enjoying your new 10k powers, eh?

Ankoganit

@Beastly is enjoying his new ~~toys~~ privileges :P

Beastly Gerbil

Yeah I just went into tools and looked at delete votes. VTD if I agreed

Mithrandir

I'd probably have 10k on SFF if I didn't keep disappearing :P

Rand al'Thor

4:02 PM

@BeastlyGerbil Here's a few more for you then: puzzling.stackexchange.com/q/10730/5373 puzzling.stackexchange.com/q/16426/5373

@BeastlyGerbil That's not the whole explanation though, since I've found a couple (via the 10k tools) where you were the only VTD so far.

Until I added my VTD, of course.

Gareth McCaughan

@Sconibulus Thanks. I'm not sure what you mean about word 5 letter 1 being s2 (I agree it is); the ones I was asking about were 1:5 (which is also s2) and 4:1 (which is s19); if my understanding of the S-letters is right then those ought to correspond to f4 and f6 respectively, and if my guess at the plaintext is right then those are C and M respectively, and I'd been hoping there was a kinda-repeating 2-row pattern about the S-letters with period 16.

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor yeah those were in the 'extreme donvotes' section

Gareth McCaughan

oh, wait, 16 = -10 so maybe it's OK

no, that's the wrong way around

the above may entirely fail to make sense because the 2-row pattern may simply be a flatly wrong guess on my part

Sconibulus

well you do clearly have the plaintext correct, do you want/need any further hints for the S-encoding?

Gareth McCaughan

not yet, I think

Sconibulus

4:09 PM

Oh, T isn't an ordinary move, by the way. Notice that all instances of T are the same move

Gareth McCaughan

fair enough

maybe then R indicates all sorts of funny business: T for check, perhaps, O for castling, X for capture

though my explanation seems like it works too :-)

If there were an "r16" we could discover whether it means something else when there's a promotion

Sconibulus

well... that particular move would end up encoding an X,T, and the promotion result

Sid

Anyone above 2k, I see an edit of a 2-year old question...

Rand al'Thor

@Sid ?

Sid

[This] (puzzling.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/25801)

user230888

4:21 PM

@Sid After seeing, in the puzzles where its instantly obvious how to proceed. Can't add links from mobile, being lazy.

Rand al'Thor

@Sid Seems legit. (I checked the revision history of the Wikipedia article, and it doesn't look as if anyone is messing around with the "maximum" and "minimum" wrongly there.)

Sconibulus

Oh, wait, I'm super dumb, there IS an encoding for S, I just managed to miss it repeatedly, it would have been S13

Rand al'Thor

@Beastly Wow, there's a whole pack of questions now which you and I have VTD'ed and just need one more.

@Alconja @Jonathan or other 10k-ers, questions in need of deletion: one, two, three, four (also maybe votes to close on this and this?)

Sid

4:40 PM

I see, there hasn't been the site self-evaluation in a while..

Mithrandir

I like that almost invisible text thing. Just saying...

Apparently, I also like dropping random hints in chat...

Rand al'Thor

@Sid Isn't that a beta thing?

Sid

Is it? I am not sure.... I just saw it at the community bot's profile...

Rand al'Thor

There was a 7th review queue here for site self-evaluation a couple of times.

11

Q: Let's get critical: Nov 2014 Site Self-Evaluation

We all love Puzzling Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's ne...

discussion site-evaluation

10

Q: Let's get critical: May 2015 Site Self-Evaluation

We all love Puzzling Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's ne...

discussion site-evaluation

Rubio

Sigh. Again, I don't understand why there's any reason at all on closing the Which Star was Closest question. If answers other than the intended one only fit if you wildly speculate, and/or ignore information provided in the puzzle, I don't think it makes sense to look at them as "proof" that the question was too broad.

When a puzzle excludes answers other than the intended one, but does so in a way that isn't apparent until you see the actual answer and see how the others are excluded, I think that's actually clever puzzle crafting and a good thing; penalizing that by VTC as "too broad" seems, to me anyway, to be discouraging questions that don't beat you over the head with their path to their intended solution.

Rand al'Thor

4:45 PM

@Rubio You may be right. I haven't actually VTCed (yet), but I thought it was worth discussing.

Sconibulus

The Apple Star question?

I thought that was pretty good

Rubio

I thought it was excellent. Subtly hinted to a specific answer.

Deusovi

Which one?

Rand al'Thor

I've never heard that thing inside an apple referred to as a star, nor do I think it looks particularly like a star, so in my subjective opinion it's not a good question, more like "plastic bag"/"guess what I'm thinking" territory.

But I do accept that mentioning "half an apple" in the same line as "which star is closest to us" may make that answer more natural than others and therefore the question not too broad.

@Deusovi This one. Btw, there's some comments you might want to remove there, including one with an unnecessary spoiler.

Beastly Gerbil

Oh yes that would be mine

Deleted

Rubio

4:53 PM

"I didn't narrow it down to the intended answer from the provided clueing" ≠ "Too broad" :-)

Gareth McCaughan

5:59 PM

@Ankoganit OK, a hint on the CCCC: I already mentioned that there's a word that essentially serves as filler: the word in question is "reached". (It's not strictly filler, but it might as well be in terms of effect on the clue.)

Rand al'Thor

That's the one I'd guessed.

Could "on" suggest an anagram somehow?

Giving the answer as a state whose name is an anagram of "turned"?

Gareth McCaughan

(would you like me to comment on those speculations?)

Mithrandir

6:17 PM

dentur
deturn
Druten
dunter
durent
Red nut
Rudnet
Truden
Trunde
truned
tunder
Tundre
tunred
turend
turned
undetr

Sconibulus

I sort of assumed 'turned on' meant 'NO' for something like Norway, but didn't find anything else that might make that fit

Rand al'Thor

Hmm, yes, "turned" would be a better anagram indicator than "on".

But the answer is 6 letters long.

@GarethMcCaughan I wouldn't mind some more help, but others might - I'm far from the hottest crossword solver around here.

Maybe the fact that it's lasted so long unsolved is more to do with the weekend than it being particularly hard ...

Gareth McCaughan

Certainly possible. (I don't think it's very hard, but of course it's always hard to assess one's own.)

I will say that I would never use "on" as an anagram indicator but might use "turned" to indicate either reversal or anagrammatization. Or, of course, neither: it could be used for its actual meaning or as a source of letters for treatment as indicated by other words. None of the foregoing is intended as a hint for this particular clue.

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan You spell "anagrammatization" with a Z? I'm afraid you'll have to turn in your Brit card now.

3

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling

Rand al'Thor

6:32 PM

@GarethMcCaughan Oh.

Hang on, I thought you were a Cambridge man!

:-P

> A state I've [reached]: turned on (6)

Maybe "A I've on" anagrammed (turned) to form a state?

Sconibulus

ACTIVE A, CT (Connecticut), I've ->Turned on

Rand al'Thor

Nice!

@Gareth ^^ ping

Sconibulus

reached could maybe mean 'the path traversed to get here' as a sum thing

Gareth McCaughan

6:50 PM

(sorry, was making gravy)

@Sconibulus Correct!

Sconibulus

Yay! I got one!

Umm... now to make one

Gareth McCaughan

@Randal'Thor yup, Cambridge, but I agree with the OUP's reasons for its stance on -ize.

And I claim it's a perfectly cromulent British English spelling given that Oxford does it.

(disappearing again for dinner)

Rand al'Thor

@GarethMcCaughan I haven't been able to take the Oxford English Dictionary seriously since they decided "literally" could mean "not literally".

Sconibulus

how about... CCCC: A western study area featuring waterfowl, increasing rapidly (7)

(Apologies in advance to Deusovi for probably breaking some sort of rule)

Mithrandir

Whew. I made my puzzle hard for me to find what I need, and I know where they are. o_o

So you missed some letters, but don't count on being able to do fill in and have them magically appear. It's too close for that :) — Mithrandir 1 min ago

I'd say he missed... 5 invisible text thingies?

@LukasRotter that's a hint :P

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